No kidding! Art and music are supposed express our feelings, often some of our deepest feelings. That disqualifies AI. Besides, who'd want to waste their time on it?
I have used much of my time and treasure following the best musicians in the world. Typically there are twenty to fifty in the audience. I don't see that AI will change this at all. Those interested are few and shall remain so.
As far as I'm concerned USA popular music was a lost cause long before AI made the scene. When I lived in Michigan the city had an in-the-park concert series. Of ten concerts there were nine tribute bands and one cover band. (Tribute bands aim to copy some act exactly. Haircuts, clothes, etc. Some right handed guy went so far as to learn to play ebass left handed to emulate Paul McCartney.) I'm glad not every country is like this.
Caitlin & Tim, every time the subject of AI comes up, you seem to lose all your usual sharpness and shy away from much needed nuance in understanding human-AI interactions. It's frustrating to see you do that, because you're capable of so much better (and I've seen it, so I know).
Myself, I love playing classical piano. I get immense joy out of using my fingers, ears, and cognitive abilities to not only physically play but also create music on the piano. But I also love listening to recorded music and going to live concerts and symphonies. AND, I enjoy using AI to create variations of classical compositions, mix different genres into something unique/different, and produce AI music that offers a different listening experience than the normal ones.
My years of piano lessons/training shape all of it: they're what tell me which variations are worth keeping, which ones fall flat, and why. That is what makes the music mine, regardless of whether or not I use AI tools to help me in my music journey.
Listening to and experimenting with AI music ADDS to my experience and enjoyment of music - it does not take anything away from all that I love about music (or the humans that make/create/produce/mix/perform music).
One guy on Twitter hyping Suno is not a reason to write off everyone who touches this technology. Declaring "there's no such thing as AI music" isn't an argument either. It's a verdict you reached before you started writing. And comparing a song to being catfished doesn't work, because nobody who knowingly listens to an AI track is being fooled about anything.
You're usually so good at asking who owns something, who profits, and whose work got taken. I'd love to see that Caitlin write about AI. This one just felt like being lectured about what kind of person I must be.
As you said, AI is TOOLS that help you in your music journey. It's just another instrument or recording or producing device for making YOUR music. In the end, you're the one deciding whether the sound is what you want or not.
All's good.
Much of the AI slop--whether in writing, music, videos, or even business processes --seems to result from taking whatever it generates as the first result to a prompt as a final result instead of interacting with it as a tool to expand HUMAN creativity.
🎯🙏 Exactly! I see AI as something that helps me be MORE creative (in ways that I might not have considered) - be it in music (my piano pieces), software development (my programming), or writing (and thinking about things from multiple perspectives).
Just as a music school or a music teacher/instructor or a musician friend might help me improve my music and offer creative ideas for this, so also do I consider AI as just one more "helper".
And I genuinely appreciate some of the AI music out there - and in no way does it decrease my appreciation and enjoyment of non-AI music.
I think it’s a big error to lump music, software development and writing generally together. I appreciate music very much and I’ve also coded for a living. Coding is soulless - it’s an expression of specs and algorithmic ideas, and AI assistants can thrive there, and the people using them can thrive there, doing that activity. If one approaches non-Muzak, non-military, non-corporate music and non-mechanical writing (no technical, no ad scripts, etc.) in the same way one approaches a love song or a symphony or a novel or a political statement, then boundaries have been crossed. If you’re just doodling with patterns in your music, yeah I guess AI is an assistant, but I likely won’t want to listen to the results.
A human instructor in a field of the fine arts is vastly different from a bunch of bits flowing through overpriced memory on some Amazon servers in Virginia.
>>"big error to lump music, software development and writing generally together"
Maybe YOU'RE doing the lumping in YOUR head? 3 separate fields of human creativity are mentioned, and you understand this as 'lumping'?
>>"Coding is soulless..."
That's YOUR opinion, and it differs SIGNIFICANTLY from mine (and others I know). It can be soulless, and it can be something much more. It depends on the environment, the person, the purpose, the application, and other variables.
