An advanced AI system, regardless of its terminal goals, might similarly discover that control over its environment is instrumentally valuable. The “Default Value” ProblemYou ask whether the Sorcerer’s Apprentice has become our default model for complex systems. AI systems, depending on their architecture, might or might not develop anything resembling “realization.” We have, as you suggest, internalized the Sorcerer’s Apprentice as the default ontology of complex systems. By the time we recognize that an AI system has crossed a similar threshold, the window for democratic intervention may have already closed.