[OJFord]

...so that you can get to the supermarket for food, to meet someone you love, meet someone you may or may not love, or to solve the problem of how to get to work; etc.

Your ancestors didn't want horses and carts, bicycles, shoes - they wanted the solutions of the day to the same scenarios above.

[sublinear]

As much as I love your point, this is where I must ask whether you even want a corporeal form to contain the level of ego you're describing. Would you prefer to be an eternal ghost?

To dismiss the entire universe and its hostilities towards our existence and the workarounds we invent in response as mere means to an end rather than our essence is truly wild.

[anonzzzies]

Most people need to go somewhere (in a hurry) to make money or food etc which most people don't want to do if they didn't have to, so yeah it is mostly a means to an end.

[sublinear]

And yet that money is ultimately spent on more means to ends that are just as inconvenient from another perspective?

My point was that there is no true end goal as long as whims continue. The need to craft yet more means is equally endless. The crafting is the primary human experience, not the using. The using of a means inevitably becomes transparent and boring.

[mewpmewp2]

It should finalize into introducing satisfaction to the whims directly, so the AI would be directly managing the chemicals in our brains that would trigger feelings of reward and satisfaction.

[sublinear]

I think you're just describing drugs

[mewpmewp2]

Yes, but current drugs have many issues such as tolerance build up and withdrawals. If AI could figure out how to directly manage chemicals in the brain in such a way that it keeps working, it would be able to attain its goals of making people happy.