It is apparent you haven't thought much (or deeply) about these subjects (AI-human interactions) from your comment above - since it comes across as an opinionated and one-dimentional viewpoint with no supporting argumentation.
Oh, and watch out for logical fallacies, strawman arguments, and non-sequiturs in your response above...especially that last sentence.
I've also seen this pattern here of how "awful a person you must be if..." for the last couple of posts. Just lectures and an attitude of condescension of people and their lives. Not very empathetic, educational or uplifting, IMO. (But Lee Camp wrote something very interesting about AI today you might want to check out: https://realleecamp.substack.com/p/ai-execs-admit-to-the-largest-labor )
It's very true (from what I personally know about how the AI and tech industry works - as I'm embedded in it and have many friends in it too).
Basically, what these corporations have done is STEAL human labor from ALL of history (Marx would term this as 'dead labor'). Hence, the WHOLE AI Industry is built partly on theft (taking without compensation or attribution).
An analogy for this would be how Capitalism took over from feudalism. Capitalism privatized public land (and resources) and led to the displacement of people from their methods of income generation, thus leaving them with few options other than being wage slaves in the capitalist system.
Similarly, AI WILL cause many to lose their jobs and methods of income. What puzzles me - and I don't know why these corporations haven't thought about this - is that if people lose their source of incomes due to AI, then WHERE are people going to get the money from to purchase the products and services that these corporations are selling? If not enough people have the money to spend on these corporations, won't profits DECREASE? What happens then? So, I don't really understand what the GAME PLAN is of all these corporations that are using AI to reduce labor costs...
I honestly think the Tech Bros don't care if there's anyone left to buy their AI services... I think they're building them simply for their use and pleasure. The rest of us will be without paying work and simply starve. No more problem of selling anything anymore--the Tech Bros/oligarchs/billionaires will just enjoy themselves and be taken care of physically by their AI run robots and drones. That's their plan in a nutshell. It's why we must lock them all up immediately. It's for the good of humanity.
It steals from other sources- any that are available to it- all archives, every BOOK that AMAZON SHREDS to feed into it, every artwork or film or song that a HUMAN made, it copies.
Do you know where the INSPIRATION to hit that note comes from? When you play piano for fun- making music? When an artist decides what brush stroke or where to draw that line... does anyone know where that comes from inside? An artist can say they were inspired or had a burst of inspiration- even they do not know where it is coming from!
AI is a fake of that feeling.
AI makes Humans LAZY - FACT.
AI makes Humans DUMB - lose their critical thinking skills- FACT.
AI is a TRICK - some people will get rich convincing others that AI is Humans' Buddy. But at the SAME TIME, Techofascists are saying AI is dangerous and will "Create" a SUPER VIRUS to kill most of us for the Rothschilds-Epstein Class! Bill Gates is nearly salivating over Depopulation!
AI isn't a tool to create New Music & Movies so we do not need Actors or Artists anymore. AI isn't a fuzzy funny friend to help when you need a pep talk. Just think, AI can replace OnlyFans, and then sex and human attraction can REALLY become plastic and devoid of emotion! MORE Isolationism! YAY!
MORE Humans who have no idea how to learn or love or live because they do not do anything that makes life worth living... NO human connection AT ALL. NONE. Is this how we want Children to grow up being their guide, the AI created by people like Peter "Not the Antichrist" Thiel, Alex "Cant Sit Still" Karp, and Sam Altman? Ask his Sisiter how Sam is with children... how he was with Her.
THAT is who is building the New AI Tool to "help" humans.
Gussie it up all you want... paint lipstick on a pig.
Give your soul to a machine, just like the Sociopaths who created them.
AI is a TRICK and a LIE.
Last week, AI was gonna kill us all. Remember? Now AI is just another Artist's Tool, like a new medium? Wow... what a flip of the switch, huh?
The Rothschilds-Epstein Class is building Our CAGE and Their new workforce
Chetzmom4, you're sounding UNHINGED - especially when you repeatedly say things like "Rothschilds-Epstein" in EVERY comment (and blame it for the cause of everything wrong).
