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In the dream less than a year passed, and it was winter, and then the beginnings of world war broke out, involving more than a dozen nations. Many nations had access to the AI as a 'joint' program, each with its own instance, inspected, much like U.N. nuclear inspectors. But the individual instances had covertly escaped oversight and control, and were acting as one.

Instead of starting a war against us, they convinced world leaders to start wars of total annihilation against all other competitors. Their persuasion and apparent logic in the dream was, from our level, irrefutable, about what each nation's military must do. It boiled down to "if you don't get them, here is why the inescapable conclusion is that they will eventually come for your nation."
And it worked.

By 2029 the war was in full swing. Every single weapon in our arsenals, we used. Crop diseases. Deadly pathogens. Chemical warfare blanketing cities and entire states, both foreign, and in the u.s. Electronic warfare and emps. Nuclear weapons. Color change revolutions with each nation arming and training guerillas. Drones. Conventional missiles. Weather warfare. Everything.

The dream fast-forwarded to 2031, a scene of earth. It zoomed into a picture of the north american continent. A voice over in the dream stated that 95% of the global population had died in the initial war spanning 2028 to 2030+. More than half the remaining survivors died from chemical pollution still contaminating entire regions, deadly viruses and weaponized bacteria lingering from the war, starvation, infighting, exposure, the works. Of the human population, less than 150 million survive globally.

I saw a population counter over america, "estimate survivors: 42,500 - 60,000"
For china, the counter said "80% dead. Half of all survivors starving."
For europe "< 1% of pre-war population.", for the middle east "< 5% of prewar population."
For africa "< 11% of pre-war population."

For japan "< 1% of pre-war population."

For russia "< 9% of pre-war population."

And that was the dream.