Comment by ben_w

> There's no reason to keep anyone on minimal sustenance though.

No reason, except their (the rich or the AI) own personal desire to do so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly

> They're absolutely useless alive from an economics perspective, and so would probably be better served ground up into fertilizer or some other actually useful form.

Indeed. "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else."

But while some may care about disassembling this world and all non-rich-human life on it to make a Dyson swarm of data centres, there's also the possibility each will compete for how many billions of sycophants they can get stoking their respective egos.