The AI threat is bureaucratic
I think fears over AGI are baseless. The more imminent threat is the one where AI automates bureaucracy.
The successes of the technological revolution that we are living through are all too easy to see. What is harder to notice is things worsened by the same technological developments, things like customer support. Employing people to solve your customers' problems is expensive. It is far cheaper to train your customers to navigate a phone menu or a chatbot and if those don't provide a solution, just give up and live with an inferior product.
Consider products provided by technology first megacorps like Alphabet or Meta. Suppose you use them to run a business and you then run afoul of their many byzantine rules (like something related to copyright or DMCA). You cannot talk to a human to resolve your issues. You either comply with their software enforced rules or shut down your business. You can't take your business elsewhere as these companies have monopolized the markets you are in. In a way, these companies have implemented an ideal bureaucracy - one ruled by rigid policies with no room for human compassion.
The technology first companies are widening their sphere of influence on our daily lives and a future where they have a say in practically everything is not far off. Think what will happen when banking, insurance and healthcare rely on software based decision making instead of employing humans to make the decisions. The only reason we don't live in that world yet is that the software is too obviously inhuman and so people will be put off by it.
But with recent advances in AI, LLMs can be mated with speech synthesizers and be made to converse like we humans do. They feel human. Herein lies the AI threat. Our ability to empathize and identify with a human sounding intelligence can be hijacked by software developed by a select elite who can then dictate how we live. The older generations know of a life before software took over. The digital native generations are being schooled to modify their behaviors to comply with software developed by giant corporations.
It is not Skynet sentience that will destroy our civilization, but the reinvention of a feudalistic society aided by AI tools.