Exactly? I think we agree about this.

It won't care unless it's been programmed to care (for example by adding "spatiotemporal scope boundaries" to its goal system). It's not going to override a terminal goal, unless it conflicts with a different terminal goal. In the context of an AI that's been instructed to "build paperclips", it has no incentive to care about humans, no matter how much "introspection" it does.

If you do program it to care about humans then obviously it will care. It's my understanding that that is the hard part.