Artificial Intelligence seems to be taking over our lives and replacing jobs wherever possible. In the foreseeable future, there are quite a few professions that come to mind where robots can phase humans out. Uber drivers can be a thing of the past with self-driving cars, and data-entry positions can eventually be automated. And robot telemarketers have likely called your phone more than once this week. (While the current robot telemarketers are unconvincing, I believe AI will be able to increase the quality of the bots, and therefore scam more people).
AI is tapping into nearly every market-even the music industry. It may sound crazy, but AI can compose original symphonies. The legendary Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), often referred to as the first “computer programmer”, once brilliantly and prophetically said,
“The Analytical Engine might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine… Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”
One hundred and seventy some odd years later, we are fulfilling that mission. Companies like AIVA.ai are assisting musicians and artists by generating music for them. Aiva specifically composes “emotional soundtracks.” AI is also being used to generate stories, including this one: https://onezero.medium.com/we-asked-an-a-i-to-write-a-column-for-us-the-results-were-wild-220ce0f7e1f8, which is about life during the pandemic. So, with artificial intelligence able to compose music and write stories, although both in a preliminary phase, the implication seems pretty exciting: robot musicians writing full-length, lyric-driven songs. However, while this may be a strong possibility, I do not believe that robots in the near future, will be able to replace the musicians we currently admire and bop our heads to. Why? Because AI lacks something very important: personality.
We may not realize it, but much of why we enjoy the music out there is because of the attachment we have to the people behind the microphones. The Beatles, for example, took the world by storm not just by their genius lyrics and compositions, but also by their lovable personas. Watch them in interviews; they aways knew what to say to make the media laugh and want more of them. My family loves talking Beatles trivia: “Did you know that this song is John Lennon’s diss track to Paul Mccartney after the Beatles broke up?” These tidbits and side-entertainments make you enjoy the music itself even more. This sort of thing is hard to replicate if you have a computer simply generating all the music in your library. Think about an artist like Eminem, his songs are pretty much all about his personality: they’re either hilarious, motivational, or angry,. Plus, once this pandemic is finally over, who is going to get the crowd going during a concert?
So, while AI has a place in music in assisting or even augmenting musicians, there is no replacing the humans that alter our moods through tunes.