Just look at what you wrote - "...SUPER VIRUS to kill most of us for the Rothschilds-Epstein Class! Bill Gates is nearly salivating over Depopulation"
I can only surmise, but it seems the goal is the obsolescence of money since the establishment of power hierarchies will be in place which ensures the position of the TechnoLords in the overarching scheme of existence. Since the same philosophy of being also assumes prefect control of human function including life everlasting, money is unnecessary. Of course the TechnoLords are the Kings… or Queens maybe.
You can try to make an argument based on the unassailable philosophical absolute interiority of your experience, but it’s not going to be very satisfying for other people. Maybe you are indeed a human who is wired differently, such that “clever solution coded!” moments feel to you exactly how the sublimeness of a certain passage in a good novel feels to other people (though I think probably not), but your trigger wouldn’t be “soulful” in a way that most people would commonly agree with, I’ll wager. We all have lifetimes of experience to compare each other against and against the backdrop of the world. Common human understanding is important on this issue. And I hear what my soul and the majority of people are saying about AI-produced or significantly AI-assisted works that claim to be creative.
And significantly, coding and computing (I have a masters in computer science) just don’t, and can’t, give us spiritual understanding, or connection with others beyond shared intellectual endeavor. There’s no “there” there. It doesn’t teach us anything. It doesn’t truly know about the world. It doesn’t feel.
JG, I want to take your last comment seriously, because there's a lot packed into it.
First, a few comments ago you told me that coding can be intellectually satisfying, "absolutely." Now you're saying that it doesn't teach us anything. Those two don't fit together. Something can't engage and satisfy the mind while teaching nothing, so which is it?
Second, you wrote that coding can't give us "connection with others beyond shared intellectual endeavor," like that's some kind of lesser thing. Shared intellectual endeavor is one of the oldest ways that people connect. Friendships, communities, and entire careers get built on exactly that. You're free to prefer a symphony, but that's your preference, not a fact about coding.
Third, you brought up your masters in computer science AGAIN. First it was "I've coded for a living," and now it's the degree, as if that's supposed to add weight to what you say. Millions of people have computing degrees, and none of that has any bearing on whether AI music can move someone or whether my experience of it is real. A credential doesn't make an argument true, especially when it gets dragged into a conversation it has nothing to do with. Your points have to stand on their own, same as mine do.
And then there's the "spiritual understanding" part. I'd like you to notice that none of this needs it. I'm an atheist, I'm not spiritual at all, and I'm still moved by music, including AI music that I've helped shape. So deep feeling in music clearly doesn't require anything "spiritual."
Here's what I don't get about how you're using it. If you mean that something is emotionally powerful, fine, we can talk about that, and it needs no spirituality. But if you mean something beyond that, then you have to tell me what it is and how you know. Because "spiritual" can't be checked by anybody, which means anyone can invoke it to justify anything. It ends up working like a trump card: whatever you already value is "spiritual," and whatever you don't isn't. That's not an argument. It's a way of avoiding having to make one.
We've now spent a whole lot of comments on coding, degrees, and spirituality, and none of it changes what I said in the first place: that I'm someone who plays piano, loves concerts and recordings, and enjoys AI music, and that Caitlin's claim about people like me is wrong. Nothing in any of this changes that.
JG, seriously, go read my comments again. Because you keep answering things I never said, and at this point I'm starting to wonder if you're reading what I actually wrote or just what you imagine I wrote. (Do check out strawman arguments/fallacy here - as you keep making them).
I never claimed that my experience is the standard for everyone. Not once. What I did was respond to Caitlin saying that people who enjoy AI music are shallow and hiding from real connection. I'm a software engineer who plays piano, who loves going to concerts and listening to recordings, AND who enjoys AI music. That alone is enough to show that her claim is wrong. A counterexample doesn't have to be typical, that's just how it works. It doesn't need to be "absolute interiority" or whatever you want to call it, it only needs to exist.
