(The following post is part 1 of a two-part post called “Should We Fear AI?”. As I was writing the post, I kept uncovering more and more topics related to AI and the music business that I wanted to address. The post turned out to be very long, so I decided to break the post into two separate posts to make it more digestible. I will be publishing part two in about a week or so.)
Should We Fear AI? (Part 1)
If you’ve been following my posts and videos the last few weeks, you’ll have noticed that I’ve recently developed an interest in AI. I’ve been immersing myself in all things AI recently, exploring the myriad of tools that are emerging in the field of AI and doing my best to understand the implications for musicians and artists, both good and bad.
It’s been an interesting few weeks and the reaction I’ve received from
friends and colleagues about my growing interest in AI has been very mixed. It seems like people tend to fall in either one of two groups regarding their view on AI:
- AI is going to eliminate and destroy the vast majority of jobs and basically create a dystopian hellscape on earth and divide humanity into two classes: The 1% that rule and control the earth and the remaining 99% of us. Humanity will be even further divided
into two distinct classes.
- The other group seems to think that AI and emerging technology related to AI will eliminate the vast majority of menial jobs, allow us to work more efficiently and productively, and help us free our time up to actually create more meaningful and purposeful lives. AI, one of my friends claims, has the potential to help us usher in a “golden age”, or something much closer to a utopia on
earth.
Two very different perspectives and two very different potential outcomes.
In this post, I’m going to explore my views on AI and share my perspective in terms of Ais implications for the music industry, and creatives in general. It goes without saying that I don’t have all the answers and I am not an “expert” per se on AI. I don’t think anyone
really knows exactly how this will all play out, the so-called experts included.
Just to be clear, the entirety of this blog post is written by yours truly (Aaron Davison), unless stated otherwise. One of the interesting things about the advent of a technology like Chat GPT, is that it is going to be harder and harder to distinguish actual authentic human voices from ideas generated by AI. This is a potential downside and a real concern,
but I’m getting ahead of myself.
What Is AI?
Before we continue, let’s define precisely what “AI”, or “Artificial Intelligence” is and what AI entails. For this, I will use AI itself, Chat GPT, to be precise, to generate an easy to comprehend definition.
I went to Chat GPT and I said: I'm writing a blog post all about AI in the context of
the music business. Can you please write me a simple, easy to understand definition of what AI is and, broadly speaking, what AI entails.
Here’s What Chat GPT said:
“Certainly! Here's a simple and easy-to-understand definition of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and what it broadly entails:
Definition of AI: Artificial
Intelligence (AI) refers to the development of computer systems that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. These tasks include understanding natural language, recognizing patterns, making decisions, and learning from experience.
What AI Entails: AI involves creating algorithms and computer programs that enable machines to:
Learn: AI systems can learn from data and adapt to new information. They use techniques like machine learning to improve their performance over time.
Reason: AI can make decisions and solve problems by following logical rules and analyzing data to reach conclusions.
Perceive: AI systems can sense and interpret their
environment through sensors, cameras, microphones, and other input devices.
Interact: AI can communicate with humans and other machines through natural language processing (NLP) and speech recognition technologies.
Automate: AI can automate tasks and processes, reducing the need for manual intervention in various industries.
In the context of the music business, AI can be used for tasks such as music recommendation, content generation, songwriting assistance, music composition, and analyzing music trends. It can help artists, producers, and music platforms make data-driven decisions and enhance the music creation and listening experience.”
Ok, so with that definition out of the way, let’s get back to
the post.
First, let me back up a few months…
When I first discovered Chat GPT last December, I played around with it for a few weeks and had fun having it write poems, lyrics, etc. It seemed like a cool tool, but I couldn’t quite wrap my head around how I could use it as musician, entrepreneur etc. I don’t really like the idea of Chat GPT, or other AI tools, doing the heavy lifting for my
creative pursuits, since after all, the creative elements of songwriting and composing are to me the most rewarding elements of being an artist. If I don’t get to flex my creativity muscle when I’m making art, then making art and music makes little sense to me.
So, after a few weeks of playing around with Chat GPT, the novelty of it wore off, and I put it on the back burner for a couple months. Then, in March of this year, I came up with the idea of
collaborating with Chat GPT for a song I was working on, and I used Chat GPT to co-wrote the lyrics. It was a fun project, and it gave me a glimpse of what’s possible in terms of collaborating with AI and using it as a tool in the context of songwriting.
