Agreed.
But to be somewhat fair (which not all techbros deserve) I do think that the original impulse is not all bad. For example, much of this research started out to see if human thought could actually be modeled because such a model would be useful for brain science.
Of course, we are nowhere near modelling human thought processes -- and low and behold this thing we have instead can be used to make money! And the whole project goes off the rails.