Just to be clear, we're nowhere near this. The current state of the art has failed to implement a single learning algorithm that would give an AI sentience. In fact, all that we have been able to construct so far are very fancy pattern matchers. They use statistical optimization methods to construct a model that can detect similarities, such as between two images.

Before anyone loses sleep over the idea of an AI taking over a government, realize that current AI cannot replace attorneys. Attorneys represent a job skill that is one small part of governance: making arguments to do one thing or another based on an analysis of court decisions, statutes, administrative regulations, and procedural rules. Sure, there are apps that pretend to do legal work, but those apps simply take your inputs and fill out legal forms. That's something that falls far short of practicing law, which requires sentience. It's not enough to recognize the similarities between two different texts. One must have an actual understanding of the meaning of the words, map them to a coherent world view, and then make creative extensions from that that solve particular problems.

If you're going to lose sleep, worry more about how wealthy people holding power will use AI and bend it to their whims. For example, a number of business groups are experimenting with AI to replace clerks and office workers of various types. One job on the chopping block is insurance adjuster. Their work does not involve much in the way of independent thinking, and can be implemented using natural language processing and neural networks. Once we get autonomous vehicles rolling, we can replace a large portion of the long distance truckers. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.