A lot of people have been surprised by the interest that AI companies have in solving maths problems without obvious applications, as well as in the financially precarious state of these companies. I imagine that they thought that these companies were helmed by mere bean-counters, like at Boeing. But no, I reckon that they're still academics at heart, and so they work on Navier-Stokes and L=BPL, instead of on how to maximise value for their (soon to be) shareholders.
No, more like the average can be more important than some outlier's impact, at least for steady progress. So while you do need the Mozart and Einstein, a more productive effort would be to raise the general population's education level.
Humans learn in the side effect of education, nobody is busting out some poor method that schools teach to solve antiquated problems in the real world.
