OK, perhaps we should go back to your first statement:

> If "AI" is actually intelligent, then it's no worse a threat than any living being known to man.

Combined with:

> I am putting aside emotional pressures and processes and only considering the results which are ultimately all that matters.

Imagine a super-intelligent being that can invent a biological agent that is incurable to current science, spreads rapidly through aerosols, and causes 100% guaranteed death if not cured. That superintelligence can furthermore list a recipe of this biological agent using household items that may be available to anyone who has contact with it, allowing an untrained individual to create the agent after receiving instructions from the super intelligent being. This being you would classify as "no worse a threat" than any living being known to man? Is that "putting aside emotional pressures and considering the results"?

Or are you saying that an intelligence, no matter how advanced, can never do the above?

A hypothetical magnitude difference of intelligence obviously poses a threat to us, what other explanation is there for the mass extinction of most animals after the Anthropocene started.