Thanks for the thoughtful reply. :)
The key concept here is whether the usefulness is "net useful" or "net consumptive" to the overall physical environment.
I actually look forward to experimenting with this concept with ChatGPT.
Apolitically, the existence of a civilization(city-based society) is somewhat antithetical to living Nature's 'pay it forward' system of accumulating useful traits (anti-entropy; Schroedinger) to react and proact to random change. Ergo, civilized humans are on a path of extracting value from the future (debts, resource depletion, competitive consumption, etc) that will be needed by future humans to actually breathe, eat and dispose of waste products.
Causation may be useful to know, but that goes along with intentionality (using an accurate model of future possibilities to take actions that improve our ability to persist/survive sustainably). The primary 'correlation mode' of modern economics is based on undirected competitive animalism by individuals manipulated by massive systems of credit, disinformation(advertising, religion, etc), culture, nationalism and profits that have little to do with physical species integration with our environment (quid pro quo).
As Raj Patel put it, "The opposite of consumption is not frugality, it is generosity."
Nature wants to know what human activity is doing for the overall biological system to add to its anti-fragility and possible usefulness.
Causation knowledge could be used to protect the Earth from asteroids, for example, or nurture biosystems. Yet, if the net result is destroying it with consumerism, there's really no there there: just a different timeline of failing.
It seems that the true test of intentionality/causality as a species/symbiotic trait will be whether it can spread from a single species on a single planet to unfamiliar territory, and then reproduce the whole process again (Intentionality child processes that are faster, bigger or more efficient than the 4 billion years evolution has taken to get where we are now.)
The beehive example is its Net Usefulness process (pollination and environment enhancement beyond just consuming nectar and pollen).
Humans have a few examples of generosity to Nature, but they are rarely found on the internet (compared to porn, polarization and product placement).
Maybe training the AI to look for net useful examples of human existence should be added to the filters.
Frankly, I think intelligent awareness was unavoidable as well as emergent, considering the correlation effect of connections and payoff for living organisms.
Whether causation/intentionality has a long term payoff is still up in the air. So far, it appears to be more of an invasive species type of thing, and now, we are trying to enhance that effect with even faster technology because "we'll make it up in volume".
