The reason why we have glorious cathedrals, statues and art is because the richest and most powerful people of the time wanted to impress the masses. AI companies should learn from this, they should think hard about how to impress the masses. Maths proofs and automated coding is cool and here, in our in group, we all love it, but I bet that even solving a Millennium Prize problem would barely make the front pages.
Doing something real, visible and unambiguously good (i.e. NOT driverless cars) would be a huge big win. Maybe as a new way to desalinate water, lower bill, cheaper groceries. That way, companies will start to get some real political support and not just have to convince the elites that it is good to invest in AI and build that data centre.
Maybe someone needs to speak to a normal person and see what they would like AI to do for them.
AI Capability Lead @ Arena.ai