Sure of course there will be some internal reason or some non-zero value behind doing any craft. But the analogy to AI & software engineering careers is that there are corporate for-profit tomato farms today. They have pushed out plenty of small farm businesses. Your mom enjoys tomato growing in spite of the availability of cheap high quality tomatoes. Your comment seems to me to agree with and support the GP comment entirely; you mom found value in doing the work despite there being no financial incentive.

Many people have argued over the years that it would be great when we have an economy that takes care of all the labor and everyone in society is free to choose to spend all of their time on things that have no financial incentive.