> Why is effort a requirement?

That's how human brains work. People have an intrinsic need to sort, build hierarchies and prioritize. Effort spent is one of viable heuristics for these processes.

> Why should being an artist be a viable job?

Art itself has great value, if it weren't, museums, theaters and live shows wouldn't exist.

> Would you be against technology that makes medical doctors obsolete?

The analogy doesn't work. The results of a medical process is a [more] healthy person. The result doesn't have any links to the one performing it. Result of an artistic creative process is an art piece, and art is tied to its creator by definition.

I would be against technology that freezes medicine at our current understanding and makes it economically unviable to develop new medicine.

I don't think it's worthwhile to explain the inherent value of human created art or that to learn how to do it one must put some effort into it. All I can say is, if you are one of those people who do not understand art, please don't build things that take away someone else's livelihood without very good reason.

I don't think the majority of AI generation for art is useful for anything but killing artists.

On effort being a requirement: part of art is around playing with limits of a medium and finding a way in it, it takes a lot of trials, attempts, and errors for an artist to make their way. It's not a requirement per se, but something needed for someone to intent something different. Not worried about creative ways where artists explore AI, new things will come out of it and it's going to be interesting. Not worried either about post-modernists who already dropped requirements long time ago and tape bananas to walls, they'll find their way. But the category artists who make their way through the effort put in a medium, not only the narrative around the medium will be affected.

On jobs: craftsmanship is slightly different than art: industries are built with people who can craft, there is today an artistic part in it but it's not the essence of the job: the ads industry can work with lower quality ads provided they can spam 10x. There is however an overlap between art/craftmanship: a lot of people working in these industries can today be in a balance where they live with a salary and dedicate time to explore their mediums. We know what will happen when the craftmanship part is replaced by AI, being an artist will require to have the balance in the first place.

It feels like a regression: it leads to a reduction of ideas/explorations, a saturation of the affected mediums, a loss of intent. Eager to see what new things come out of it though.

I think effort is a signal that whatever the thing is, the artist/team -really- wanted to put it out there and have people view it. They had -something- that drove them to take the time and effort to make the thing.

Zero-effort output generators like prompting means people are just generating trash that they themselves don't even care about. So why should I take my time to watch/experience that?

The whole "GenAI is accessible" sentiment is ridiculous in my opinion. Absolutely nothing is stopping people from learning various art mediums, and those are skills they'll always have unlike image generators which can change subscription plans or outright the underlying model.

Absolutely no one should be lauding being chained to a big corp's tool/model to produce output.

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Why should being an artist be a viable job? Well, people should get paid for their work. That applies to all domains except technical people love to look down on art while still wanting to watch movies, well produced youtube videos, etc. You can see it in action here on HN frequently: someone will link a blog post they took time to write and edit... and then generate an image instead of paying an artist. They want whatever effect a big header image provides, but are not willing to pay a human to do it or do it themselves. Somehow because it's "just art" it's okay to steal.

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If tech has progressed to the point of true "general artificial intelligence", then likely all jobs will be obsolete and we're going to have to rethink this whole capitalism thing.

I think all industries should be utilizing tech to augment their capabilities, but I don't think actual people should be replaced with our current guesstimator/bullshitter "AI". Especially not critical roles like doctors and nurses.

> Why should being an artist be a viable job?

Because we as a society have valued it as one for eternity.

Why do you want to destroy social mobility? Do you think you'll be on the safe side of the line?