I think it is also worth considering that "artist" is very broad.
Digital artists (and potentially songwriters?) seem very vulnerable, but I expect that my role as a programmer/CS researcher will be 100% automated before I can hire a robot to be even a mediocre photographer. Photorealistic image generation probably reduces the demand for some kinds of photography (stock photography?), but not the need to capture real events like weddings. Painters*, sculptors, and other physical-medium artists seem even less exposed. Even if a robot could paint something ni... (read more)
Are there some people who do this for a hobby?
I was first exposed to it (flintknapping, but you can also make stone tools by grinding stone) by a granduncle when I was very young (5), and did it as a hobby for the last ~1.5 years of my undergraduate degree while I was living with my parents. I don't do it anymore because I live in an apartment and don't have easy access to a space where I could do it. It takes a lot of outside area because you produce a lot of sharp stone flakes and silica dust which you don't want in an area that is not well-ventilated.
... (read more)Yo
I think it is less surprising for current early university students (esp. outside top students/schools) because they probably weren't feeding the AI of three years ago (GPT4) tasks that far beyond its capabilities. High-school-level homework, short essays, etc.
From their perspective it might be: "AI did a good job on my homework on 2023, it still does a good job on my homework in 2026." They never tried the college-level homework problems in 2023, let alone were trying to use it for software engineering, real research tasks, etc.