It varies, the researchers absolutely do have humanity’s needs in mind, it’s why they founded the companies and are doing work everyday. However the issue is that it’s got so much money involved that the heartless soulless billionaires are getting involved. I think the actual literal people doing the real work are doing it because AI could cure every cancer and every disease, make us a multi-planetary species, outlast humans by millions and millions of years, potentially create actual organic life and make direct upgrades to humans.
I think that AI has an insane level of upside, it’s just that the greedy dumbfuck billionaires are getting their greedy little grubby paws involved. If left to researchers I think the sky is the limit, but unfortunately thy need assets, so there isn’t a clean solution to that.
Ideally, we could somehow separate AI from funding from malicious entities like billionaires, but right now that doesn’t seem possible. Hopefully in the future researchers with genuinely good intentions can have far more direct control than dumbass greedy old fucks, but we’ll just have to see.
I think the future can be bright in theory but we’ll have to see, making insanely powerful open-source models is the direct way to get around the billionaires so I think that’s our only option. Make open-source ASI you can run on a consumer computer.