“Would that all of Israel were prophets.”
That is Moses’ startling response to Joshua, when Joshua frets that Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp—“false prophets,” as the anxious deputy frames it. Joshua worries they pose a threat to Moses’ authority. But Moses waves him off. “Are you jealous for my sake?” he asks. Moses doesn’t give the episode a second thought—secure as he is in his own standing with God. "If only," he adds, "all of Israel had the spirit of holiness."
A lot of people today are prophesying catastrophe about AI. They worry it will overshadow so much human activity that we will be left bereft of purpose, wandering in a desert of too much leisure and too little meaning. What will humans do when machines perform most of the tasks we once defined ourselves by? Find novel forms of mischief? As Proverbs reminds us, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” Or, as the rock band Styx sang with theological precision, we’ve got too much time on our hands.
AI will almost certainly take over a large swath of white-collar work—the intellectual and managerial functions we’ve long associated with human distinction: analysis, instruction, diagnosis, computation, counsel. In the near term, though, I’m confident there are jobs AI won’t touch: nursing, plumbing, farming, building, maintenance—all the work we were suddenly reminded was "essential" during the pandemic.
AI will entertain us, but not everywhere. Not in sports. The whole point of sport is watching humans strive. We reject artificially augmented athletes even when they remain human; the idea of machines competing for our amusement leaves us cold. Robot games, are a real thing, but haven't captured the imagination for a reason. They don’t scratch the itch.
And then there is art. Art is the thing AI will never truly do—not with honesty, credibility, or respect. The reason is simple: art is an act of human expression, and expression requires experience, feeling, and a subjectivity you cannot simulate. AI imitates, generates, computes. It doesn’t express. Without a human behind a work, the essential ingredient is missing. AI output may be consumed, but not 'appreciated'. It will be treated like a Big Mac: maybe tasty, but no one lingers over it. It will gain market share, but not reverence.
So what will humans do with all the time AI gives back to us, once it diagnoses, calculates, and counsels on our behalf? We will still seek purpose, challenges, meaning—because that is what we do. And increasingly, we will pursue those things for their own sake, not because they are necessary for survival or success.
That is what art has always been: the making of something beautiful and meaningful for its own sake.
In fact, we have been drifting toward this future for 150 years. As machines have made more and more of the objects we use, and leisure time expanded, artmaking escaped the academy and became a popular pastime. Never in history have so many people written, painted, sculpted, composed, or photographed. The artist is no longer a rare, romantic figure touched by the muse; today they are everywhere. This is not cultural decline but cultural abundance. Only the professional gatekeepers - the critics, snobs, and agents who profit from it - lament the democratization of creation.
As Moses might have said, had he lived to watch Bob Ross on PBS: “Would that all of Israel were painters.”
Perhaps that is what AI will give back to us—a renewed sense of what is irreducibly human, and a reminder of its own limits. It may accelerate the return to art-making as the quintessential human activity. AI will be able to do almost everything better than we can—the more complex, the better—from calculation to diagnosis to useful design.
But not art—because art is the human spirit made visible.
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