Honestly, this "creative destruction" has already to some extent entered the photography field. You can take very capable, often professional looking photograph

Honestly, this "creative destruction" has already to some extent entered the photography field. You can take very capable, often professional looking photographs for the vast majority of circumstances with just your phone. There are still many situations where more professional expertise is required (portrait photography is probably one of the best examples, knowledge of proper lighting is still required for best results). But I've gotten the impression that overall demand for photographers -- and pay -- is slower these days, largely due to technological advances. (See articles like this: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/business/media/30photogs.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/business/media/30photogs.h...) In a way, this is fine though -- as you say, it gives power to more people, which is great. Per the parent post's point, to be honest, I perceived much of the criticism to be more that they really couldn't think of a good way to use it in their own hobby level work. I personally can't think of a good use case. On the other hand, the most useful application I can think of for this is more in reverse: social media companies with huge image libraries their users have graciously "donated" to them, could use this AI algorithm or something similar to pick, or construct, the most "professional" looking image of anything they can identify from their vast library, and sell it or license it to media / content publishers for a relatively low cost. Such could be but one more competitor to any professional landscape / scenery photographers out there.