[Udo]

> These models, by nature, can only produce derivative mimicry. Humans are capable of generating spontaneous concepts and employing meta-qualities [...]

It's even more complicated than that. "derivative mimicry" and "meta-qualities" are both subjective value judgements you are making, and you're implicitly asking us to go along with them as given.

Human output is also derivative. AI output also has meta-qualities. The real difference is that one is made by a person, the other is made by a person using a tool.

> To replace this process with an ML implementation devalues humanity

Maybe there will be a time where machines will - without any human action involved at all - generate content, put it online, autonomously interact with other machine-generated content, and there will be a closed system where humans are either not involved or are just passive consumers. In that case, yes, humans have clearly fallen completely by the wayside. Which, depending on the nature of those interacting autonomous systems, may be the start of a whole new civilization. Or just electrons chasing each other in circuits that are endlessly recombining the ghostly echoes of their long forgotten makers.

However, that day is not today. We have made more capable content generators and generative tools, and amazingly, have democratized them to a degree.

[nottorp]

You couldn't be more right. They're content generators.

If you can't stand "consuming content" they're useless. So is 95% of modern TV, even if human made, because they're also applying patterns they've been taught.

Once in a while something interesting is made by the content mills - possibly by mistake - and pattern appliers, be they human or automation, have nothing to do with it.

A few humans are capable of going beyond applying patterns, current "AI" isn't at all.