Whenever I use midjourney, which is a lot, I think about what I could accomplish if I actually had art skills, to feed to it, and to edit and compose its results, and if all these tools were tightly integrated into existing tools.
It seems similar. New heights are possible for those with skills, and the barriers are lowered for those without training. There will be new demand for both things, competition for quality at the top, and new applications where it wasn't worth it to produce art before at the bottom.
Both art and programming seem hard to predict what value you'll get out of investing in skills now, because there's both barriers being broken down and demand being opened up.
I do think there is a key difference, though, which is software hasn't shown signs that it's getting close to done "eating the world" yet, due to the universal nature of the turing machine. It's nothing to do with programmers being special and everything to do with computers being a single tool that's applicable to everything and has sustained decades of exponential gains in power.
I wouldn't stop someone from investing in art skills if that's their interest, and I wouldn't stop someone from investing in programming skills if that's their interest. But if they were interested in both equally, I would absolutely suggest programming.
> new applications where it wasn't worth it to produce art before at the bottom
I've been using Midjourney to create logos for my FOSS projects. In the past I'd never spend money on something I'm making for free but now I just generate a few variations of a prompt like "create a minimal flat vector logo for a software product called X" and I pick the best one. I don't need a logo for a FOSS project but the barrier to entry is so low there isn't really a reason not to do it. I still pay humans to design logos for products I want to market because AFAIK there isn't really a great way to do minor revisions with Midjourney.
It seems similar. New heights are possible for those with skills, and the barriers are lowered for those without training. There will be new demand for both things, competition for quality at the top, and new applications where it wasn't worth it to produce art before at the bottom.
Both art and programming seem hard to predict what value you'll get out of investing in skills now, because there's both barriers being broken down and demand being opened up.
I do think there is a key difference, though, which is software hasn't shown signs that it's getting close to done "eating the world" yet, due to the universal nature of the turing machine. It's nothing to do with programmers being special and everything to do with computers being a single tool that's applicable to everything and has sustained decades of exponential gains in power.
I wouldn't stop someone from investing in art skills if that's their interest, and I wouldn't stop someone from investing in programming skills if that's their interest. But if they were interested in both equally, I would absolutely suggest programming.