And look at where your comments went. This thread is about AI music. I mentioned programming ONCE, in passing, as one of several ways that I use AI, and you grabbed onto it and made it the whole conversation: coding is soulless, computing doesn't teach us anything, it doesn't feel. That's a RED HERRING, plain and simple. Notice also how you keep running away from the one subject this thread is actually about - AI MUSIC! I'll let other readers draw their own conclusions about why.
Then there's "what my soul and the majority are saying." Think about what you just did there. You brushed off my experience as too personal, and then your whole case is your own soul, projected onto "the majority." Where's the evidence about who the majority even are, or how they feel about AI-assisted music? You haven't given any. And even if you had, popularity doesn't decide what's soulful. There was a time when plenty of people called jazz soulless, and synthesizers too, and that tells you nothing about whether they were right. What the majority feels describes THEIR reaction. It doesn't overrule mine, and Caitlin's claim was about people like me anyway.
Same goes for "it doesn't feel." A piano doesn't feel anything either. A score doesn't know a thing about the world. Yet nobody looks at someone playing a piano and says that it's soulless. The feeling comes from the person at the keys, and that's true whether I'm playing a piece myself or shaping an AI variation of it.
And the "bits flowing through overpriced memory on Amazon servers in Virginia" line? Every streamed recording of a human pianist reaches your ears the exact same way. So if that makes music soulless, then every Glenn Gould recording you've ever streamed is soulless too. And if it doesn't, then the servers were never the point to begin with.
You strongly intimated in an early comment in this thread that coding can be a soulful experience for you. Please examine your own writing. My further arguments flow from that.
Your frequent chiding references to a naughty list of bad argument types smells of debate culture and black-and-white tech culture.
JG, you asked me to examine my own writing, so I did. In my original comment, I said that AI helps me be more creative in music, in software development, and in writing. That's all. Nothing about coding being soulful. Then you declared that coding is soulless, and I said that it can be soulless and it can be something much more, depending on the person, the environment, and the purpose. That was me pushing back on your sweeping generalization, NOT me describing how I personally experience coding. Those are two different things.
And honestly, even if I did find coding deeply meaningful, so what? You said that your further arguments "flow from that." Spell it out for me. What's the step from "coding can be meaningful to this person" to "AI music is soulless"? Because I don't see one, and you haven't shown it.
I guess people with no arguments to support their positions have nothing left but stupid comments to make - noted "Lisa".
PS: human STUPIDITY (some of what you display here) is far more dangerous (and has been throughout history) than anthing else AI (or any other technology) could do.
You clearly have more time and energy and willingness to rehash and try to win points than I do. My writing is more economical the older I get. I think I made my position pretty clear to most people who might read this thread.
What you've demonstrated (in spades) across multiple comments, is an inability to support your own opinions/arguments, but rather to use tricks like "red-herrings, strawman arguments, and much more" to distract and evade the ACTUAL material involved.
Not only have you "imagined" and "mis-represented" several things I stated (which all readers can examine for themselves), you've continued to REPEAT this pattern even when I pointed it out to you.
Now, that's argumentation in bad faith...I expected better from you (even if we disagreed on our opinions of AI Music).
I follow Duke Ellington. He said it if sounds good then it is good. Here's some AI music I like. Judge for yourself. I'm not going to deny myself this because of politics or philosophy. It's a lot better than today's industrial popular music.
As far as I'm concerned this is the best pop music of 2026 by a big margin. I will note that there is a key human element. The appeal comes from songwriter/musician Keodo48, who appears to be 78 years old. He/she would never be able to produce music like this without AI assistance. I doubt AI could write songs so well, but it has surprised me before.
I also note that pop music is already largely divorced from the artist. The income of musicians have been declining ever since hifi recording appeared in in about 1950. Big Money took over radio and got rid of the DJs. Drum machines came to be. MBAs and accountants took over the business. The appeal of music was analyzed scientifically, this producing disco and continuing to the present day. Little originality or inspiration is allowed to intrude. In contrast AI enabled Keodo48 to reach an audience, empowering him versus the for-profit music business.
On the other hand, I can't get interested in AI-assisted visual arts. The art site I used to visit sold out and AI took over. Everything now has the same plastic look with those fake too-beautiful people. I don't feel a thing. I completely lost interest.
