There is no AI "thing." Ai may bring paradigm changes to a number of different areas.
My skepticism is regarding the self-awareness bit, which I think is just a "fun" clickbait doomsday scenario based more on sci-fi ideas than science.
There is no evidence whatsoever that self-awareness may be just around the corner; I've been hearing that that's the case for decades.
It is very likely the probabilistic ML engines in use today will indeed disrupt a lot of industries, services, life in general.
It's also likely that they are completely incapable of achieving self-awareness and we are still a breakthrough away from seeing that. We don't even grok what it would take to get self-awareness in artificial systems.
Of course it can, and perhaps should be discussed, but my take remains that this specific issue is a potential concern, not an urgent concern like other aspects around AI and automation.
There are good points made in the video linked above, and a lot of speculation too.