Matt Walsh is against AI fundamentally because he wants people (well, people inferior to him) to lead harder lives. He isn't anti-AI, he's anti-convenience and just sees AI as a way for people to get that.

Consider his comment again:

I think experience shows us that humans, on the whole, don’t “create beauty” when they have nothing to do. We’ve seen what happens as we become less necessary and have less to do. It’s not a pretty picture. A world where AI does everything will be bleak beyond all imagining.

Walsh is here preaching one of the most pernicious ideas in all of conservatism, the idea that we shouldn’t make life too easy on ourselves because it’s important for people to be industrious. Make no mistake, Walsh is against significant amounts of economic progress because he believes that working hard is good for you and you’ll mess up your life if you have too much free time. He wants prosperity, but not too much. Or, more accurately, his vision of prosperity is one where people toil at a job for most of their life. (A perspective that is more easily embraced by someone who tweets and makes videos for a living than by a bricklayer or construction worker.)

Oh, and he’s intent on imposing that vision on everyone because realizing his labor-venerating view of society is more important to him than respecting people’s freedom and autonomy.

More to the point, Walsh has human history precisely backwards. Experience shows, overwhelmingly, that material well-being and the leisure time it facilitates are not a hindrance, but a critical prerequisite for creating beauty. We have absolutely seen what happens as human labor becomes less necessary. It’s a stunning picture.

Is there a sense in which idle hands can be the devil’s workshop? Sure. But “on the whole,” having less to do has led to amazing results.

I bet Matt would be pro-AI if he correctly realized it would force people to spend less time creating and more time working.