The answer, short and sweet is centralised power and control. Sure, many of us get off playing with computers, but I suppose plenty of people get off playing with chemistry sets too, but do not go to the genetic engineering level of playing Dr Frankenstein:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-02/real-reason-why-globalists-are-so-obsessed-artificial-intelligence

“The globalists have long held AI as a kind of holy grail in centralization technology. The United Nations has adopted numerous positions and even summits on the issue, including the “AI For Good” summit in Geneva. The UN insinuates that it's primary interest in AI is in regulation or observation of how it is exploited, but the UN also has clear goals to use AI to its advantage. The use of AI as a means to monitor mass data to better institute “sustainable development” is written clearly in the UN's agenda. The IMF is also in on the AI trend, holding global discussions on the uses of AI in economics as well as the effects of algorithms on economic analysis. The main source for the development of AI has long been DARPA. The military and globalist think tank dumps billions of dollars into the technology, making AI the underlying focus of most of DARPA's work. AI is not only on the globalist's radar; they are essentially spearheading the creation and promotion of it.

The globalist desire for the technology is not as simple as some might assume, however. They have strategic reasons, but also religious reasons for placing AI on an ideological pedestal. But first I suppose we should tackle the obvious. In most white papers written by globalist institutions on AI, the thrust centers on mass data collection and surveillance. The elites are careful to always assert that their interests focus on the public good. This is why the UN and other agencies argue that they should be the leaders in oversight of mass data collection. That is to say, they want us to believe that they are objective and trustworthy enough to manage rules for data surveillance, or, to manage the data itself. For the safety of the public, the globalists want centralized management of all data collection, ostensibly to save us from those evil corporations and their invasion of data privacy. Of course, most of those corporations are also run by globalists that fill the guest books of events like the World Economic Forum to discuss the advancements and advantages of AI. The WEF has made it a mandate that AI be promoted widely and that the business world and the general public be convinced of AI's advantages. Bias against AI must be prevented...

So, what we have here is yet another false paradigm in which globalist institutions are opposed to corporations in terms of how AI is used.  Yet, globalist corporations and globalist institutions both develop AI as well as pro-AI sentiment.  The public, with its innate distrust of corporate moral compass, is supposed to be convinced to support UN regulatory reforms as a counterbalance. But in reality, corporate powers have no intention of fighting against UN control, they will ultimately welcome it. This was the goal all along. The actual effectiveness of AI as a means to help humanity is questionable. AI is primarily about “learning algorithms”, or machines that are programmed to learn from experience. The problem is that a learning algorithm is only as effective as the human beings that program it in the first place. That is to say, learning is not always a cause and effect process. Sometimes, learning is a spontaneous epiphany. Learning is creative. And, in some cases, learning is inborn.

When a machine is pitted against a human in a system built on very simple and concrete rules, machines tend to prevail. A chess game, for example, is designed around hard rules that never change. A pawn is always a pawn and always moves like a pawn; a knight always moves like a knight. While there can be moments of creativity in chess (which is why humans to this day are still on occasion able to beat computers at the game), the existence of the rules makes AI seem smarter than it is. Human systems and natural systems are far more complicated than chess, and the rules tend to change, sometimes without warning. As quantum physics often discovers, the only thing that is predictable when observing the universe and nature is that all things are unpredictable. How well would an algorithm do in a chess game where a pawn could suddenly evolve to move like a knight, without any specific predictable patterns? Not very well I suspect. And this is where we get into the crux of how the image of AI is being inflated into a kind of half-assed electronic god; a false prophet.”

     Apart from the obvious social control aspects, AI has the capacity to itself take control of systems. By this I mean that people become slaves to the extremely limited dictates of machine logic. Thus, if the computer can’t do it, the fault must be with you, or what you want is just wrong. The computer system cannot be overridden by humans, because that would be contrary to protocol. At this point people have become the mindless slaves of their technology. If anyone wants proof of this, just subject your life to the rule of … Centrestink. That one word says it all!

     Criticisms of technology, just like criticisms of the growth economy are rejected by both the Left and Right because this is the ruling ideology of the age. The God of old has been replaced by the new gods of science and technology, which in turn serve the globalist money power. A truly monstrous and evil world indeed.