Beneficial to humanity does not mean "increasing the GDP". Humans are not machines; there are things that are valuable that is not technology. Just from the title of the thesis I would not judge its value. Analyzing culture and writing about your own ideas can be a good thing.
More important to me is whether it was written because someone really cared about the topic, or wrote 100s of pages of nothing to have a title.
But I also want to comment on your idea that researching AI is superior to researching dancing because it is more beneficial for humanity. I am myself in AI adjacent research, but I still disagree. Dancing is a deeply human thing, and we should care about it. And I believe that many people (especially outside of this bubble) will think that many parts of currently hyped AI research has very questionable "benefit for humanity", such as AI image generators.
I'm 100% with you on the nebulous value of AI, however given the "theme" of HN I think the bias is here towards such an assumption.
I am not dismissing the value of dance or culture or social science or even event management (or farming or any of the dozens and dozens of things people can get Ph.D's in).
And I note that in my post above.
I am seriously not being sarcastic by saying it's worthwhile. Probably to her. Maybe her department. Maybe even to break dancing (well, maybe not break dancing).
But the presumption that someone getting a Ph.D has somehow "uplifted us all" as a default seems highly improbable to me.
It no doubt uplifts a number of the degree holders, if statistics bear out.
But that's like saying "If Elon Musk becomes rich, we all become rich" and I don't think that's true. Not even in some "trickle down" economics kinda way.
If Elon gets a Ph.D we have all to assume some intrinsic benefit to humanity?
More important to me is whether it was written because someone really cared about the topic, or wrote 100s of pages of nothing to have a title.
But I also want to comment on your idea that researching AI is superior to researching dancing because it is more beneficial for humanity. I am myself in AI adjacent research, but I still disagree. Dancing is a deeply human thing, and we should care about it. And I believe that many people (especially outside of this bubble) will think that many parts of currently hyped AI research has very questionable "benefit for humanity", such as AI image generators.