I'm willing to be friends with anything of even the most dubious intelligence, as long as it isn't totally psychopathic or antisocial (in the medical sense of harming others).

If an AI seems to have some kind of motivation and self direction, why wouldn't I be friends with them?

I wonder what an AI would think about friendship though. When I think friendship, I think shared interests, shared goals, and just enjoying each other's company. What are an AI's motivation and goals which overlap with my own, and what do I have to offer an AI? Thumbs? Even that won't last long.

Kind of feels like being friends with an AI would be more like being friends with a hyper intelligent talking cat, rather than another human or a dog.
Like, perhaps a mutual respect and tolerance, with each occasionally fulfilling a role for the other. The AI gets to observe us and collect data points, gets to bounce ideas off us, and we get to enjoy the content they make or test their newest product.

Yeah, it's hard to even think about in a nontransactional way. An intelligence without the same biological needs. Any internal motivation it develops may still be as mysterious as a human's.
I would love to explore an AI's development with it, but it feels like it'd be like watching a child grow up at super speed, and then surpasses us in such a way that we look like the children instead.