Why is Artificial Intelligence Vital to the future of Humanity?

There is a huge debate about the ethics of creating true AI. Some people think it will be too powerful and destroy humanity on a whim, and others don't think it will ever be smart enough attain human level intellect and aggression. As our smartest people learn increasingly esoteric things they can only draw upon so much knowledge. Many of our greatest innovations are from a great many people pooling their knowledge together to come up with ideas and innovations to in some way push the human race forward. Imagine if we took all of human knowledge ever attained and crammed it into one person's mind and then point them towards a bunch of problems we need to solve.