AI is the perfect job for asteroid mining, or any other job outside of Earth orbit, whether for research or commerce. Space is incredibly hostile to humans and, short of some miracle technology, is likely to always remain so: at best we'll have a few plant-the-flag missions in the inner solar system.

I really wish we'd build a standarized space exploration platform and saturate the solar system with mostly-autonomous robots that occasionally phone home with "wtf is this?"

imagine all the surface area in the solar system. I bet there's got to be at least 100 completely unexpected things lying around that would transform our understanding.

Yeah, but now you've gotta build a better AI that can go "that's a rock, you dummy" to the million or two false positives.

yes, we call those "Graduate Students"

what's stopping AI from asteroid mining for itself