This Noema article about the real dangers of AI by Shannon Vallor - and how they differ from those more typically bandied around in public debates - has saved me a great deal of time and mental anguish by precluding the need for me to actually write a similar article laying out more or less precisely my views on the subject. There is one slight inconsistency in the later acknowledgement that the notion of "human resources" as something akin to mechanically interchangeable parts in a machine designed primarily for the extraction of profit did in fact exist prior to the introduction of computer-based information systems, but this is a fairly minor quibble. Overall I think it does an excellent job of laying out the full scope of what is at stake when it comes to the question of artificial intelligence, and I would recommend it to almost anyone with a brain, especially if - like me - you have long suspected that the debate about AI may really revolve more around unresolved questions surrounding human intelligence and capabilities rather than resting on the various unqestioned assumptions often involved in the comparison of one type of intelligence to another.
Thanks also to Sean Carroll for the heads up on this one. By this point I'm so firmly down my rabbit hole it may be some time before I get around to saying anything quite so sensible or indeed topical...
I've been relatively slow to get into performing, perhaps almost famously.
To be fair, two of the most prominent musical phenomena of the previous century - The Beatles and Glenn Gould - eventually gave up public performances entirely in favor of studio work. Given the dynamics of the era, it's not really hard to see why that made sense, and it basically still does. The results were more controllable, the sound quality was better, and there's the possibility of doing things that
essentially can't be done on stage. Especially once multi-track
recording on greater than four channels of tape (initially the standard
for nearly all of the Beatles' recordings up until Abbey Road as far as I'm aware) became
common practice in studio sessions by the early 1970s, the effect on the music world has been nothing short of electric. The new technology did much to cement the LP format as the preferred vehicle for carefully crafted album-length masterpieces that soon issued like fruit from the trees starting in the 70s and ever since. I've collected quite a few myself over the years, as you might expect!
It's easy to forget that things weren't always that way though. Before the advent of inexpensive, reliable and high-fidelity (well, relatively speaking) recording formats, being able to reproduce an entire musical performance - reliably, from start to finish, whether on stage or in the studio, on an instrument or sung - was essentially the gold standard of musical professionalism, and groups often spent hours, days, weeks or months rehearshing together to prepare for tours and studio dates at a time when the overall cost of living was (let's not forget this either) considerably cheaper than it is now. It seems a marked contrast to the entertainment world of today, where image, style / aesthetic presentation and economic expediency have become in certain ways almost more important than the music itself.
So I started to wonder what would happen if I attempted to engage in a bit of musical "time travelling"... Not back in time, but somehow reaching out to the roots while simultaneously embracing the unknown future, using the technology immediately accessible to me. There's a lot that is unknown about the present moment we're in as a people, as a society and a planet. Both humanity's greatest potentials and our gravest dangers seem to lie not in some far off utopian or dystopian scenario but in actuality everywhere around us, at every moment, pervading every space that we once took to be sacrosanct, private and trustworthy. At such a time I thought it fitting to experiment with new formats and new ways of playing; perhaps even redefine my basic model of working in order to breathe new life into what I do.
That is what you see documented here, if only in prototypical form. I thought, what if the studio could truly be used as an instrument, "playable" in real time to create unique performances that allow for spontaneous variation..?
The lens through which the present problem of technology is framed is itself an illustration of a much grander dilemma running through much recent world history: the desire for progress, for positive societal change and adaptation, is forever opposed by the weight of history, and from a strictly empirical perspective, we lack purely historical examples of the type of society we so fervently wish to create; at least, we lack examples that spring readily to mind in the public consciousness, save what many take to be well-intentioned yet somewhat vague sentiments about respect, compassion, mindfulness, tolerance or diversity.
The situation reminds one of nothing so much as William Blake's famous maxim:
"What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair, eternal death..."