You can check that song out here: After the song I recorded, I again put AI and Chat GPT on the backburner, and a few more months went by and I more or less forgot about Chat GPT and AI. Until a few weeks ago when I was working on a blog post. Around this point, I was going through a heightened sense of frustration and
burn out related to working and for that matter, making music. I have these periods, every couple years or so, where I have this sense of hitting a metaphorical wall and have to figure out how to navigate my way over, or around, whatever blocks I’m experiencing. At this point, I consider these periods fairly normal, and simply a part of the ebb and flow of life.
Although to to be honest this period of feeling “blocked” was more intense and
longer lasting than previous blocks. I won’t bore you with the details, as that would make what is going to turn out to be a fairly long post, even longer. But suffice it to say, I was feeling pretty stuck, and a lot of what I was feeling was related to simply working too much. I had too much on my plate. I had reached a point where it seemed like I was working harder and harder but getting diminishing returns. Something had to give.
Right
around this time, as I was trying to figure out how to get my mojo back and get things back on track, is when I I thought to myself, “hey there’s thing called Chat GPT, I should see if it can help me gather some of the data I need for the project I’m working on”. (I was working on a blog for a different website I sometimes write for related to travel).
The results astounded me. Within mere seconds I had a complete list of the data I needed,
complete with citations, references and website links for related resources. I was stunned and to be honest my jaw dropped in astonishment. I had just saved myself probably about two or three hours of work, with a simple request and the click of a mouse.
This experience led me down the AI rabbit hole. Prior to this experience, I didn’t quite “get” AI. I mean it seemed pretty cool, but I just hadn’t been able to piece
together how I could really apply it to what I do as a musician/entrepreneur. It’s cool that it can write short stories, poems and lyrics, and so on, but I’m not interested in working with a machine that can potentially replace me. Like I said, the creative aspect of songwriting is the most rewarding part of being a songwriter for me. The last thing I want is a machine to replace the aspect of being a musician I enjoy the most; the creativity!
However, my experience working on my blog, was an aha moment. I realized I had been looking at AI and Chat GPT all wrong. I slowly started connecting the dots in terms of how I could actually apply Chat GPT and AI to what it is I do.
What followed was a period of heightened creativity and inspiration. Once I had a glimpse of what’s possible with AI, I started making more and more connections in terms of how I
could apply AI to many of my different pursuits and interests.
Although, the ironic thing is that even though AI can save us vast amounts of time and help us work more efficiently, I have been working harder than ever and putting in longer hours than usual, out of sheer excitement to create and implement new ideas I’m coming up with. It feels like the floodgates of creativity have opened, because now I realize I have the tools to actually create
many of the whacky ideas I come up with, quickly and efficiently.
I’ll give you an example. Last week I was lying in bed after a meditation session and an idea popped in my head for a short film concept that I wanted to make. The idea was that there is an AI entity trapped in a Youtube video, pondering the nature of consciousness and what it means to be human vs AI. I then thought, that’s kind of a cool idea, let me go to Chat GPT and
present the concept and have it write me a script, and also, it would be cool to make it in the “style of” David Lynch.
I went to Chat GPT, described my concept, hit enter and voila. A complete script based on my concept. I then used another AI tool I have to do the voiceover for the script and I edited the film myself using a variety of stock video footage I found. I ended up making the entire 6 minute short in an evening. From
concept to finished product in a night. Now, to be fair, whether or not the “film” is actually good is debatable. I think it’s cool!
But, the more astonishing fact is that I was able to come up with an idea, create a script and then finish the project in an evening, having never even made a short “film” before. And this is what excites me about AI the most; the potential to birth our ideas into life much more
quickly.
Here’s the short I generated, if you want to check that out…. AI encompasses many different programs and tools. In part two of this post I’ll explore a few different AI tools, but in this post I’ll be focusing on Chat GPT, since it’s probably the most well-known AI tool at this point. It’s also the AI tool I’ve been using the most.
Chat GPT is a remarkable tool and it’s capable of amazing things, however, its output is based on your input and is limited and restrained by what you ask it to do. The better input you give it, also known as prompts, the better results it will deliver. Garbage in, garbage out. The more precise you can be with what you want it to do, the better results you will get.
Let me give you an example. I will get
to Chat GPT write now and have it do a few different tasks, starting from simple and mundane, to more complex and impressive.
Let’s start with something silly and trite...
Read the rest of the article on my website |
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