Long-time reader, but first-time poster: If this post should go into r/cscareerquestions, or be deleted, just let me know.

I have the opportunity to start a PhD in Computer Vision/ML with a potential focus on SLAM. I am looking for topics related to society that can guide and especially motivate the research. A counterexample would be face-recognition which is technically fascinating, but IMHO has significant negative potential from a political perspective. A possible example would be “helping the blind” where computer vision should generally be beneficial; however, I currently assume that most challenges in this area are more user-interface- and product-design-related.

I am asking this question here, and not at say r/AskReddit, because I was hoping to get more understanding for striking a balance between a topic that is relevant from a research perspective and relevant to society. I do also understand that this might be a topic to discuss with my supervisor, and I will; nevertheless, I am very interested in your opinions 🙂

Thank you all in advance for your answers, and in retrospect for the great content on this sub!