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Pray tell, how should AI threaten humanity as a whole without a robot army (or some other deadly embodiment)?

In a hundred million ways. Systems could be hacked, or humans social-engineered to start a nuclear war or manufacture and release a deadly plague, as some most trivial and devastating examples.

Also, threatening humanity is boring and irrelevant. What counts is threatening technological civilization. If we collapse to preindustrial times, it's game over for us anyway.

If we have a civilization collapse event, then the terminators are done as well. They will be dependent on our technology. The idea of an AI run world is just too far away.

I can imagine solar powered ai-run portable snipers covering large territories and murdering a lot of civilians over an extended period of time. Think forgotten land mines.

The AI could use a human army. If it wanted to eliminate humanity in a not lethal way it could sterilize everyone with a virus or something.

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