But - I'd like to encourage you for asking. That's a really good question. If more tech-minded folk asked questions like this, we'd be doing a whole lot better as a species.

My personal hot-take is that understanding how people get manipulated and coerced into acting against their own interests is essential to our survival. Think big tobacco tactics, big oil climate denial, manufacture of consent, kayfabe politics.

I don't know how - or even if - AI can help us create systems that offer protection against such manipulation. My hunch is that it's worth thinking about.

Some examples: Maybe AI can analyze vast amounts of data to manage pollution - soil, air, water, etc - in such a way that manipulation of the results is impossible. However, the institutions which manage this stuff seem quite thoroughly broken (Superfund sites, for example, or Deepwater Horizon, or pesticide buildup).

Maybe AI can analyze currency transactions to identify bribes, sinks in the money system where value flows out. However, we've seen many examples of this stuff coming out into the open without major consequence (Paradise, Panama, bank bailouts, CDS, etc etc).

Maybe AI could help identify those most susceptible to manipulation in order to help & protect them, rather than to sway their vote, turn them into 'useful idiots', and sell them stuff. That would be "bad" for the economy (and fantastic for society).

Maybe AI could help overhaul education - I think this is both essential, and terrifying. I won't ramble on though.

Best of luck man.

Does identifying as an AI expert preclude starting small?

Good luck.

I’m already helping out on weekends in the local equivalent of “soup kitchen”. But I’m rethinking life and what I spend my work on.

Even if it does, there is no shortage of people who would like to direct large amounts of resources from a desk chair and feel like they were do-gooders for it.

Andreesen didn’t write “software is feeding the world.” Quite the opposite in fact. And he was in a position to shape some of the world.

I’ve met developers with do-good dream jobs. They are small scale and opened up because the developer paid their dues over many years.

The simplest way to change what you work on is to change the kind of work you do.

E.g. go to nursing school and the possibilities are endless. But you’ll have to change what “being professional“ looks like.

Or quit your job and start the organization that does what you think needs doing.

You want to help humanity? Find a way to kill off advertising. It's the cancer that's not just funding the current downsides of technology, but reshaping the technology industry to serve it even more.

Wtf?

A large chunk of the problems we currently see with social media, privacy, etc are incentivised by advertising. You remove that and those problems are significantly reduced - people won’t pay for a social network that intentionally prioritises outrage or fake/misleading news over their friends’ content for example - the only reason it happens right now is because advertising pays for it.

Yes, that's my point. People will pay for things they find valuable, switch to a cheaper alternative or do without (a lot of spammy content that is currently only funded by ad impressions and survives because you can't ask for a refund on an ad impression will no longer survive as nobody would pay).

Got any data to back up your claim?

In my previous comment I did say that a lot of content isn't worth paying for and will stop being produced for monetary gain (because the only way it currently survives is due to the non-refundability of ad impressions - people can't take back their "payment" even if they've been duped by clickbait/garbage content), but that doesn't mean all content/services will disappear - some has genuine value that will still be profitable to produce, some will keep being produced because the objective wasn't monetary gain to begin with.