The rich of the previous Gilded Age founded or donated to cultural works like museums, libraries, parks, hospitals, universities and schools still in use today. They at least pretended to uplift the poor among the citizenry. What do we get? Trivial apps, NFTs, memecoins, and public dick-measuring contests to create resource-gobbling AIs.

I would argue that until we have actual intelligence (thin on the ground of late), we do not need AI that hallucinates 1/3 of the time and is subject to rapid cognitive decline. Nor do we need a leisure-class space program subsidized by taxpayers - unless we can send Musk, Bezos, Ellison et alia at least as far as Pluto.