Every era hands its instrument to the few who understand it first. The press. The camera. The film reel. Each one was ridiculed before it became mandatory.
Painters swore the camera would be the death of painting. It killed nothing. It ended a monopoly. Those who set down the brush and picked up the lens founded an art rather than destroying one.
The divide will not fall between those who use AI and those who refuse it. That question is already closed. It falls between those who treat it as a toy and those who treat it as a discipline. We don't generate. We build.