Sure, this mirrors history, technology is always transforming economics.
I guess my point is that there is a decent sized middle class of creative professionals right now, and I expect that the number of them will go down significantly due to AI. Seems like art will become more and more restricted to hobbyists and the lucky few who achieve mainstream success.
This is kind of what happened with photography. But I think the scale is much bigger, affecting all creative industries.
If you take the analogy of smartphones & photographers- then why don't you take both sides? We're much better off with now than then.
So this is a bit of a hot take for HN, but while my life is dramatically more convenient due to smartphones, “better” is actually not obvious to me. Some things are better, some are worse.
Anyway, I don’t think anything I said was even framed morally (although of course I have my personal opinions). My prediction is just that the amount and average quality of paid creative work is going to massively decline. To me, the scale difference matters a lot (compared to impact of previous tech). I hope I’m wrong.