>> they could’ve helped

Who’s “they”? “They” is us. There’s nothing special about people working on AI. It’s just people that chose a specific track in college and a specific job after that. Barring life circumstances that make college out of reach (and I understand there are very many valid reasons that may be the case), if you actually cared enough, you could very feasibly be one of “them” working in AI, green energy, fiscal policy, or medicine. There are plenty of people working in each, it’s just that each is actually an assortment of complex problems that aren’t solvable by one person. Again though, unless you’ve got some prohibitive reason, you are choosing to be an armchair critic instead of devoting your life to one of these causes.

>> they’d make AI which will ruin everyone’s lives

It will be people ruining people’s lives. AI is just a tool. It could be used to organize horrors on a massive scale, sure, but then, so can Excel spreadsheets. If you mean some kind of Skynet bullshit, stop confusing movie scripts with reality. It’s hard enough to get code to run without crashing, there’s no “accidentally” developing malevolent sentience.

>> just for a few slips of paper

That’s not what money is. Whether paper, metal, or bits in a bank’s computer system; money is a quantification of resources, both human and physical. As long as people need things and other people have to provide those things, there will be some notion of value, and reducing the need for human effort will create value.