You don’t think their main source of income was ever consumer-grade memory… do you?

It’s always been servers and business customers.

Yeah let’s have AI make art, play our games, hell let’s have it fuck for us!

Let’s keep all the really fun stuff to ourselves, like cleaning shit.

Well yeah… AI research started out in the Soviet Union precisely as an investigation of intelligence and consciousness. The goal was never to replace workers (as you know, the USSR was socialist). It was a scientific investigation of our own minds. The idea was that by learning how to build an artificial mind, every step would help us learn about our own “natural” minds.

It’s not random that some of the best existential works of sci-fi ever came from the USSR 😂

That’s a neat hypothesis, but there is no settled science on what is “thinking”. Specially thinking in the sense of coming up with new ideas.

It really doesn’t matter… there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Just use what’s more practical or better in any way for you.