I was talking with a colleague recently who told me that someone had uploaded all the Nirvana songs to an A.I. algorithm, then the A.I. composed its own Nirvana songs that not only sounded just like Nirvana songs, but were also were really good songs.
Now, I’m not oblivious to the fact that, given the general demographic of this paper’s readership, the above sentence made as much sense as a blind man at a strip club, so allow me to define some of the above for you.
Nirvana: a hugely successful ’90s grunge band.
A.I.- Artificial Intelligence: when the drummer tries to discuss music with the rest of the band. (Sorry, can’t help myself.)
Actually, A.I. is kind of like where computers gain near or above human intelligence, enough to even threaten our jobs; which brings me back to my friend’s story which he finished by saying that “soon, all us jazz cats will be replaced by A.I. robots.”
Now I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I can understand why a lot of professions might feel threatened about being replaced by intelligent, self-aware machines.
There is however, a common conception that we in the arts are safe. It could be argued that self-expression is a uniquely human quality, and for this reason robots could never replace jazz musicians. But here’s why I think musicians’ jobs aren’t threatened: any intelligent, self-respecting robot would look at the
