Thankfully YouTube provides a lot more value to society than gen-AI.

This is a subjective value judgement and many disagree.

Doubtful. If you look at viewed content it’s probably 90% views from brainrot content.

To adults? Certainly. But keep in mind that many children are now growing up with this crap glued to their eyes from age 2:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=funny+3d+animal...

(That's just one genre of brainrot I came across recently. I also had my front page flooded with monkey-themed AI slop because someone in my household watched animal documentaries. Thanks algorithm!)

Not for me.