Nice Camera!

Have a friend who's into photography and want to make them mad? Next time they show you a great picture, tell them: "Wow, you must have a nice camera!"

They'll be quick to point out, rightfully so, that, in addition to the gear, taking great pictures requires tremendous skill. After all, is the camera selecting the subject for you? Does it tell you what composition and framing would work well here? Does it tell you whether this shot would be better made with a deep or shallow depth of field?

Technical progress raises the floor in certain regards. Better sensors mean photos are less grainy when shot in low light, for example. Great, but more often than not it's the pros who will really take advantage of such advances.

So that's my thinking about AI's impact on jobs: At the low end, it will raise what's possible at the consumer level. Throwaway apps, throwaway songs, throwaway images will be cheaper to produce, to the point that it even makes sense to make them in the first place. But wherever it counts, you'll still want to hand it to the professionals.

After all, you don't let your cousin with an iPhone shoot your wedding.

(Funny enough, my friend Alex Jukes touched on the same topic, using photography as an example, in his last post, just as I was drafting this one. Check out his newsletter!)