I remember thinking the same thing in gradschool. There was a lab partnered with Microsoft, and all their research was focused on ranking search results. That's it. I felt so bad for the grad students there, who had big dreams about changing the world, but instead were optimizing ways to get people to click search results.

Ranking search results is not the same as clicking ads - it's about organizing information.

I'd say since he or she worked at Facebook they already had a skewed idea about just what defines a "best mind" and what the goals of that best mind should be.

Maybe, but if I think of the five or so people I know who are truly brilliant two work at Google, a couple work in finance and one is getting a PhD in math. A lot of people would consider at least two of those fields not worthwhile for such talented people.

But to be honest, the whole "best minds" thing is sort of silly because the actual hard problems that we have to deal with aren't hard because smart people aren't working on them. They're hard because they touch on human issues and have a lot of tradeoffs and no solution that is satisfying to everyone.

> The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads

I've worked in the industry for a few years now and worked with hundreds of data scientists and for me this is not true. They are smart, no doubt, but they are on par with programmers. Majority aren't doing pure research but just applying the knowledge of others to new problems.

The best minds for me are still those in universities doing pure research. And that hasn't changed.

A generation ago the best minds were working on ways if killing the maximum number of people at minimum cost. Maybe this is progress.

And now it's being weaponized.