Time and time again, AI brings me back to an unchanging symbolic Truth: Reality is more than the mere sum of its parts.
I barely dabble in AI (other than philosophising auf Deutsch with ChatGPT) but I cannot help but notice the grotesque of AI-Music: every time I encounter it, its ugliness is too intense to not remark – a face so hideous you just have to remember it.
AI-Music is the greatest proof that Music is more than the mere sum of its notes: AI-Jazz “sounds” like Jazz, it “does” what that music “does”, clap-clap, yet it is bizarre in a way that just engulfs the listener in Uncanny Valley: it betrays its own artificiality by lacking that distinct human touch, that viscerality which makes you know it was made by a living being – it really doesn’t impress me, it just makes me ask the Jurassic Park question: “Should anyone even bother finding out what this would sound like? Who cares except for talentless artists?”
I wouldn’t express the human touch as “The Artist is clearly flawed and mortal, whereas the Droid is irreproachable”, it’s not a Perfection/Imperfection duality (Humanity kicks Bot-ass anyway, if it just puts its mind to it, precisely because it has one), it’s to do with the execution: I could play a Jazz-piece all the way through, replicating it literally note-for-note, but if I don’t put the same energy, the same passion into it, then it will not only be noticeably different from other performances, but distinctly less enjoyable, less inspiring.
In the exact same sense that language is not just an arbitrary, quantitative heap of “words”, their precise purpose being to express something beyond their very own selves, they are a mere Means to an End, Music is not just a set of notes: and only a pathological dullard - and terrible musician - would ever assume it is.
All means of communication, from purely linguistic to full-on artistic, exist in relation to a deeper symbolic intuition of reality: communication only makes sense as an expression of deeper Meaning. You discard that dimension, you end up with the realm of AI: Communication as pure A-to-B superficiality, as a result of which the beautiful, ineffable idea of “Music as a language” becomes relentlessly banalised to the level of “This language is just a set of notes”.
I am not an AI-enthusiast: as per the standard Loweism, I do not care (sic), and I feel the phenomenon is starting to demand a good talking-to, it is really getting uppity and provocative, like some Ghetto-Robot, its intrusion on Art is its own proverbial face gearing up for a nice smack – the act will inevitably become irresistible, not our fault, the brat was just asking for it.
These things are never qualitatively neutral, because nothing ever is: the mere existence of AI-Music annoys me.
You have to understand that, if you gave me the opportunity to make endlessly intricate Music by pure Computer-means, without the slightest effort, I am not convinced I would jump at the opportunity: it would, if anything, irritate me that something so beautiful, one of my greatest interests and passions, was in fact so cheap - it is comedic mockery doubling as personal insult, as are all things egalitarian.
Is Artistry actually just a delusional daydream? All my musical effort was a mere waste of time? There are no treasures to be discovered in life? No mystery to muse upon? I just had to live for the advent of AI to have it all handed to me on a silver platter? It’s all just haphazard contingency? Can I smack the Robot now?
If you could become the world’s “greatest musician” by means of AI, you would just be the world’s greatest swindler: it’s not a title worth winning - not anymore. If you made the rules of the game so easy that anyone could win, who would play other than losers?
Never gets old.
Having the fact thrown in my face that people are in fact shamelessly indulging such con-tricks pleases me not - the Music-sphere is infested by rats as it is - it’s like having whiny CNN-drivel appear on your otherwise perfectly Far-Right news-feed: I get this part of Reality exists, that didn’t exactly elude me, but I thought I’d unsubscribed.
As mentioned in other writings, all things Progressive are an ideal encapsulation of the German term Verschlimbessern: the failure of Improvement won’t even have the decency to remain neutral, as some unfortunate mishap we can just move on from, it will precisely make things worse - there will not only be tears before bedtime, but a literal Hell of a mess to clean up.
Technology is only ever a glorified hammer: it may distance itself in manifestation from a hammer, but in essence only over operates on the exact same Tool-spectrum. Misunderstanding this is being the archetypal chump mistaking the moon for the finger: the hammer, in itself, will not provide the breakthrough you seek.
AI has no business taking care of anything other than its assigned tasks, those which one would assume as befitting only basic machinery - outside of that, it can only be a weapon of violence.