Not Jennifer. The substack writer. Just to clarify

I am willing to be persuaded on the virtues of human sacrifice in order to bring winter to an end

That's what keeps me doing it right now. That, and masochism

But for me the process of trying to write something is actually still worth something, even if I never get a story published. The process of trying to do something, and trying again, and trying again, until I get it sort of right... that's still worth something to me

I am not actually an artist, I am a (tryhard) writer, & already many people say "well you're stupid if you think writers will exist in a decade". Yes, probably. Why bother learning how to construct an artful sentence/paragraph/story if everyone will get AI to do it & the skill is completely devalued

Like why even bother trying to learn any technique if the AI can do it? if there's no market for human art because it's all AI art, why even bother attempting to learn any of the skills you need to draw or paint or play a musical instrument or write etc etc

Obvs people are going to use AI, that's what it is, the horse has escaped the barn. Have we democratized art? I don't know. I do know people I've known for years who could make a living from art now cannot. I do know art skills seem increasingly pointless to many young people

"OK but I just wanna make an image of a guy for my DND game, I don't have the time or personality to become a portrait artist to make this NPC look good" is like, well, ok? There are other options there between "become an Art Wizard" and "using AI". But that's an aside...

With AI art you can put in a prompt into Nano Banana and it will deliver an image for you, but is there an iterative building on skill? Does prompt writing really work like that? I don't know! Can you improve the AI's control of light and perspective and framing and colour and so on

And also building skills -> seeing things that are good that are beyond your current skillset but aiming for them -> building more skills -> seeing things that are good and aiming for them again -> etc etc is an iterative process. You build the capacity to know what good is by trying for it

Yeah after Brexit and two Trump presidencies and the insanity of the Ukraine war, whenever other Albertans tell me it won't happen I don't feel terribly reassured