[krapp]

>This idea that AI "does things" in a vacuum does not make sense to me and I don't understand why people assume it's the end goal.

It's the end goal for capitalism. Consider Jeffrey Katzenberg's recently stated expectation that AI should make it possible to eliminate 90% of artist jobs in animated films - of course he doesn't expect to make 90% less profits in the bargain. Every industry looking at AI is doing so primarily to be able to eliminate jobs, which entails having AI doing as much as possible without human intervention.

[smoldesu]

You have not just described a vacuum, though. AI is not going to make animated films apropos of nothing - that idea is fundamentally flawed. Someone has to set it up, someone has to pay for it's electricity, and eventually a human has to review it. If such an AI were writing Nobel Prize theses, my instinct says that the person who curated/selected that theses is the actual party that "discovered" it.