I think that's more what the people excited about AI think it it is, many of the people who fear it don't really fear its intelligence as much as how it's abused.
Personally, I don't even like the machine learning algorithms in social media, despite them being a thing for a long time now.
I don't know if I'd call him evil. It was basically a giant moron getting his first taste of power alongside a massive pile of cocaine. No way it could ever go well.