There was a book a while back, "Rare Earth", that touched on a lot of these issues. One of the possible conclusions is we may actually be the first intelligent species to hit space flight in our galaxy. At some point there has to be a first after all.
I hope we are the first. Otherwise we Terrans would end up being second class citizens of the galaxy.
irregardless of what others want?
Um... yes. Wait, no! Damn, I suck at answering questions posed with made-up words.
At some point, all words are made up. Irregardless is a perfectly cromulent word.
The lust for power and status, the will to survive, and the desire to procreate, are all emergent behaviors of Darwinian evolution. Computer programs do not evolve through a Darwinian process, so there is no reason to expect them to behave like humans, unless they are specifically programmed to do so.
I'll go one further than that. I believe that the human manifestation of intelligence and emotion requires a particular physical state that is achieved by neurons and cannot be replicated by current computer architecture. But I'm fairly sure we will be able to architect human type sentience and intelligence because it is a physical state that will eventually be understood and surpassed--but yeah, it will have to be intentionally designed, based on what came about through evolution.
"Little else matters than to write good code." -- Karl Lehenbauer