1. Smart, well-meaning people see a problem, and try to craft a solution.
2. Bad actors completely ignore these good intentions and use the new invention for money and power, harming or exploiting the general population in the process.
This isn't to say progress is never made, but the lion's share of the benefits of any new tech always ends up going right back to the rich and powerful that didn't need it in the first place.
I wasn't a programmer in the 90's, but I did grow up then, and into the hacker culture of the 00s. Looking back, I feel comradeship for the radicals in the 60s. A revolution was in the air, things were going to change! And then it all petered away to nothing.
Smart, well-meaning people constantly dream of freeing everyone: from poverty, or political oppression, or ideological entanglement. One more advance, one more theory or piece of tech and then we'll have it! But the general populace will never be free, because they don't want to be. On an unconscious level, they desire their cage. Freedom is scary and uncomfortable. That's why smartphones replaced PCs, and why software and the web became a closed, user-hostile morass. Most people do not want the power to self-actualize. They just want to be kept comfortable until they die.