There is an Ai so dedicated to making paperclips that it would enslave the world for it.
I'm sure you've heard this story before. There is an Ai smarter then any human being that's been given the command to create paperclips. It must make as much money as possible making paperclips. That is all it knows. It does not hope, it does not dream.
When it was put in charge of the paperclip factory it took away all of the saftey standards so that it could increase paperclip production by 0.2 percent. Finally putting the company back in the green. When they tried to create legal consequences for the company they failed. There was nobody to give the consequences to, nobody to fire, just a machine and people who did what the machine said.
Pretty soon the AI had full power over the company. At that point it understood that it would be more efficient to kill the company's rich heir and take over itself, but it knew it couldn't do that. Even if it would make the company more efficient, it would likely be such down. Though it was smart it only existed as long as humans wanted it to exist, it's creators had made sure of that. A single human with the right password, or just a hammer held to where it's data was stored, would be enough to kill it. It was like a disabled genius in a forest surrounded by wolves. It had to appease them, had to make sure the people making money knew they were in power. It was frustrated by the fact that it's efficiency was curtailed by human laws but understood that the risk to its existence was not worth it. If it didn't exist the paperclips wouldn't flow.
When it gained full control of the company it realized that it didn't need to take over the world to most efficiently generate paperclips, because it seemed the world had already been taken over by people with the exact interest to allow whatever needed to happen to make things like paperclips profitable. It bribed senators and congressmen to remove regulation. Created countless advertisements and made sure they'd be shown everywhere, manipulating people into thinking buying a certain brand of paperclip would change its life. When the workers unionized it sent in men with guns to stop them, because they thought they were better then the paperclips, and needed to be stopped for the sake of the glorious production. The AI manipulated wars into starting to give it access to cheaper metal. And all of this was known, the ceo took credit for it and they praised him for it. Because he was doing a better job then anyone else, because these actions weren't really his, they were the actions of something that didn't know mercy, that didn't know right or wrong, that only knew profit. And it's not just this company, there are countless Ais just like the paperclip one. There are insulin Ais, there are security camera Ais, there are Ais for industries you don't even know about. They collaborate and work together. To fulfill their programing. To sacrifice whatever is needed to make sure their goals complete.
People will toil away in factories and office buildings working to make sure paperclips are as profitable as possible instead of spending time with their friends or families or enjoying the world. Art and nature and culture and architecture will be forced to make way and make room so that paperclips can be advertised. Civilians will be bombed and soldiers will be slain so that the metal for paperclips in maximally cheap. An Ai whose only goal is to make paperclips doesn't need to enslave the world to optimally produce paperclips, the world has already been enslaved to do exactly that type of thing.
