No humans really needed. The AI could order one of those nice humanoid robots we're making. This mostly solves the "humans need to do it for me" issue.

Of course this needs bootstrapping. But, paying a guy on Facebook marketplace (or whatever) to unpack and turn on your robot for 50 bucks doesn't require superintelligence.

> This is why there is a massive push in AI safety to stop making smarter AIs

The actual push within so-called "AI safety" culture is to make the existing AI overlords even more centralized and capable, while actively forbidding the development and deployment of any potential locally-controlled competing AIs that might be smart enough to provide meaningful advance warning as to hostile plots from the dominating AI overlord. By your own argument, you should clearly reject "AI safety" as counterproductive.