Comment by Chance-Device

Nobody determined the usefulness of the internal combustion engine or the aeroplane after the fact. They were goals specifically worked towards. For every useful discovery that comes from this hobbyist approach there are far more that aren’t, and those would have been discovered during a goal orientated research program.

However, with AI it actually may become so cheap that the scattergun random approach becomes more viable rather than less. It’s when human time and resources are scarce that you need to optimise. The hobbyist approach may therefore ironically continue, but without the hobbyists.