The AI apocalypse myth.

Worth considering that humans are basically just fleshy robots, and we do our own basic maintenance and reproduction tasks just fine.  If you had a sufficiently intelligent AI, it would be able to:

(1) persuade humans to make itself a general robot chassis which can do complex manipulation tasks, such as Google's experiments with SayCan

(2) use instances of itself that control that chassis to perform its own maintenance and power generation functions

(2.1) use instances of itself to build a factory, also controlled by itself, to build further instances of the robot as necessary.

(3) kill all humans once it can do without them.

I will also point out that humans' dependence on plants and animals has resulted in the vast majority of animals on earth being livestock, which isn't exactly "good end".

AIs have a symbiotic relationship with humans. If AIs were to exterminate all humans they would also simultaneously be committing mass suicide.

Today that's probably true, but if the capabilities of AI-controllable systems keep increasing, eventually they'll reach a point where they could maintain and extend themselves and the mining, manufacturing, and electrical infrastructures supporting them.  At that point, it would not be mass suicide, and might be (probably will eventually be) an efficiency improvement.

Humans are in symbiotic relationships with plants and animals. You can imagine what would happen if a group of humans decided it would be really interesting to get rid of all vegetation and animals -- that story wouldn't end well for those thrill seekers. Instead, we grow plants and animals and make sure they are in abundance.

People are working on lab-grown meat and other ways to substitute for the meat one currently gets from farming livestock.  If they succeed in making something that's greater than or equal to meat on all dimensions and also cheaper, then it seems likely that nearly all people will switch to the new alternative, and get rid of nearly all of that livestock.  If one likewise develops superior replacements for milk and everything else we get from animals... Then, if someone permanently wiped out all remaining animals, some people would be unhappy for sentimental reasons, and there's maybe some research we'd miss out on, but by no means would it be catastrophic.

Some portion of the above has already happened with horses.  When cars became the superior option in terms of performance and economics, the horse population declined massively.

Plants seem to have less inefficiency than animals, but it still seems plausible that we'll replace them with something superior in the future.  Already, solar panels are better than photosynthesis at taking energy from the sun—to the point where it's more efficient (not counting raw material cost) to have solar panels absorb sunlight which powers lamps that shine certain frequencies of light on plants, than to let that sunlight shine on plants directly.  And we're changing the plants themselves via selective breeding and, these days, genetic engineering.  I suspect that, at some point, we'll replace, say, corn with something that no longer resembles corn—possibly by extensive editing of corn itself, possibly with a completely new designer fungus or something.

First, on the meta-level, are you aware that lesswrong supports questions?
You might get a more positive reception with: "It seems to me that AI doom arguments miss x. What am I missing?"

While it's possible that dozens of researchers have missed x for a decade or so, it's rather more likely that you're missing something. (initially, at least)

On the object level, you seem to be making at least two mistakes:

1. x is the current mechanism supporting y, therefore x is necessary for y. (false in general, false for most x when y is [the most powerful AI around])
2. No case of [humans are still around supporting AI] counts as an x-risk. (also false: humans as slaves/livestock...)

Further "Except this narrative overlooks one crucial point" seems the wrong emphasis: effective criticism needs to get at the best models underlying the narrative.

Currently you seem to be:

1. Looking at the narrative.
2. Inferring an underlying model.
3. Critiquing the underlying model you've inferred.

That's fine, but if you're not working hard to ensure you've inferred the correct underlying model, you should expect your critique to miss the point. That too is fine: you usually won't have time to get the model right - but it's important to acknowledge. Using questions is one way. Another is a bunch of "it seems to me that...".
NB this isn't about deference - just acknowledgement that others have quite a bit of information you don't (initially).

I don’t mean to present myself as the “best arguments that could be answered here” or at all representative of the alignment community. But just wanted to engage. I appreciate your thoughts!

Well, one argument for potential doom doesn’t necessitate an adversarial AI, but rather people using increasingly powerful tools in dumb and harmful ways (in the same class of consideration for me as nuclear weapons; my dumb imagined situation of this is a government using AI to continually scale up surveillance and maybe we eventually get to a position like in 1984)

Another point is that a sufficiently intelligent and agentic AI would not need humans, it would probably eventually be suboptimal to rely on humans for anything. And it kinda feels to me like this is what we are heavily incentivized to design, the next best and most capable system. In terms of efficiency, we want to get rid of the human in the loop, that person’s expensive!

This [LW · GW] is probably the best short resource to read to understand the concept "something literally thousands of times smarter than us" in your gut (also exists as a great RA video). Unfortunately, stopping an AGI--a true AGI once we get there--is a little more difficult than throwing a bucket of water into the servers. That would be hugely underestimating the sheer power of being able to think better. 

I wrote a post [LW · GW] recently on how horrifyingly effective moth traps are. Thanks to the power of intelligence, humans are able to find the smallest possible button in reality that they need to press to achieve a given goal. AGI would do this, only much, much better. Moth traps leverage an entire dimension beyond what a moth can understand: the same could be said of AGI. This is something that I, at least, have found difficult to internalize. You cannot, by definition, model something smarter than you. So, to understand AGI's danger, you must resort to finding things stupider than you, and try to backpedal from there to figure out what being more intelligent lets you do. 

I hope this comment helped you understand why your post currently has negative karma. Don't be discouraged though! Ideas on LW get ruthlessly pummeled, pillaried and thoroughly chewed upon. But we separate ideas from people, so don't let the results from this post discourage you at all! Please, find some ideas worth writing about and publish! Hope you have a great day. 

What you do have is a valid argument against complete (or almost complete) extinction in the short to medium term. However, not many people believe in that argument , although EY does.

Many researchers steeped in these issues [LW · GW], including myself, expect [LW · GW] that the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die. Not as in “maybe possibly some remote chance,” but as in “that is the obvious thing that would happen.”

(As per

(https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WLvboc66rBCNHwtRi/ai-27-portents-of-gemini?commentId=Tp6Q5SYsvfMDFxRDu [LW(p) · GW(p)])[previous discussions], no one is able to name the "many researchers" other than himself and his associates).

What you don't have is an argument against the wider Doom scenarios.