Alex Marshall, writing for the New York Times, pulled together a fascinating piece, a bit of a survey of the current state of artificial intelligence and songwriting.
My 2 cents: All of this music is on the wrong side of the uncanny valley, but it is definitely getting closer. And I do think it will get there. Which is a scary proposition, given how difficult it already is for humans to make a living as musicians.
The thing is, the computer scientists who are making these apps are basing the app on the works of songwriters, and they should be paying the songwriters for that work, but are not.
We are so used to computer scientists being allowed to wholesale steal other people’s work because we — incorrectly — look at computers as magic boxes that have their own self-will. The actual fact is a computer is more like a musical instrument like a guitar. What the computer is doing at any given moment is what the programmer wants it to do in the same way the guitar is doing what the guitarist wants it to do. So when a programmer uses a computer to steal someone else’s work we don’t blame the programmer for that.
Facebook should be paying its writers. The fact that they are not is what enables them to have tens of billions of dollars to play casino capitalism.
So it is not a matter of computers replacing humans at all. It is strictly a matter of programmers with computers replacing guitarists with guitars. And a key thing is the programmers are not innovating in music or culture, they are just wholesale ripping-off the guitarists and other creative people.
With all due respect, I think you are not getting how AI works. It has nothing to do with ripping of as long as you don’t feel the same with musicians and their teachers.
You program a machine with basic abilities to perform music. The rest is random stuff that follows rules programmed by the programmer, that’s all. Thats just how much every musician is influenced by his or her peers.
This has nothing to do with ripping off, more with standing on the shoulders of others. This is not an immoral thing to do, at least not in my world.