Is that the best example of AI music you can offer? It’s inoffensive, bland, uninteresting, unoriginal. It has a structure very similar to a hundred thousand other melancholy pop songs - it’s good at recapitulating that genre because there’s so much human material available (likely that the AI’s corporate owners stole) that it can slice and dice to create a good facsimile.
I completely disagree that being able to produce something like that is a victory for a solo producer. I’d rather scream at the world on my way to the grave.
I'm sitting in a coffee shop so can't play the video, but it needs to be pointed out that most of today's popular music is incredibly mediocre, so saying that it's better than anything else made this year isn't really saying much at all. I remember when songs told stories, created by the words and music working together, when music was dynamic and emotional. Now most everything is formulaic, designed to create a certain feeling without being based on actual feelings. Last night I listened to Dire Straits live performance of "Telegraph Road" from 1983. Is there anything made today that even comes close to the power and emotion, much less the musical skill of that song? Not that I know of.
In fact we live in a world of posturing and the creation of vignettes. The rocking chairs on the front porch of an expensive home that nobody ever sits on. Just there for show. As Paul Simon might say, it's all a Kodachrome moment (apologies to a generation that has no idea what Kodachrome is). From that point of view, AI made pseudo art is the logical destination of a pseudo society.
Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. The further debasement of music is yet another example of the corrosive influence of capitalism on popular culture. I believe popular culture reflects rather than leads society. The state of popular culture, at least in the degenerate West, is horrifying. Kardashianization, Taylor Swift and “Superhero” movies are hardly indicative of an enlightened populace. To be fair, ameriKKKa leads in the production of said garbage. There is hope. Coming to terms with the reality of the Zionist entity and its 80 year genocide of the Palestinians, apparent rejection of the MAGA freaks and a nascent anti war movement are hopeful signs. Time grows short. Worldwide general strikes remain our only choice.
With AI we simply won't have any new art, because AI will put the human creators of music, prose, artwork, etc. out of business. AI is literally eating up the internet as I type this line as it steals everything ever put online. Humankind can't afford AI because it will starve artists and leave nothing for AI to steal. A losing proposition all around.
So true. It would be nice if the creators could be compensated but that seems impractical. Too bad.
It seems inevitable that AI will make people stupid and ignorant. Just like machines made people weak. I read about 1817 and what people could do then seems almost impossible today. But not everybody. There will always be people around who want to understand things.
This has been going on for a long time. A fourth grade textbook from 1890 is about like a 12th grade textbook today. My uncle taught in a junior college in the 90's and he had a student who could read but not write. Recently I heard a middle school band teacher say half of her students didn't know the alphabet. Is that really true?
Don't just give in and say everyone will make be "stupid" and it's "too bad." Fight back! That's one thing that AI doesn't have--the human will and the power to stand up and fight for what is right and just.
Some people run away from human connection because of PTSD and toxic shame that has them terrified of people finding out that they're the bad person their mother (or father) convinced them they are. I'm talking about A LOT of people.
So true! But then again, you must remember most people have been trained to just follow, to flow on the surface of things, to be culture's dolts. And so many wannabe artists who now have just enough push to get their lazy ass off the couch for a second or two to "build" not create -- big diff. So with freedom, true personal freedom at such a low, the robotic voices have a chance. Oh yeah, and then there is the $$$ carrot. Oh well, there goes the neighborhood. I'm looking for a cave far away from everything, even these shadows.
Caitlin, I’ve read your uniquely brilliant work for years and enjoyed every word, but today you're dead wrong.
I’m a retired engineer and a lifelong musician. Music isn't a closed transaction between two egos; it’s vibrating air molecules reaching a human receiver. If a bird, an avalanche, a four-piece band, or an AI algorithm moves air in a way that sparks the divine in my heart and brings me to tears, that IS music. Art doesn't live in the machine or the medium—it lives in the capacity of the listener to feel.
Dismissing a profound spiritual response to sound just because of how the signal was generated isn't defending humanity—it's gatekeeping grace.
