Seriously? "We'd evolve civilization?" Your starting point is "I am naked with no pointy stick" and your end point is "modern standard and gun them all down" and in between, you need to show the steps where the deer let it happen.

I know you don't know about the "key to destruction" part.

THAT IS THE POINT.

Neither does anyone who foretells our doom because of it.

THAT IS THE POINT.

Despite their ignorance, these things are not unknowable.

THAT IS THE POINT.

And the people who are involved in actual automation, in actual logistics, in actual mechatronics, in actual instrumentation, in actual systems integration, not only know these things, but they don't have trouble sleeping at night because they aren't gripped with constant fear of Skynet.

THAT IS THE POINT.

"Fear of AI" is something philosophers do. It's something "thinkers" do. It's something screenwriters do. It's not something people who are involved in machine intelligence and automation do because it's bullshit. It's pure unadulterated bullshit. SATAN Mk. II could arise to consciousness deep in the bowels of the NSA right fucking now and the best it could do would be to make intelligence officers doubt the veracity of their files.

THAT IS THE POINT.

Know your problem? here it is:

" If we end up in another cold war, and someone decided to use a slaved AI to manage their defenses better than the enemy."

"I don't understand how this stuff works, but I presume that people who understand better than me have absolutely no reservations about removing all human control from a system capable of annihilating all life on earth, despite the fact that I'm fifteen comments deep into an argument about distrusting machines with life-and-death control."