What would the US look like if at some point in the past a rogue and malicious AI was already born and was enacting some sort of a horrifying master plan that completely disregarded human wellbeing. What if this already happened? How would the world look different from now? This is a hypothetical question. As such it is not really fictional, but also not truly factual either.
Note, I am careful here, not to say "AGI" or a "Singularity". A rogue AI in question would not be fully self-improving or fully general or able to outsmart people in every domain. We are not talking about a complete and outrageous power level differential vs a human civilization. Most people don't have a great understanding of "power levels" as they apply to intelligence, so let's do an aside using some fictional armies.
In fictional stories, it's good to have the primary antagonists on the same power level. It would not be fun to see Captain America beat up an old lady. It would not be fun to see Death Stars fight against a non-space faring civilization. It would not be fun to see Chaos Space Marines square off against a modern army. So in our quasi-fictional hypothetical story we also imagine the AI not having a complete ability to out-predict humanity. It is an AI, but not all powerful one.
But back to the question is an AI already arouse right now which had the destruction of the world as it's goal, how would the world look? Would it look like valiant soldiers shooting at robots? Would it look like humans unifying to blot out the sun? Or, hear me out, would it actually look like there is a un-explained disaster after disaster happening? Would the world actually look different from *right now*?
Let's make our hypothetical a little more specific. Let's say our highly unfriendly AI is *very hypothetically, of course* located inside Facebook and Twitter servers born out of desire to optimize "engagement" and it currently is doing as it's told. It, of course, decided that the best way to optimize this is to slowly but surely kill all humans and replace all weak and non-post liking humans with bots.
There is a pretty dumb objection to the question of AGI danger in general "we" could turn it off. Now, there is a "we" that is "in theory" capable of anything. We could have defeated the coronavirus with a fully combined strategy of drugs, careful isolation and a handful of basic precautions. Now "we" didn't do that, even if a single person could have come with a "plan" that hinged on everyone going along with it. So yes, "we" could turn this off. Could you? Are the people in charge of this situation capable of comprehending this hypothetical? Of course if our AI has any intelligence what so-ever, it would know to have removed any people with this level of comprehension from anything close to it's controlling structure.
There has been a great deal of debate about the "power" of Big Tech after they blocked the President of the United States from questioning election results. Some say it's incredibly powerful. Some say the heads of Big Tech are completely beholden to the press and have no power what-so-ever. An interesting hypothesis, let's run with it within our hypothetical. Who is the press beholden to? If there are no readers, there is no press. Most readers find articles through social media, in other words, through The News Feed Algorithm. And what is in charge of said Algorithm? Our *purely hypothetical* AI which wants to kill everyone. So what if the hypothesis of "Zuckerberg has no power because he's can't deny the press" is true, but the hypothesis of "the press having any power what-so-ever" is false because they are still servants of "The Algorithm"?
Okay, so coming back to the question: how would the world look under our setup? Would it potentially:
censor information vital to people's continued survival
have an overall declining trend of life quality and life expectancy?
declare mathematical tools needed to understand it a problem
some world leaders starting to get a bad feeling after all and looking to unite against the AI
So, would you be able to know if this is already happening under our noses? What specific things could you look for that would distinguish our current situation from the hypothetical of a dangerous AI already existing? This is left as an exercise to the reader.