I would like to push back against this a bit. You, along with most people in this thread, probably suffer from availability bias. People only interact with AI/ML systems when they are surfaced to them, and currently the most popular channel to surface ML is ads. Of course I have my own biases, but I think is an important critique. As Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

> It's not profitable to use AI for wholesome and healthy things for people, so nobody does

The purpose of the ML systems I build is to detect when things go wrong in order to keep people safe. These systems are both important and extremely valuable. They just aren't quite as sexy as the latest computer vision or large language models. But that's ok. Normal people only become aware of such systems when things go horribly wrong. It's sort of like plumbing in that regard.