It's better to focus on trying to do good, to keep learning and adjusting.
"who would willingly attack themselves to prevent their own abuse of the power they've newly gained? Only a rare few, I doubt that will change."
Of relevance - the "least privilege principle" in computer security involves designing the system to prevent itself from doing anything which it isn't outright required to do. It involves the host of a service to even lock themselves out of as much potential access as possible (for example via end-to-end encryption).