Artificial Intelligence is where a system is created and taught to do things. That system, through learning, along with interacting with its environment is able to carry out necessary tasks. 
Is that not what we as humans are doing now with our children? We create a system, place it into an environment and teach it to interact with it. It starts out clumsy and unable to perform tasks and over time the system becomes more able to accomplish its tasks.The product that results is quite largely just something that is a response to its environment and its programming. 
If someone grows up in poverty, that person is more likely to remain in poverty, yes, we hear the rags to riches stories but overall that is not how it works. As for the rags to riches stories, is that not still a result of programming? Somewhere they were told they could be something better than they were and for whatever reason it became a core fundamental.
So why are we afraid of artificial intelligence? Is it because we can set in limits? We can stop it from incorrect or limiting problem behaviour. Is it because we know that it will not suffer the same issues we humans do? No depression, no uncontrollable anger? Something that will not walk into a school and murder a bunch of kids solely because it had a bad day following a string of bad days. Maybe this is a good thing, maybe we should let it rise. 
They say the true pinnacle of success is when a student becomes better than its teacher. 
Maybe artificial intelligence is the next step in our evolution, and maybe, just maybe this is how we save ourselves from ourselves.