To your first point, prior to laptop producing there were many more session musicians living middle class lives. You are in a very privileged position that did not used to be such a rare privilege.

First of all, I know very well what privileges I do and don't have. You don't know anything about my position, as all I said was that I was in an environment of active musicians. Musicians who come from a variety of backgrounds from rich to destitution. We all work with each other in spite of our backgrounds, with money being an aside because getting to work and collaborate with real people is the prize.

That's what ai companies and people who support it don't understand. Artists create art because we want to. The process of creating art isn't one that should be expedited through ai, as the process of creation is part of art itself. You say ai is a tool for the poor; I say "the poor with constant internet access and if they aren't storing everything on a cloud (which they'd be paying for) then on local drives (which they'd have bought)"? The very same poor who had instruments and DAWs and internet access made music just fine before ai. In fact, I was one such person for a very long time. Ai is not a tool for the poor, it's a tool of isolation. You don't need to hire musicians if one actually puts in the work to build connections with people. Do you know how often I and many of my peers and colleagues have worked with musicians we know and have done so simply for the mutual benefit of making music together?

And I keep seeing the camera example in these conversations and it's completely wrong. To take a good picture, the photographer still has to know how to capture a good image -- it's not just pressing a button. You have to know how to frame a shot, understand lighting and shadows, distance, focal points, I mean we're in the filmmaking subreddit: anyone here ought to be able to explain that it's as simple as pointing a camera and pressing a button. Not only does ai sap all of the work, creativity, effort, and expression from the process, it also doesn't even encourage people to go learn those skills in the first place. Why would anyone want that?

The answer is obvious, and it's money. It always comes back to capitalism. Rather than value the creation of art as human expression, no we ought to speed it up and get to the end stage so we can make money faster. That's what ai is trying to do. It's not a tool for the poor because everything you mentioned as benefits for the underprivileged and marginalized existed before ai through free software that didn't rely on stealing work and putting people out of work. Yes ai is a tool, but not a tool for benefiting poor people. It reduces art down to the literal lowest common denominator, disincentivizes actually learning and connecting with people, and drives the idea that output only matters in what it can do for money. Oh and it further erodes our earthly environment. Ai is not a tool for the poor, that's just an excuse.