I think most of the "AI ethics" thing is two things: first, for people that are actual AI practitioners, it makes "AI" seem a lot more powerful and interesting than it is. I think AI is a small part of the example problems you mentioned. Second, it's a way for humanities types to wedge themselves into a hot, high paying field.
I think it's unwise to minimize the impact and significance of AI at this time - this is the same sort of thinking that prevented proactive and effective management of Social Networking and Big Data technologies. We have to take it seriously this time round, and if it proves to be a y2k thing - well no problem.
You are right about the humanities types - the otherside of the coin is that there is a definite class of insight that should come out of social sciences and history that is relevant here. Unfortunately those fields are dominated by bullshit artists which means that the signal to noise ratio is very very low.
