They want something like the Star Trek computer or one of Tony Stark's AIs that were basically deus ex machinas for solving some hard problem behind the scenes. Then it can say "model solved" or they can show a test simulation where the ship doesn't explode (or sometimes a test where it only has an 85% chance of exploding when it used to be 100%, at which point human intuition comes in and saves the day by suddenly being better than the AI again and threads that 15% needle or maybe abducts the captain to go have lizard babies with).

AIs that are smarter than us but for some reason don't replace or even really join us (Vision being an exception to the 2nd, and Ultron trying to be an exception to the 1st).

Yeah I often think about this Rick N Morty cartoon. Grifters are like, "We made an AI ankle!!!" And I'm like, "That's not actually something that people with busted ankles want. They just want to walk. No need for a sentient ankle." It's a real gross distortion of science how everything needs to be "AI" nowadays.

I think it's an easy mistake to confuse sentience and intelligence. It happens in Hollywood all the time - "Skynet began learning at a geometric rate, on July 23 2004 it became self-aware" yadda yadda

But that's not how sentience works. We don't have to be as intelligent as Skynet supposedly was in order to be sentient. We don't start our lives as unthinking robots, and then one day - once we've finally got a handle on calculus or a deep enough understanding of the causes of the fall of the Roman empire - we suddenly blink into consciousness. On the contrary, even the stupidest humans are accepted as being sentient. Even a young child, not yet able to walk or do anything more than vomit on their parents' new sofa, is considered as a conscious individual.

So there is no reason to think that AI - whenever it should be achieved, if ever - will be conscious any more than the dumb computers that precede it.