The moon program wasn’t solving a “real problem” in any sense, but the offshoot R&D of achieving this practically meaningless feat solved a lot of “real problems” by advancing a lot of technologies.
What makes you think that an AGI program won’t have the same kind of offshoot-technology impact on the world? It’s not like it would go “nothing ... wait for it... AGI”; there’d be a lot of tools, processes, and paradigms developed along the way, and also lesser AIs developed that might solve real problems for e.g. government resource allocation or military strategy, which would have outsized impacts on vulnerable countries and populations.
Frankly, this comment is simply rude and ineffectual. It completely unnecessarily disrespects the good people in the OpenAI team. No one doesn't qualify as "real people".
I am quite confident all the current employees of OpenAI qualify as real people. They certainly have problems and probably a good share of those problems are "real" too.
Of course their priorities may be off and they could be open to be persuaded to work in a different direction. But I don't think that condescension would be very effective for that.
I wish you realized how big and thick of a bubble you live in, and how your thinking is so heavily influenced by it.
My humble advice to you and your team is to spend more time with real people, with real problems. Or perhaps people from other parts of the world, that haven't been brainwashed by the Silicon Valley jargon just yet.
I'm rooting for you, believe me. It's just hard to read or hear certain things and not roll my eyes up.