But the very act of making and organizing your card deck is part of the SRS! It “sucks” because you get no dopamine hit from a fresh desk, as the reward system is not yet in place.

Again, I really think this is a viewpoint we've talked ourselves into to help us feel better about how cumbersome creating the cards are.

I'm willing to grant that there is some value in choosing what to put in the cards, but most of the awkwardness around making cards is UI related. Nobody creates cards on their phone, or while they're walking (AI could do both of these) - people create cards sitting at their computer (like cavemen!) usually clicking through a clunky UI and managing thousands of cards with thousands of clicks. That sucks, and people probably wont realize it sucks until something better comes along.