And we are not trying to address them, we are just trying to make more AI and more techbros.
the enlightenment was driven by "we can do thing better" and "to know god, we must know the world". A lot of money for research came from the catholic church (including for Galileo who wasn't put in jail for heliocentric, he was put in jail for being a massive insufferable arrogant prick)
In england, a lot of research was carried out by bored vicars, on CoE dime. (well pennies)
So yes, profit can be a motivator, and it can be very effective, it needs to be tempered with humanity. We could go into who a lot of brands we see today that are old were founded by quackers, but we dont have time for that.
the TLDR is, yes profit is a motivator, but its often short termist.
"AI" tech is actually a perfect specimen here: this could be a genuinely positive net for Humanity if only it wasn't controlled by the sort of scumbags that are only motivated by "profit".
If you define it so broadly that the hunter-gatherer inventing a spear for hunting more effectively is “profit”, then your statement is a tautology. The spear innovation was driven by “profit” and the “profit” is having the spear. Great.
If you apply a narrow, capitalist definition of “profit”, the statement is false. Plenty of advancement of civilization was and still is being made without or outside of capitalism, especially if you go as far back as the Stone Age that you mentioned.
It does not solve the problem but makes it more tractable.
A brief look at labour relations in both the US and UK suggests that sustained direct action is the only real way to force change. The hard part for us is that for the last 25 years we've all been told that unions supress wage, and that we are all expert negotiators. Unions would be the natural place to start, but they are but a former shell of what they were (for good or ill)
Declare that the current use of copyrighted works is not fair use. Create a new "generative use" clause which permits copyright use consumption and transformati on provided a number of conditions are met e.g. not-for-profit and for-public-be nefit organisation.
Place a tax on current AI company outputs, similar to CD or harddrive tax in Fra nce. This new "generative use" entities would not have to pay this.
The government/people "owns" all of the land and resources in it's borders and makes it available to people or companies on various conditions. You could interpret that they also "own" all of the copyrighted works (i.e. things become public domain at death+70years or whatever the current scheme is) and choose the mecha nisms, fair-use, exclusive copyright etc, which are or aren't permitted.