Humanity is at a crossroads: Should we judge creative work by its authorship or by its merits?

Is something beautiful worth less if it was made by a probabilistic machine?

Yes, and I don’t think this should be contentious. It’s the difference between talking to a friend, seeing their gears turn as they consider what you say, perhaps even changing them forever, and an LLM instantly provide a response that is cold and indifferent to who you are.