a thing i think about a lot is how the last 10 versions of Adobe Photoshop have each advertised some new method of quickly isolating objects with ML or AI so you don't have to tediously cut them out with the freeform select tool, so each time I try it, and each time it fails at even the simplest test. I try to select a box sitting against a stark white background and it feathers the edges and there's a whole bunch of ugly speckles and noise, and then I deselect and switch to the fucking polygon tool, carefully select 8 points, and get a perfect cutout. i have no sociopolitical opinions about this at all
the neat thing about doing a good mask cutout is you have to understand what you're looking at and computers can't do that