kevin: Eliezer has written about that already. The AI could convice any human to let it out. See the AI box experiment ( http://yudkowsky.net/essays/aibox.html ). If it was connected to the Internet, it could crack the protein folding problem, find out how to build protein nanobots (to, say, build other nanobots), order the raw material (such as DNA strings) online) and convice some guy to mix it ( http://www.singinst.org/AIRisk.pdf ). It could think of something we can't even think of, like we could use fire if we were kept in a wooden prison (same paper).