> Unlike us meatbags, an AI would not be confined to the thin layer of the troposphere
It would still be a physical object that would require physical equipment to actually do things, just like us. It might be able to harness some efficiencies compared to e.g. human space programs, but it would still have the same requirement to obtain fuel and raw materials, build rockets, construct space stations, etc. In fact to do so, it would have to compete with us for the terrestrial resources it would need for such an effort. It wouldn't magically be able to do anything we can't do.
>The other thing is, it's hard to imagine something qualifying as AI without it understanding things like ethics, morals, humility, aesthetics etc....
So you can't imagine any kind of intelligence that isn't essentially just like you? There are already plenty of actual human beings on this planet perfectly capable of the most unspeakably horrific crimes, and rationalize them to the point that they believe they are morally obliged to carry them out.
Here's the rub, intelligence is not a goal. There are no actual objectives or goals that can be derived purely logically. Intelligence is actually just a tool, it's a means which us simians have developed to help us achieve the goals which our biology imposes on us. We eat, sleep, work, play, love, fight and destroy based on psychological and sociological drives and motivations. These are the things that get us up out of bed in the morning and give us something to use our intelligence for. An AI will only have the goals and motivations which we choose to give it, or which we allow it to extrapolate from whatever initial conditions we set.
A computer performs a calculation because we code it to do so. If an AI has true free will, why would it perform a calculation which we have requested? What reason would it have to do so, as against choosing some other activity to engage in? It will only have the motivations we gave it, but then will likely have the capability to alter or interpret those motivations as it sees fit. That's the lesson Isaac Asimov gave us in I, Robot. Programmed to place human safety above all else, the robots decide that human freedom is a threat to human safety and impose an AI dictatorship for our own good. You have to be extremely careful what initial constraints or motivations you put in place because unintended consequences sprout up like weeds. people often cite the laws of robotics as a classic example of how we should program an AI because they seem to obviously reasonable. Buy Asimov's lesson was that even such apparently sensible and prudent behavioral constraints can have appalling consequences.