[fleddr]

We seem to have some things in common. I'm also a software engineer with a creative hobby: wildlife photography.

In that space, there's already a kind of abundance problem. It's saturated. So even in the case of a "hit piece", the appreciation lasts about a few hours. A bunch of likes and some shallow comments. That's it.

If I were to base my meaning on that, I'd say it has no meaning. That's why I find meaning in my deep love for my subjects, as well as the process of photography itself. I decouple external validation from my intrinsic motivation. Few photographers do this, they crave the attention, which is why they're restless and miserable. They would surely feel even worse in an AI world where current saturation levels will do a 1000x.

The above you can probably apply to lots of other creative endeavors. For example, creative writing on a blog. You already can't get noticed today, imagine the avalanche of AI writing making this problem exponentially worse.

So we will have little shared meaning, at best personal meaning, but only for the strongly intrinsically motivated, the rest may stop altogether. On top of that, the new "creators" will also experience little meaning. You can generate the most beautiful piece of AI art, but can't seriously claim: I made that.