I think you know that for me nothing is safe from debate :D Which is pretty annoying at times.
I'm gonna address only one thing you said, so we don't spend whole evening behind the keyboard:
"But cosmic life doesn't seem to have an end or we just don't know it."
This is so "brain-like" that it is even hard to express :) End and beginning, or rather whole concept of time, does not exist, we are just created that way.
That means AI is like an alien life form with all benefits and disadvantages that come with it.
Conclusion: DEBATE MORE, we are basically facing alien invasion here :D
:-D I wonder what AI would do with the paradoxes Einstein was facing. The behavior of substances on a molecular level contradicted the ones on a much smaller particle level. He desperately wanted to create a unifying theory but couldn't (so it was depicted in a lecture I heard yesterday). The AI therefor also will have difficulties to identify "life", thus what a human being is. How then could it make decisions and proposals?
So much open questions.
Have a good day, Konrad:)