Not one of these leaders is leading by example, though. No CEO has offered to give their own job over to AI; they've asked real working people to do it, in the sense that predicting people losing their jobs is 'asking' them to accept it as fate. Cancer still appears to exist uncured, and I think I've heard of some international wars happening just recently that AI appears to be involved in to make them more 'efficient'. The problem of war is not its inefficiency. War is death; efficient death is not a solution to anyone's problems.
I could snipe at the rich and powerful some more but who cares? Instead let me share constructive ideas for what I think are real problems 'AI' (that magic word) could help with.
1. Defecation
How long have we toiled in tiny toilet closets or too-big echoey marbly rooms, reading our bad little phones or good little books? How many untold hours?
If you like the peace of pooping, I suspect you're not able to take enough meditative time outside the privacy of the toilet. I sympathize. Actually, I relate. I'm a father, and I'll often get unexpected visitors when I'm doing what modern people think is the most private thing we can do.
If AI were really good, it might poop for me. That would, honestly and earnestly, be revolutionary. I am not entirely I'd like the change, in fact. But when I'm sick, dehydrated, in a rush, driving? When I'm hung over, or ate spicey food, or something I'm allergic to? I'd like very much for, in some metaphysical magical way, the magic little AI boxes everyone's pushing on us to actually do something useful for once in their lives and take the dive for me.
How would it work? How do LLMs work? Most people have next to no idea, and trust them to write emails and fact check their garbage questions. Let's not worry about how AI could possibly transport physical waste out of a human body and into a toilet. Let's stop asking how and start asking when. The AI geniuses are supposed to be geniuses that will revolutionize everything. Why are we cutting them a break with regard to the natural laws of physics?
2. Sleep
More controversial, but why not? It isn't like anyone is forcing you to use AI...right? We're all complicit in the destruction of our jobs and the construction of our prisons. Let's keep taking steps forward.
Particularly for older people who aren't sleeping much, this could be an interesting change. For teenagers, they could finally play video games all night. For alcoholics, they could drink all night. Flip a switch, punch in a query, push a button, and AI sleeps for you.
Maybe it does whatever the brain needs to do during sleep for you, in an instant. Or maybe it juices you with whatever chemicals the body replenishes during rest. I don't know. I care as much as the CEOs currently attempting to destroy people's jobs and capture their private data at the same time. I care as much as they do, the visionaries who don't know hell when they see it, only that they'll be filthy rich when they burn.
3. Eating
Surely you've noticed the pattern by now. Basic biological functions are, strictly speaking, impediments to economic activity. As they used to tell us in the kitchens: If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean. I assume that phrase came out of some labor union pamphlet or routine joke meant to mock the relentless inhumanity of managers trying to psychologically belittle and torture their workers, but isn't it just like capitalism to come along and steal the very jokes meant to damage it. It was mostly supervisors who gave me that line, and the horror-comedy of it is irresistible.
By the same magic it steals my poop, AI could gift me sustenance. Granted this is probably sludge deposited via some disgusting tube through my bellybutton, but progress can be ugly sometimes. Sure, it might make asking people out on dinner dates or even work lunches seem quaint and outdated, but think of all the extra time you'd have (to work) thanks to the removal of this basic necessity from your to-do list.
I've trod off into satire maybe too deeply for my liking. Before I go too deep, I think I ought to step back. But I'd like the point to be clear: 'AI' is largely a scam in that it is not what it say it is. It is a mass theft and centralization of mental labor away from workers and into the hands of controlling managers and ownership. It is another plantation model, this one for white collar workers who are too short-sighted and bound by deadlines to see and react to what is quite evidently another power grab by the rich of the poor's value. CEOs do next to nothing for the real economy; what they do is raise value for others of their class. And so on, and so on.
Cancer will not be cured; war will not be stopped; jobs will not improve. Of this I am fairly certain, as we are living through a long arc of historical depravation and destruction. It may take 500 years - say, from 1900-2400, but these are the same terms historians use when describing past epochs of history, characterizing entire centuries of change as one major fall, or one major rise. What do you think it was like to live during that time? When you read of a medieval European scholar who bemoans the illiteracy and parochialism of the time, do they feel particularly prescient, because they appear to agree with our contemporary conclusion on their time? How would it feel to read a historian in 2700 bemoaning the temporary (but centuries-long) error of replacing human labor with AI computation, starting in the 21st century and running up until the extinction events of the 23rd?
We don't know our history because we don't know our future. We live through it like bumbling idiots, and the more confident we pretend to be the more hilariously pathetic we end up. There were powerful, powerful popes in the 1200s who believed they were infallible and divinely touched. There were emperors in the 1600s who laid claim to 'the world'. Supreme confidence is bound like an angry chicken to the great bumbling ox of hilarious tragicomedy. The sound of empires falling is, I'll bet, mostly that of a long, drawn out fart. Remember, of course, that some farts explode and some contain considerable heat. Nuclear explosions, aka the great farts of nature, are suitable ways for some of us to end.
As the mental health of the hyper wealthy erodes, and their ridiculous power simply increases, it is perhaps worthwhile to apologize pretty sincerely to future historians who have to live with the air we farted in. Like citizens watching their nation commit genocide, a lot of us just sort of stand around while atrocity happens to someone else nearby. Mostly we don't know what to do. But it sure happens fast, and seems exciting.
If AI ever wants to get out from under the dark cloud of theft, exploitation, and wealth extraction is was born and bred for, it'll need to take a good hard look at the problems humans actually have.
Assessing the actual value of a CEO and paying them accordingly might be one path.
Assessing the tax code of various post-democratic nations might be another. If the goals of a nation are what is written in its constitution, and AI is the smartest thing around, it might be worthwhile to have it grade how close to democracy some of the louder, prouder nations actually are.
Assessing AIs own impact on environmental sustainability might be another interesting conundrum for the robot to work through.
The vast majority of problems are not the concern of these tech companies and they will not deploy their magic boxes to go out and fix them. Money is the main concern; always has been and always will be. Unless that changes, AI is no revolution; it is simple a faster form of capitalism.