The only one that I can think of is research or clinical settings. It could be really useful for various social or psychological research or monitoring patient status. That’s not how it will be used for the most part but that is a place it could be useful. Like any tool, it can be used for good things and bad (how revelatory…)

The problem with the AI industry (and modern, unregulated capitalism in general) is that as soon as someone has a potentially useful tool, they look everywhere for every possible use with no regard for societal consequences. Thinking about the ramifications of using a tool doesn’t increase shareholder value. In fact, trying to only have your tool be used in a positive way actively harms shareholder value. Greed perverts all that is good.

It depends. I’d say it’s a scale of fairly easy to very easy depending on how you have everything set up and documented. Essentially, back everything up and install the new distro then put it all back. It will take some time, though. The first time I distro-hopped, I forgot to take a list of my installed packages, which made for some unwelcome surprises when I couldn’t find certain programs. That’s not hard to overcome, just keep a list of your installed packages. Even if you don’t, it’s easy to just reinstall them.