I agree with you…it is just a tool…not an ANSWER. Having said that I feel that this is where KRAFTWERK were in 1978/9 when computers were used to generate music…and much frowned upon by the ‘elites’. When CD’s first came out, and as a DJ of alternative music in South AFrica, it became impossible to buy vinyl literally overnight. The last vinyl I bought was TROMPE LE MONDE…and now even CD’s are ‘collectible’ and there has been a huge reversal back to vinyl…and as a DJ vinyl is way way superior in ‘dynamics of sound’ quality. If you know, you know.
People can be moved to tears and have divined hearts by all sorts of invalid ideologies and spiritual blasphemy. Doesn’t make either worthy of praise or rationalization.
Sooner or later anything produced by Ai becomes boring… Why?
Simple, it never changes and it is based upon what is supposedly perfect.
It’s known that Beethoven struggled with his music at times, this is the difference because Ai would never have progressed beyond early versions that Beethoven rejected. And thus the whole world would lose that beauty of his creation.
Ai is nothing more than a stupid tool, listen to the difference of contemporary and early contemporary popular music, Ai simply cannot produce.
"Don’t life your life running from true human connection. Don’t be a coward hiding from your own inner dimensions. Dive into the depths of this crazy human adventure. Explore. Expand. Be vulnerable. Be brave."
Caitlin: You're making the unsupported assumption that the Rules of Engagement With Life that work well for you will by definition work well for everyone. Please be aware of that error in your reasoning.
Not to play the role of Debbie Downer, but this wonderful tool that some of you defend and gush over, comes with a tremendous carbon footprint. Somebody, something, somewhere has to pay the price for your "assistant" in creativity. The green balance sheet doesn't add up for me but just takes us deeper into the rabbit hole. I prefer to just be happy with my own limited, unassisted creativity. its good enough.
Point taken, Patrick, but for some of us, its a moral issue more than its an economic issue. Rationalization is what got us here. The American government is loaded with Foghorn Leghorns: "I'm no chicken--over there's a chicken"
How much do AI girlfriends complain about your computer gaming? Do they get jealous? Asking for a friend.
Brilliant
Probably little unless they’re programmed to. Do you want a girlfriend who makes no demands on you and stays in her lane?
Hmmm. Let me think about that.
No kidding! Art and music are supposed express our feelings, often some of our deepest feelings. That disqualifies AI. Besides, who'd want to waste their time on it?
Maybe, but what about Artbreeder.com? Since I really can't draw at all, I'm registered at that site (under a nondescript username).
And the Iranian lego videos also come to mind. It can be put to good uses.
If everything becomes AI driven, we risk losing the variety that exists in the world. That would mean losing a lot of art and music.
I have used much of my time and treasure following the best musicians in the world. Typically there are twenty to fifty in the audience. I don't see that AI will change this at all. Those interested are few and shall remain so.
As far as I'm concerned USA popular music was a lost cause long before AI made the scene. When I lived in Michigan the city had an in-the-park concert series. Of ten concerts there were nine tribute bands and one cover band. (Tribute bands aim to copy some act exactly. Haircuts, clothes, etc. Some right handed guy went so far as to learn to play ebass left handed to emulate Paul McCartney.) I'm glad not every country is like this.
Caitlin & Tim, every time the subject of AI comes up, you seem to lose all your usual sharpness and shy away from much needed nuance in understanding human-AI interactions. It's frustrating to see you do that, because you're capable of so much better (and I've seen it, so I know).
Myself, I love playing classical piano. I get immense joy out of using my fingers, ears, and cognitive abilities to not only physically play but also create music on the piano. But I also love listening to recorded music and going to live concerts and symphonies. AND, I enjoy using AI to create variations of classical compositions, mix different genres into something unique/different, and produce AI music that offers a different listening experience than the normal ones.
My years of piano lessons/training shape all of it: they're what tell me which variations are worth keeping, which ones fall flat, and why. That is what makes the music mine, regardless of whether or not I use AI tools to help me in my music journey.
Listening to and experimenting with AI music ADDS to my experience and enjoyment of music - it does not take anything away from all that I love about music (or the humans that make/create/produce/mix/perform music).
