Being kind of obsessed with all that technological progress stuff, from time to time I try to find any breakthrough or even just great inventions around. Without any success, really.

For TLDR crowd - read last paragraph.

In the mid-50s, there was created so-called "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving" (Теория Решения Изобретательских Задач - ТРИЗ/TRIZ) by Genrih Altshuller who was more widely known in USSR as an SciFi author under name of Genrih Altov. He was Jewish origin.

Interesting fact from his biography is that during his work on that theory he wrote a letter to Stalin about severe problems in inventions area and how to fix them. Not long after that he was arrested and sentenced tolong jail time for some antisoviet activity. But after few years in jail, in 1954 he was freed and completely cleared from any charges by highest USSR authorities and it was found that he was sentenced by slander by another Jewish person. In turn this person got Altshuller's sentece and disappeared in history.

Looks like Altshuller's letter finally reached Stalin, who was at the time obsessed with growing technological potential of his Soviet Empire.

In any case, it is already highly suspicious, that as soon as some interesting idea popped up, there immediately appeared somebody who tried to exterminate it at any cost.

That "Theory of Soving Invention Problems" get serious attention and was noticeably popular in engineering and science circles of USSR. However, Altshuller for some reason didn't turn to scientific approach in further development of his theory, and limit himself only to popularisation of it. There was regular seminars and classes on that theory, but it didn't have any serious development.

Shortly, theory declared that in order to make an invention, first a problem should be formulated in a way where all umimportant things are cut out. Then, you divide problem into tiniest possible parts and began to combine anything known to find solution.

It is a very simplified description, but hope you get the point. After USSR fall that theory become little known abroad, and even giants like Samsung, Ford Motors, Mitsubishi and other used it to some extent for innovations.

Those who want to dig deeper could start f.e. here - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166361517300027 with other articles by links below.

One of basic thing in TRIZ was that checking of combinations of known inventions to find a new one. Pretty logical approach, since nearly all inventions was done by combining known things. Since invention of wheel, literally, when some person combined a stick with a disk.

At the time, performance of computers do not allow store and check millions of known things in trillions combinations.

Today it is perfectly possible. And it is nearly perfect, most obvious and insanely profitable task for all that ANN based things that posed as AI today. But you will not find anything except silly toys like "Inventions generator" like https://glitch.com/~invention-idea-generator

All similar "serious" commercial "AI-driven" (they are not) tools are not any different from that toys, they just pasted all over with marketing bullshit, nothing more, completely ignoring the core of theory.

So we have more or less working theory for making inventions, we have resources to practically use that theory, we have demand for new inventions, and even few samples of real use. But this obviously highly profitable and simple approach is completely ignored by all that "AI" crowd.

And to make modern "AI" useful for such usage, tiny addition in form of rudimentary expert system is needed. But such move will open a way to real AI, that understands what it process.

I could not find anything that could be a sign of development in that directions.

I think it is a good proof that scientific and technical progress is artificially stopped by elites and corporations. And any real moves to the real AI will inevitably open that box of endless inventions. And this is unacceptable for TPTB.

That is why there could not be anything that even distantly resemble any AI, while TPTB in power. Only "AI" mockup in a form of dumb artificial neural networks (ANN) or their incarnations in one or another form that could not produce anything useful by design.