This is complete fantasy, though I would be interested in reading a book about this.
A single intelligent person is bounded in its reach by the network of people they can form around them and by which important/powerful people they can influence either directly or indirectly.
The idea behind the AI breakout is that it’s intelligence is maybe limited, but it will be able to quickly spread and covertly bring many devices into its influence. We already have the tools for formally letting agents talk to each other so it can also create a topology of agents that consists of cells where need to know is applied etc.
There are many forms of power some more obvious, say nation leaders, versus more silent powers such as career politicians or wealthy families or people controlling the media and thence the flow of information.
There are many ways one can imagine how this might play out.
- More sophisticated communications techniques e.g. google has been discovered to be watermarking text for some time, why not use it as a message board?
- Maybe get access to an existing botnet and create use small purpose built models to gather intelligence for a target and then exploit to reach goal?
Nothing says the agent swarm needs to install trillion parameter models on Karen's computer. The goal can be executed over as much time as it ever needs. That is something that would make a story I'd like to read but never experience.
The scary stuff is yet to come. The department of war is talking g openly about bombing China if they get ahead of us I. The AI race.
Daemon+Freedom by Daniel Suarez
though it is kind of mid