AI isn't a threat to creative professions because it can actually make passable art that humans enjoy (it can't). It's a threat because in a capitalist system, employers would do literally anything to not have to pay humans living wages (or any wages, let's be real).
We've been in a productivity boom for the past 60 years, but the one area where production cannot become more efficient is the arts. It takes the same amount of time to write a novel or compose a symphony now as it did a hundred years ago. That's just the creative process.
AI represents a shortcut to making art that has had executives salivating since LLMs and AI art generators hit the internet. It means more content faster with the benefit of not having to provide salaries, sick days, parental leave, time off, or healthcare. It means not having to deal with unions and labour laws. It means cutting humans out of the most fundamentally human activity we do – making art.
All those headlines and clickbait articles about AI annihilating the human race are a hyperbolic distraction from the actual problem we may soon be facing where people won't have the possibility of supporting themselves making art (not that it's particularly easy to do as it stands).
If making art becomes a luxury only for the affluent, we will stop hearing the voices, stories, and perspectives of marginalized people. And our cultural tapestry will stop being so vibrant, diverse, and vital.
The world used to be alive with sound. People barely noticed it at first, as the world began to become quieter. At first it was the sounds that no one would notice that had gone, such as a tree falling in a forest with no one around. The world became quieter not all at once, but bit by bit. Slowly losing its vibrancy and lustre.
Nobody could agree why it was happening and nobody could agree on whether they should care or not. Whilst it was the little things that went, many people loudly and proudly proclaimed that these things did not concern them as it was not directly impacting them. People still could not agree if they should care when the creeping silence started impacting everyday sounds: the bang of a car door slightly muted and not as loud as it used to be. The sounds of people rushing to work on trains were no longer a noisy cacophony but quiet and subdued. These were all sounds that people were glad to be quieted.
However, it was not just the everyday noises that had begun to quieten and disappear from the world. It was also the joyful sounds of music and laughter that began to disappear. The loudest voices remained those that proudly declared that these were excesses and we did not need music of laughter to be happy and that ignorance is in fact bliss. People began finding alternatives to the sounds they missed; if instruments would no longer make sound they would make it themselves with their voices. This carried on for a while until this too began to fade.
Eventually the whole world was quieted until the loudest sound was a whisper. Nobody could make a sound louder than a whisper. True despair set in at this point as they knew that before long there would be nothing but silence. Bizarre scenes swept the planet of people silently rioting against the injustice of the inexplicable silence; the only sounds made were their quiet whispering.
On the day of the last whisper there was tranquillity. Acceptance that everything to be done to find a solution had been done. The people who had previously been the loudest about the silencing were now the quietest. They had seen for themselves now the consequences of the stagnation and inaction they advocated for. They wept, and the world wept, for it only now realised the value of what it had lost.