r/MachineLearning - [D] Societal problems/topics that can be reasonably tackled during a Computer Vision/ML PhD while generating interesting research from a theory standpoint.

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.