I don't understand your argument here.

> That they gained power or not is almost irrelevant: the amount of intelligence that grants successful agency is not above the threshold of ethics - on the contrary, a psychotic agent reaches goals with less constraints.

Even if I were to grant your conclusion despite you not arguing it effectively here: this means an AI at the level of Pol Pot or whoever, doesn't know they're evil, but is still smart enough to lead a genocide? How is this supposed to help anyone?

> If they were evil under some judgement of level l, they simply did not reach that judgement. It's what I was saying in the original post. They were not intelligent enough - either in the general ability, or in the specific deliberation.

Or they did reach the judgement and simply don't care about the ethical framework in question. Like, I can easily reach the judgement that my bisexuality is حَرَام (haram, forbidden) under Islamic law, or that doing overtime on a Sunday is forbidden by the Ten Commandments, but I don't care.