AI Invasion: Is This the End for Musicians?
ericharpermusic.substack.com
ericharpermusic.substack.com
> So, the question that comes to my mind is: “What really separates humans from machines?” Well, for me, the answer is the soul.
But if the soulless piece happens to be the most beautiful music there is? As a Buddhist who does not believe in soul, I welcome soulless music from AI.
In truth, humans will probably take music in crazy new directions just to differentiate it from AI generated stuff....like visual artists did after the camera was invented. So it will be self evident if it was human vs AI.
For me, the important part of music isn't how beautiful or ugly it is (some of my favorite music is beautiful, some is ugly). It's the communication of human emotion and experience that I value.
So yes, for me, it matters a great deal who made it. Even the most beautiful music in the world loses meaning and impact to me if it's made by machine. (Nuance here: not "made by people using machines", but "created by a machine instead of a human".)
I know that I'm very far from alone in this, which makes me think that the answer to the headline question is "no, its not the end for musicians". Perhaps it will (or won't) reduce the number of them, but they will always exist because at least some people will always want that human communication.
A musician performing a piece of music created by another is not just there for playback. Two musicians performing the same composition will not produce identical pieces of music. The musician is inevitably adding their own layer of interpretation during the performance.
So, at worst, it becomes communication from the musician to me rather than communication from the composer to me.
That is also why so many people push back on pop music: all too often it's lacking that connection as the "artist" is an assembly line of multiple people working on different aspects of a song. It's McDonald's, not Grandma.
AI then will be successful at producing pop music and given most people's reaction to that genre I really don't think too many people are going to care. But musical artists? They'll continue to exist as they always have.
Machines lack face but they can make a faces. Communication does not have to be 'authentic' to have equal or better effect. It's just patterns.
A machine cannot be equal to a human in this space because the entire point of music (like all fine art) is human expression. Without that, music is just pleasing noises. To be sure, for some people, that's enough. But for others, that's just empty.
If you feel the human connection in a music that is not make by human, do you seek for seal for authenticity?
I mean, pop artists already have meticulously crafted "he/she is real not a corporate product" PR and people feel it to be real. They talk how authentic they are and it's all planned and choreographed.
I think a listener can tell the difference. But for the sake of argument: if not, and if I fell for it, I would be absolutely furious and feel deceived. It would be like falling in love with a woman and discovering she's an android.
But let me make a very human argument. A big part of why this is so important to me is that it feels like a line in the sand. Technology has already devalued humanity to a very disturbing degree, and is increasingly alienating us all not only from each other, but from ourselves as human beings. And much of the stuff I hear from the current LLM crowd is pretty overt about this and celebrates it.
If machines are able to subvert and mimic the very essence of what it is to be human, then we have lost. What would be the point of even carrying on at all?
> pop artists already have meticulously crafted "he/she is real not a corporate product" PR and people feel it to be real.
A thing can be both real human communication and a corporate product, but I get what you're saying here. And that is likely why pop music is largely uninteresting to me. It's empty. It's junk food as compared to real food.
As I said before, lots of people don't need to have a human communication in order to find value in music. They're fine with it just being pretty sounds. Others do need that connection. I'm just in that latter camp. As long as people like me exist, there will be a need for actual artists.
It seems humans have some kinda special thing, or at least some humans.