I have been diving deep into AI for quite some time now. Having recently finished an audio book for a client completely generated by his cloned voice that even his mother wouldn’t know it wasn’t him reading the lines. It started to fascinate me, although at times it was a little scary. So, I decided to co-produce a song with AI. I played my instruments and vocals and then used music AI software to generate an AI track to accompany my original composition. It was interesting to hear what Artificial Intelligence considered Rock’n’Roll! The results came back, it did the track justice, so I combined both. You’re not going to fight the future, resistance is futile (as the Borg would say), you need to assimilate!
I wanted to write something that reflects our time now, ‘deep fakes’, AI ‘girlfriends’, social media ‘hallucinations.’ I was mesmerized by the prospect of working together with a mathematically driven music machine. It reminded me of the days when drum machines and MIDI came out and threatened to replace real musicians. It did for a while, but then the novelty wore off over time.
So, there I am writing ‘Indoctrination’ I needed to express my concern about how AI will impact all of us going forward. It’s not all roses and people are genuinely afraid. But then again, it’s nothing new, it’s been around since the earliest successful AI program was written in 1951 by Christopher Strachey, later director of the Programming Research Group at the University of Oxford.
Whether it’s religion or innovation, they all have a similar spark of creativity that leads to unavoidable change. We have always been indoctrinated by despots, kings, rulers, societies, churches, technologies and where does that leave our faith, our inner light?
I keep writing, praying for cosmic insights.
Sincerely,
Martin Cole
