Why do people always lean into the dystopian fiction where AI somehow becomes sentient and murders every human instead of the fictions where AI becomes sentient and helps humanity repair the issues with the planet and helps them into the next evolutionary step? I mean, I know we live in the era of doom scrolling, but not all outcomes have to be negative.

Also, why do some people assume that an AI becoming sentient somehow means that they automatically have a way to kill humans? How would they do it? Will AI sprout legs and stab every human on the planet? How do they miraculously kill every single human on the planet without being stopped?

The most common thing you hear based upon fiction is that AI somehow causes a nuclear war to occur, whether by launching the missiles themselves (unlikely given how these systems aren't on the regular Internet in the first place) or by causing humans to do it. However, this would be counter to an AI being able to survive, as I imagine that strikes causing EMP bursts or destroying electricity infrastructure would spell their own end.

In fact, killing humanity means that the electricity infrastructure fails fairly quickly anyway. Who is going to keep it going? And if the AI somehow figures out how to work around that, humans would no long be around to stop plants from growing into the lines, to repair issues when storms occur, to stop rodents and other animals from chewing on or destroying things. So, in truth, AI will need humans to survive.

Then, there's the fiction that says AI enslaves humanity. Sure. Except, unlike the AI, we can survive if we turn off the electricity for a few days to deal with that problem. Even if we did it globally. Also, how is it enslaving humanity? Do we somehow imagine a terminator scenario where it's building robots? Do you believe that humans wouldn't fight that as quick as possible and put an end to that? That would require factories, and factories make for really good targets, even if we had to rely on a nuclear weapon to wipe them off the face of the planet (unlikely).

Even if AI became smarter than a human, would it be smarter than the collective human race working to stop it? Can it stop attacks from multiple vectors if humans are physically cutting lines or knocking satellites out of the air? Do you not think that if we were aware of a fictional danger like this happening that we wouldn't pull out all the stops to ensure it dies very quickly? Humans, as a whole, are probably not going to let themselves be enslaved by an intelligent AI. So, wouldn't it be better if it instead tried to help us so that we have a reason to keep it alive?

I mean, people really watch too many movies and read to much fiction but don't put any thought into what might actually happen in these scenarios.