Jason Allen spent roughly 80 hours working on his entry to the Colorado State Fair’s digital arts competition. Judges awarded him first place, which came with a $300 prize.

Allen’s victory took a turn when he revealed online that he’d created his prize-winning art using Midjourney, an artificial intelligence program that can turn text descriptions into images.

The revelation (which he made even when he dropped off the submission) has sparked intense debate as to what constitutes art – to the point that it’s spawned people saying it’s the death of art. As AI enters each field, and then soon does better than even the best people (which we’ve seen time and again), we’re going to have to re-think society and work. When everyone can use AI tools to make the best of anything in the world – it’s going to have profound impact on everything.

I suspect we’ll see this in our lifetimes based on the current rate of AI growth and capabilities. I, like many others, wonder if we’ll survive it.

Read more about the controversy on the Smithsonian website.