Absolutely. I understand AI is the current big thing. But, there are tons of problems/ideas thats been around for decades, and haven't been solved (or, current solution is mediocre)

It's just, these problems aren't the sexiest

Yes. Remember that this crowd likes the newest things, and doesn't represent the general public.

I’m currently working through the Linux from scratch project and think it would be cool if I got good enough to contribute to the Linux kernel or drivers.

Wood / metal working, MTB and Factorio. Or did you mean within the IT sector? Well ML is interesting ;)

in no particular order:

  astronomy
  cryptocurrency
  climate change
  behavioral health
  prediction markets

I hope so.

For sure! Whilst most of the people around me seem to enjoy putting up with bad outcomes for the tradeoff of a few good ones (using ai codegen), I'll only use it to remind me of something ("please provide an example of doing X with Y") or for documentation lookups. With both, I have to double-check anyway.

I don't have any real desire to "have my productivity lifted" by ai codegen. I'd rather write my own code than debug someone else's. I like using the tdd cycle to let a design emerge. I care about the details in my code. I aim for maintainability over speed.