The progress in large AI models like GPT-3 and Dall-e 2 is extremely impressive and exciting. Progress is happening at a blistering pace. So much so that it is easy for me to imagine a future now where all meaningful innovation is something that comes from AI.

This is especially evident to me when I see the kind of art created by dall-e 2. It is flat-out astounding. It seems like there won't be a need for artists in the future. At least commercially. I'm dead serious. Yes there will probably still be a market for art that is known to be created by a human, but not because of some difference in quality.

I understand that there is and never will be anything stopping people from creating. But how could anyone be expected to refine their artistic skills when they could ask a large AI model to realize their artistic vision? It will soon be simple to basically describe the world you imagine, and have an AI do the heavy lifting of creation for you. Why then, would you ever learn to refine your brush strokes, or think about how a sentence should be composed?

In a broader sense though AI will overcome every human skillset, and to me all that seems left is consumption. Because AI will eclipse any need to learn how to create (to an extent that is not even humanly possible), all that will be left to do is consume what is created.

I get that this scenario is potentially still decades away. But imagine you spend the next 20 years becoming a true master at something for it to become trivial. I think this is a unique problem for humans because we are designed to create / build. Without an outlet for that, where does that leave us?