I may have lost the thread here. Are you thinking it's _likely_ AI would prioritize better ways to control us, or are you only brainstorming potential slivers of hope we might have?

As a side note: in the case of chickens, humans do have better options if you are optimizing for biosphere health. Only people optimizing for short-term profit would grow chickens the way we do. I think the analog for AI overlords is that we have to hope they care more about overall balance than about competing with other AI.