So, this is really just a BS hype talk. This is just trying to get more funding and VCs.
Imagine if transformer architecture was patented. Imagine how much innovation patent system would generate - because that’s why it exists in the first place, right?
It’s not patented and you see how much harm it creates? Nobody knows about it, AI winter is in full swing.
We need more patents everywhere.
Edit: there is a cult around transformers.
/s
It doesn't mean that you'll get good results by abandoning prior art, either with LLMs or musicians. But it does signal a sort of personal stress and insecurity, for sure.
I wonder if he can simply sit back and bask in the glory of being one of the most important people during the infancy of AI. Someone needs to interview this guy, would love to see how he thinks.
There are other considerations that don't revolve around money, but I feel it's arrogant to assume success is the only motivation for musicians.
Alternatively, if anything it could be the exact opposite of what you’re describing. Maybe he sees an ecosystem based on hype that provides little value compared to the cost and wants to distance himself from it, like the Keurig inventor.
It's kind of similar to NN model collapse maybe? But I didn't want to switch to this topic. I deleted my original answer to your comment, because the philosophical (theological?) aspect invites very broad discussion and I tend to engage with things like this.
What I wanted to say might be along these lines:
Of course feedback with and the listener (or more general, the audience) is also required for art. In art itself, there is a spectrum between focusing on the self and focusing on the audience-or even, more generally, the "other".
And both halves of the spectrum harbour potential for good and bad art, respectively. It is a common topic in all kinds of art critique as well: idiosyncrasy vs kitsch for example are not synonyms for innovation vs stagnation, unpleasant vs. pleasant, complex vs. simple, etc etc.
It is especially interesting in this context to consider how the cultural consensus on appreciation of certain styles always has shifted. Yet, however inevitable this feels, cultural line of ideas and tastes at least used to be somewhat arbitrary until globalization slowly started to take hold: there are different languages, different standard forms and tropes, even different musical scales among the world.
Arrogance would be if explicitly chose to abandon it because he thought he was better