I love the analogy, although I'd like to add up using another element: Water 💦
Generative AI, as in "creating" texts and images based on previously existent stuff is a constant pursue of automation. "How can I remove the human to reduce time and cost?" (with all the good and worse parts of it, rights, emotions, harms and benefits)
So it would be like drawing water from a well by bucket vs. using an electric pump.
Your town is thirsry, you pay someone to pull a bucket, but that person has to take pauses and can work at most 8 hours a day, someone else says that with the newest technology of electric pumps the town will receive water 24/7 at a lower cost.
Some people in the town say that water is sacred. Has to be drawn by human hands, with buckets of specific wood, that part of the ritual of drinking water involves taking out water with your own hands. Using a machine is heresy, we are stealing resources from the nature and damaging the water cycle... We have no right to do that, water is not ours, it belongs to everyone.
There is no law about electric pumps, so the major approves using the newest technology.
A few will ignore those claims and will start paying for the pumps resulting on more water at a lower cost, in less time. Yes, at the start water tastes metallic although looks safe to drink.
In a few years the well will run dry, due to the amount of extraction. Since water is less scarce and inexpensive now, more will be needed. A new industry related with finding wells is emerging.
Obviously the person extracting water by hand became unemployed. In a few years everyone in the town will forget that water was drawn by people whose main employment was pulling a rope in a well, as a few years ago there were telegraphs, letter carriers, horse riders and lamplighters...
And we open a faucet ignoring the miracle behind piped water 🚰, we are so used to it!
⁂
EOT
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