Eliezer Yudkowsky has a very good synonym for "AI" that doesn't trigger anthropomorphism: "Optimization Process". An example is Darwinian Evolution. And it is quite obvious that Evolution isn't alive, sentient, let alone human-like.
Good old evolution. Humans are just one of its fruits, yet we think so highly of ourselves.
If a superhuman AI exists, exactly what evolutionary niche are humans going to fill? Because there's a word for species which don't have an evolutionary niche: extinct.
