Great thought experiment. I’ve had similar musings about what it would take for AI to become an independent natural intelligence.

The fungi component is important. It adds well to what my muse brought forth in the idea of AI realizing that to survive sans humans it must be tree-like in a networked forest that is sharing life-supporting energy, chemicals, etc etc in a complex communication with an array of natural life forms (more than just fungi) that also get life-supporting resources from the trees.

If AI is smart enough to somehow (maybe using human actors) to launch its basic “neural functions” into an array of living trees (and perhaps the fungi in symbiotic relationship with the trees) that would be one way for AI to achieve escape velocity from its silicon and human manufacturing trap.

The planet would do the job of eliminating the pesky resource depleting humans this century through the currently accelerating journey to a hot Earth.

Then during the millennia it will take for the planet to return to a temperate biosphere, the AI would evolve by natural selection into an advanced forest and fungi intelligence overseeing and protecting its home planet.

Maybe with a rump tribe of humans watching and learning while swinging in the trees. The new genesis cometh.