... but if the money isn't there in ads in the future, I don't expect the company to just curl up and die. It'll be interesting to see what comes next when "The smartest people" need to find something to do.
A definition that calls that evil also calls auto manufacturers evil because of the car accident rate.
We’re all going to be left in a Wall-E universe though unless they help fight climate change.
Problem is, while there's certainly money in applications of AI (the ad auction is one of them), it's unclear that "AI" as a discipline is a money-factory like ads is. Google's looking for a money factory to replace ads because they're worried about that revenue stream being fragile (for the reasons ocdtrekkie highlighted).
"The smart people" provided a recipe for preventing/fixing climate change several decades ago. The politicians have never gone along, and now it's pretty much too late. It's no use hoping for a magic technical solution -- the one that would have worked was "Tax externalities and reduce CO2 emission".
Why?
Internalizing externalities with a tax only works if the actual correct amount of those externalities equals or exceeds the amount that would reduce demand for fuel enough to stop climate change.
This is a huge assumption that I never see anyone even acknowledge needs to be demonstrated.
I think in fact they are far less, but my point is that debating that would be a red herring, since people seem to talk of externalities while never even believing in the concept, and that tension needs to be resolved.
The externalities are a number that in principle has a correct value, and the increase in price to change behavior sufficiently to stop warming is another number that independently has a certain value. But you have to have a logical reason for thinking they match if you think internalizing the costs is a solution.
Eventually, as we saw, they couldn't help themselves -- Maybe just one little oppression platform wouldn't be such a big deal...