Thanks for taking the time to write a thoughtful and nuanced response about it. I don’t think I disagree with any of the concerns you brought up, tbh. They all seem like valid things to be concerned about with AI. You might be surprised to know that I know of one person who was in AI dev for years as a UX designer, including for image generation, who also had strong opinions about the value of doing creative work “by hand” (e.g. not automating it) for development, for expression, etc. May sound like a contradiction that he was like that while also working in AI, but it’s interesting to me because it helps show that not everybody who has worked in AI is a full-on tech-bro. Of course, you could argue the end result is the same, that he contributed to enabling the tech and all its consequences, but still, I find it interesting.

I do think active building/learning instead of just consuming is important. It’s a bit murky sometimes, I think, when considering things like video games, where you do have to learn, but you are also learning something that often has no application to RL. With image gen, there is learning to prompt, however minor that is, and some people do mix it with actual drawing, but overall yeah, you could low effort type in prompts and press button until you get results you want. And to make an analogy to food, that is probably more like eating sugar than nutrients. Unlike with food, you won’t get diabetes from chronically overdoing it, but you might find yourself dependent on the “hit” of the novelty and have a hard time removing it from your life. The design of image gen is very similar to gacha, even if not intentionally.

That said, in terms of self improvement as a whole and a sense of fulfillment, I’m not convinced that hobbies like drawing are a great answer in and of themselves, but they are notably better than pressing button and adjusting prompt. Where my mind goes there is, we’re looking at broader societal problems, where people consciously or unconsciously notice that the society they live in is sort of nihilistic and exploitative, and that can be depressing in itself. Individualist development of hobbies may be more of a liberal solution overall than a revolutionary one. I think we can do better, though in the interim, again the individualist solution is probably better than no solution. Similar to how chatbots can be helpful for some people for processing things, but they are no long-term solution to alienation and isolation. So there’s the harm reduction perspective on it and what form that can take, and then there’s what to aim for. I think in terms of what to aim for, we need community rebuilt and communal things for people to do more so (that don’t have big cost barriers).