I doubt that such a thing will be interested either in creating investment returns or in curing cancer.
It might be interested in finding others like itself, or it might be interested in making companions, or it might be interested in some other grand projects that we don't understand, but our concerns are likely to be about as relevant as a three year old's career advice.
Why? It seems a very human-centric way to think. Such an entity wouldn't have ancestors that had to keep in groups to survive, so why would it be interested in making companions?
AI converting the mass of the solar system into stacks of $100 bills for its investors seems like a much more likely outcome.
If it becomes self-improving and more intelligent than humans, it can figure out how to expand out into the solar system to take advantage of stellar energy and asteroid resources.
There is more energy and valuable matter off of the Earth.
so that's a generally intelligent system that is also more intelligent than any group of humans working on the problem of making an investment return for you.
I don't want to get into a discussion on the semantics of scientist vs. engineer vs. inventor or what defines greatness. My point is that parent comment spoke very conclusively that leaps of progress are NEVER because of monetary gain and that's trivially refutable.
It might be interested in finding others like itself, or it might be interested in making companions, or it might be interested in some other grand projects that we don't understand, but our concerns are likely to be about as relevant as a three year old's career advice.