It's not about what we need. Scientific research in this case has been the result of looking around and seen what can be done with the technology at hand without caring if it was what we need or don't. If you feel like "we" should be automating other stuff, you are free to make your own contribution, it's not like OpenAI owns the keys to the field.

But the people at OpenAI aren’t doing it as a hobby, they’ve got a lot of money to conduct this research (from Wikipedia: “The organization was founded in San Francisco in late 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and others, who collectively pledged US$1 billion.” [1])

This is the misallocation of resources I’m referring to.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI

I don't understand where the misallocation of resources is. OpenAI is no longer a non-profit organization. Its goal is not to automate what is most needed now. But to advance the field of AI.

And that's all highly speculative, betting on money to somehow show up, for reasons impossible to predict, if only enough games are changed sufficiently hard. If it can be done it will be done, unless we fundamentally change the way we run the economy.

Conclusions:

(1) Perhaps we should, winning at net zero games is very much a thing in the current way

(2) Didn't know it when I started writing this reply (not at all!), but I guess I agree with you

(3) I really miss Old Google, and how we happily trusted them (deservedly or not)

(I meant negative sum games of course, net zero is certainly fine)

"This street but cleaner and without the graffiti and mess" would be an awesome prompt for an AI. And possibly an essential step for a cleaning bot to even understand the difference between clean and not clean.

Otherwise these things are not connected in any obvious way and humanity has been known to work on many problems at the same time.

The whole point about Berlin (I live there too) is that it isn't Muenich. Muenich has clean streets, high cost of living, and is frankly a bit bland and boring. People are a bit uptight and conservative there. Not a great place for creatives to express themselves. You find a lot more of those in Berlin. And it's a big part of why Berlin is so awesome. Some Berliners, consider former citizens of Muenich gentrifying their formerly their neighborhoods a problem. Especially, when they start whining about how noisy, unclean and messy things are.

Munich (not "Muenich"), clean streets? Well ok, everything is relative, but even in Munich there is a lot of garbage and graffiti (although I concede that the graffiti in Berlin is better than in Munich, because in Munich most of it seems to be because of the rivalry of the two local football clubs). But, to also say something positive: Munich wouldn't be so expensive if it was as undesirable as you describe it. And yeah, Berlin is desirable too, that's why it now gets gentrified too. That's life!

It's a valid transliteration. Don't have any umlauts on my keyboard.

I beg to differ :) Even with transliterations, it's either München/Muenchen (in German) or Munich (in English). You can even call it "Monaco" if you come from Italy (because, same as the more commonly known Monaco, it was founded by monks), but Münich/Muenich is not a valid name for it in any language I am aware of...

I’m not from Munich (or any place richer/cleaner than Berlin). It was just an example off the top of my head, I don’t think litter in parks and streets is what makes Berlin’s charm/flair.

Automatically cleaning streets is a much harder problem than generating images. There might just be no dedicated work being done on it currently because it isn't a solvable problem given the current state of the art.

The direct application is instant illustration. It's called "art" because it has less requirements and can't be objectively judged. There is a long way to becoming useful, but it can have a very real world impact in everyday jobs.

Lots of people losing their jobs over this also means more available workforce for those more important jobs of yours

I wasn’t seriously expecting investment to change, just kinda funny/sad that in this case the thing getting automated is something humans enjoy doing (illustrating) rather than many things they both don’t enjoy and need more (street cleaning, construction work, menial physical labor in general). So you think in your example illustrators taking up street cleaning work will result in an overall improvement of life for mankind?

Aren’t the machines supposed to make our lives better?

This is what I'm thinking as well. I would go so far to say that it's directly evil to automate away illustration and other forms of creativity. Sure, many people will think it's cool and useful, but so many people will see their reason to live taken away from them. This is not only about making a living, creative arts is something much deeper and meaningful for lots of people.

I wish we could spend our collective brainpower applying AI to fight disease, climate change and poverty instead. That would make life better.

How dare they automate weaving cloth, it's a creative endeavor with a long history! It's deeply meaningful for lots of people in some cultures! Time to smash the looms!

Or recycling - from a conveyor belt full of mixed garbage, pick out the items that are most likely to be a given type of plastic (PET, HDPE, PS, ABS etc. etc.)