AI receives so much funding and support from the wealthy because they believe that they can use it to replace humans and reduce labor costs. I strongly suspect that AI being available to us at all is merely a plot to get us to train and troubleshoot the tech for them so it can more perfectly imitate us. Then, eventually, when the tech is "good enough" it will rapidly become too expensive for normal people to use and thus become inaccessible.
Companies are already mass-firing their staff in favor of AI agents even though those agents don't even do a good job. Imagine how it will be when they do.