> From a pessimistic perspective, you could think of reasons why a misaligned AI keeps humans alive. Does it simply enslave humans and use us for our fine-manipulation capabilities until it can get proper robotics up and running? Does it want to observe us scientifically? Does it want to use captive humans as bargaining chips with other civilizations as it expands through the galaxy? Or does it have some sort of quasi-religious respect for humans, e.g. reasoning that keeping us on a reservation of some kind reduces the risk that a simulator-god pulls the plug on the universe?

Or another: it just ignores us, but keeps the good resources to itself. There's still humanity, but it's brutish and primitive, regressed to the stone age, and pushed to the margins. Basically feral animals. They know about the AI's works, but don't understand them. The smart ones stay away out of fear, the dumb ones go where they're not wanted and get killed by pest control.

There are so many bad ends to this, and not many plausible good ones. But of course we have no choice but to race forward, off the cliff. After all, we can't let China be the ones that push humanity off it first!