[thrdbndndn]

I'm not sure how this contradicts what they said. AI would likely lower the number of paid opportunities.

Additionally, art requires practice. Sure, some "lower-tier" artists may produce work that AI could replace without anyone noticing. But by removing that step, we risk having fewer truly great artists emerging.

[butlike]

The paid artist is, in fact, the outlier.

[dist-epoch]

I will also be honest, if you expect to live off your art, you are doing it wrong.

[j4coh]

You may not be able to be rich, but at least until recently it was possible to make a living and not be homeless/require patronage.

[vkou]

If you expect to live off typing letters and numbers on a keyboard, (or off the labour of others, while you siphon up the lion's share of their productive surplus), you are doing it wrong.

[fredoliveira]

Absolutely ridiculous to assume that only some careers allow the makers to live off them.

[ndriscoll]

That's the point: for almost everyone it's not a career. It's a hobby. Like some people have a career researching physics because they're extremely good at it and society has decided it makes sense to have a few. Then there's people like me who learn what they can of it in their free time, but I do something else as a career because realistically very few people have need of someone who's familiar with the Dirac equation or whatever. Among the general population I'm probably in the 99th percentile of math/physics knowledge/ability, but I don't do that for work because we don't need 1% of the population working on such things. And that's for a skill that causes most people to get anxiety; the demand mismatch is probably even greater for things that average people actually enjoy.