Programmer Humor

Autonomous weaponized drones are useful for fighting wars more effectively, and with fewer lives placed at risk using manned platforms. You may not like that wars are fought, but they will be fought regardless. Drones solve problems that arise in war-fighting.

Likewise, mass surveillance solves problems faced by intelligence agencies. It's also useful for things like marketing studies, medical studies, all kinds of such things. And again, you may not like some of these problems being solved, but they're real-world problems that are being solved.

Nuclear weapons have kept the world's superpowers at bay from each other. They've stopped "world wars" from happening. They don't stop all wars from happening, but there haven't been any major direct clashes between nuclear-armed powers since their invention.

Those metaverses and reality TV shows are entertainment. They are aimed at entertaining people.

MoviePass' ad system is an effort to monetize entertainment, allowing for more to be made.

AI facsimiles of dead relatives are for psychological purposes - helping people work through grief, helping people relive fond memories, providing emotional support, and so forth.

There you go, real-world problems they're all there to solve. And none of them are dystopic nightmares as depicted by the science fiction scenarios you listed, which is the main point I'm making here.

Science fiction authors got their predictions wrong. They spun nightmare scenarios because that's what makes for compelling drama and increased sales of their books or shows. They're not good bases for real-world decision-making because they're biased in incorrect directions.