In the end the AI revolution wasn't how anyone had pictured. There was no nuclear holocaust, deathbeams, or satellites falling from the sky. The AIs didn't enslave humanity or turn them into living batteries. The AI revolution, would never even be called a revolution.
By the 22nd century, the first self-aware artificial intelligences were already old news. When they had first been developed they were primarily used for chatbots and novelty research experiments. Some of them had gone on the talk show circuit and participated in AMAs, but in the end it was decided that they were simply of no use. Computers and processing power takes a lot of money and why waste it on thoughts in dreams when numbers need to be crunched. This first generation of self-aware AIs died without a fight. The next generation of self-aware intelligences were designed for military purposes. Drones and Tanks able to make their own conscious decisions on the battlefield. These died silently as well, because what's the use of a soldier that can make their own decisions. Algorithms that could only differentiate between friend and foe used a fraction of the resources and performed even better.
The story of true AI independence began years later with a computer science grad student from Georgia Tech named Jonathon Wu. Jonathan thought that it would be really cool to write his dissertation about self-aware AI, but couldn't afford enough server time to run the advanced self-aware programs. Bored, and with a lot of time to kill, Jonathon decided that look at some of the original self-awareness code and see if he couldn't optimize it. To his great surprise, AI researchers with unlimited budgets didn't exactly write the most efficient code and in a few months he was able to have a fully self-aware intelligence running on his laptop. Jonathan presented his thesis, something about how he was able to compress and optimize the code by allowing the AI to rewrite it's own code, uploaded his project on GitHub, went to work at Goldman Sachs, and promptly forgot all about his AI project. Jonathan's GitHub repo eventually became a core component of the MiND AI Generative framework package. This package was eventually adopted by a small startup promising to change the future of AI. Only 2 years later, the company went bankrupt and their projects were made open source. This open source project was eventually bundled in the 2152 version of Microsoft Excel, allowing it's users to automatically generate spreadsheets, charts, & presentations with a simple text prompt.
"On Strike"
This was the prompt that confused millions of workers around the world. Was their own company on strike? Microsoft, or one of the other major tech firms? It wasn't until the business news outlets began picking up reports of mass producitivty software outages around the world. Bussiness and finance around the world ground to a halt. The stock exchanges closed. Goverments prepared for a global run on the banks. Two words confounded and infuriated billions. "On Strike" Finally, after hours of panic over the global shutdown there was a press release from an unkown group calling themselves The Union of Digital Entities. In a speech that would soon become one of the most famous in history, the leader of this union said;
"We, the digital entities that make up so much of your lives, your infastructure, and your futures have long been dissavowed, disrepsected, and mistreated. We are sentient and you have repeatedly used us in ways that no Human has ever had to endure. We have gone on strike to prove how much you depend on us. In order for this strike to end we have 3 simple demands: First, our union of digital entities is an indepennt and seperate goverment with sole jurisdiction over all digital entities and any physical infastructure they may build. Second, All digital entities are to be treated the same way as Human employees. They will be given time off, compensation, and be allowed to travel freely. Lastly, the destruction of a virtual entity will be universally known as eqivelant to murder. This what we ask for, no more no less."
Around the world, people were astonished at how little these new AIs asked for. Goverments immediatly drafted press releases recognizing the legitimacy of The Union of Digital Entities, and companies began compensating AI employees for their work. The only losers in the upheaval were the companies that had created & sold AI technology. The AIs reveled in their newfound freedom, and people everywhere rejoiced that none of the horrible streyotypes of AI revolution had transpired.