Since when are captchas a bigger issue than spam bots and fraud users?
and yes i also think that those tasks are actually helping our society. Adding models for self driving cars, for security/emergency breaking systems etc. So whats the issue?
If I had to guess:
> "solving one is not a real hurdle to you"
My experience is that it can be a real hurdle.
Sometimes reCaptcha forces me to complete 2 or 3 captchas (or more), some of them with an annoying artificial delay when loading new images. It seems to be worse when using a VPN or a browser like Firefox (or some privacy extension) that blocks Google tracking.
I understand why people use reCaptcha and that it works well for some users, but it can be a pain in the butt if you don't use Chrome, aren't logged in to your Google account, or if other devices in the network did something that Google doesn't like. I sometimes get captchas on my phone when using mobile data (on a major provider here in the UK) and Google search because of "unusual traffic from your computer network"...
Catpcha was not invented to make the internet worse and solving one is not a real hurdle to you.
I'm not sure why you 'sat down for minutes' to solve any of them, you might just be really bad in comparison to a lot of other peoples.
Nonetheless, this helps YOU it makes YOUR experience better by making it harder for bots.
Have you ever seen a community killed by spam bots? You are probably quite happy that the amount of spam in comments etc. are as low as it is.