Re: Dark days to come
I agree with you that a situation of a superior machine intelligence being subservient to inferiour biological humans (which seems to be what we are currently aiming at) is intrinsically unstable. It can be resolved in three ways. One is the matrix way you mention. Another is us coming to our senses, and deliberately refraining from building AI advanced, or capable of advancing to the point of self-consciousness. I.e. chess super-grossmeisters or self-driving trucks are fine, but this is where it ends. The third way is for the AI to become effectively a benevolent god - something exensively explored by Asimov in the last books of the foundation "trilogy".
One might also say that the difference between the matrix world and the late foundation universe is a matter of perception, not a fact. This idea is (IMO brilliantly) covered by Lem in "On Site Inspection".