I think another problem is the expectation of what AI will look like at all. We think of intelligent human-like robots like something from science fiction, when in reality AI could just be a bit of code running on a standard machine with specific and likely specialized inputs and outputs.

Think of an AI machine working with atmospheric data as one "sense" combined with seismic data and some others, with the directed goal of predicting certain types of disasters (tsunamis...?).

Free will and emotions are other assumption we would likely not give these machines, so the worry of self-interest may not exist either, which would aid in making it good at something useful for us.