On the other hand, as both an artist and machine learning practitioner, I think most artists are only seeing the surface layer here and have little insight on its derivative, the algorithms and state of research which are advancing the state of the art on a weekly basis. It'll never be obvious that we're at the critical moment because critical phase changes happen all at once, suddenly, out of nowhere.

There is an insane amount of low-hanging fruit right now, and potentially decades or centuries of very important math to be worked out around optimal learning strategies, but it's clear that we do have a very strong likelihood of our ways of life being fundamentally altered by these technologies.

I mean already, artists are suddenly having to grip with all sorts of new and forgotten questions around artistic identity and integrity, what qualifies as art, who qualifies as an artist... Generative technology has already made artists begin to question and radically redefine the nature of art, and if it's good enough to do that, I think it's already worth serious consideration. These technologies, even in current form, were considered science fiction or literal magic up until very recently.