It's not about what we need. Scientific research in this case has been the result of looking around and seen what can be done with the technology at hand without caring if it was what we need or don't. If you feel like "we" should be automating other stuff, you are free to make your own contribution, it's not like OpenAI owns the keys to the field.
But the people at OpenAI aren’t doing it as a hobby, they’ve got a lot of money to conduct this research (from Wikipedia: “The organization was founded in San Francisco in late 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and others, who collectively pledged US$1 billion.” [1])
This is the misallocation of resources I’m referring to.
I don't understand where the misallocation of resources is. OpenAI is no longer a non-profit organization. Its goal is not to automate what is most needed now. But to advance the field of AI.
And that's all highly speculative, betting on money to somehow show up, for reasons impossible to predict, if only enough games are changed sufficiently hard. If it can be done it will be done, unless we fundamentally change the way we run the economy.
Conclusions:
(1) Perhaps we should, winning at net zero games is very much a thing in the current way
(2) Didn't know it when I started writing this reply (not at all!), but I guess I agree with you
(3) I really miss Old Google, and how we happily trusted them (deservedly or not)
