milaresearcher
It would be great if the balance of human and environmental well-being produced by an organization could be captured as such, but I feel it is often much more complicated.
It is clear that a poor child has a lower ability to pay for goods and services than a rich child. Does this mean that goods and services sold to the rich one with a hefty profit margin are more "beneficial to society" than when sold to the poor one at cost?
Your point about AGI which needs to ask questions about data provenance is super interesting. Are you aware of the line of inquiry into active learning? It's fascinating and has a long history: https://papers.nips.cc/paper/1011-active-learning-with-stati...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_learning_(machine_learn...
That said, I strongly disagree about what constitutes the proper utilization of research funds. IMO, society should invest in basic research without the expectation of solutions to significant real-world problems.
Still, I'd be really surprised if I don't see advances from the field of reinforcement learning used in a ton of applications during my lifetime.
That said, I agree with you that these potential positive uses do not outweigh the negative ones you allude to.
He was a research physicist that worked on developing High-Dynamic Range screens, so he's interested in businesses kinda like that.