The ends may or may not justify the means but the means definitely do tend to affect which ends you can actually achieve. It's why (left) anarchists argue vanguard parties will always inevitably lead to authoritarianism and never the state "withering away".

Less obviously - apparently - it doesn't mean that you must forego any means that are in any way not optimal at achieving the ends you seek to achieve because which means are available to us also tends to be limited by our material conditions. So the logical consequence is to make do with what we have while we prepare for the path we want to take, rather than diving head-first into certain failure or just giving up and picking "more realistic" short-term ends instead of looking for stepping stones.

Sorry, I guess this was about AI not philosophy.