I think what you mean by machine learning in your second sentence is often called narrow AI these days. I agree with you partially, at least when it comes to that utter stupid idea of building some kind of AI God. It's not only stupid if it would turn out to be dangerous and would go wrong, the focus and obsession with it is already weird. We can have many tools in form of narrow AI systes used by humans.

Anyways, I want a somewhat human-like AI in robots, to have robot companions (synthetic girlfriends). This is going to be great for quality of life, solving the low birth rates in developed countries and simply one of the most fascinating things.