One guy on Twitter hyping Suno is not a reason to write off everyone who touches this technology. Declaring "there's no such thing as AI music" isn't an argument either. It's a verdict you reached before you started writing. And comparing a song to being catfished doesn't work, because nobody who knowingly listens to an AI track is being fooled about anything.
You're usually so good at asking who owns something, who profits, and whose work got taken. I'd love to see that Caitlin write about AI. This one just felt like being lectured about what kind of person I must be.
As you said, AI is TOOLS that help you in your music journey. It's just another instrument or recording or producing device for making YOUR music. In the end, you're the one deciding whether the sound is what you want or not.
All's good.
Much of the AI slop--whether in writing, music, videos, or even business processes --seems to result from taking whatever it generates as the first result to a prompt as a final result instead of interacting with it as a tool to expand HUMAN creativity.
>>"...expand HUMAN creativity"
🎯🙏 Exactly! I see AI as something that helps me be MORE creative (in ways that I might not have considered) - be it in music (my piano pieces), software development (my programming), or writing (and thinking about things from multiple perspectives).
Just as a music school or a music teacher/instructor or a musician friend might help me improve my music and offer creative ideas for this, so also do I consider AI as just one more "helper".
And I genuinely appreciate some of the AI music out there - and in no way does it decrease my appreciation and enjoyment of non-AI music.
I think it’s a big error to lump music, software development and writing generally together. I appreciate music very much and I’ve also coded for a living. Coding is soulless - it’s an expression of specs and algorithmic ideas, and AI assistants can thrive there, and the people using them can thrive there, doing that activity. If one approaches non-Muzak, non-military, non-corporate music and non-mechanical writing (no technical, no ad scripts, etc.) in the same way one approaches a love song or a symphony or a novel or a political statement, then boundaries have been crossed. If you’re just doodling with patterns in your music, yeah I guess AI is an assistant, but I likely won’t want to listen to the results.
A human instructor in a field of the fine arts is vastly different from a bunch of bits flowing through overpriced memory on some Amazon servers in Virginia.
>>"big error to lump music, software development and writing generally together"
Maybe YOU'RE doing the lumping in YOUR head? 3 separate fields of human creativity are mentioned, and you understand this as 'lumping'?
>>"Coding is soulless..."
That's YOUR opinion, and it differs SIGNIFICANTLY from mine (and others I know). It can be soulless, and it can be something much more. It depends on the environment, the person, the purpose, the application, and other variables.
It is apparent you haven't thought much (or deeply) about these subjects (AI-human interactions) from your comment above - since it comes across as an opinionated and one-dimentional viewpoint with no supporting argumentation.
Oh, and watch out for logical fallacies, strawman arguments, and non-sequiturs in your response above...especially that last sentence.
This reminds me of the gun supporters who protest after gun murders “but they’re just tools!!”
I've also seen this pattern here of how "awful a person you must be if..." for the last couple of posts. Just lectures and an attitude of condescension of people and their lives. Not very empathetic, educational or uplifting, IMO. (But Lee Camp wrote something very interesting about AI today you might want to check out: https://realleecamp.substack.com/p/ai-execs-admit-to-the-largest-labor )
It's very true (from what I personally know about how the AI and tech industry works - as I'm embedded in it and have many friends in it too).
Basically, what these corporations have done is STEAL human labor from ALL of history (Marx would term this as 'dead labor'). Hence, the WHOLE AI Industry is built partly on theft (taking without compensation or attribution).
An analogy for this would be how Capitalism took over from feudalism. Capitalism privatized public land (and resources) and led to the displacement of people from their methods of income generation, thus leaving them with few options other than being wage slaves in the capitalist system.
Similarly, AI WILL cause many to lose their jobs and methods of income. What puzzles me - and I don't know why these corporations haven't thought about this - is that if people lose their source of incomes due to AI, then WHERE are people going to get the money from to purchase the products and services that these corporations are selling? If not enough people have the money to spend on these corporations, won't profits DECREASE? What happens then? So, I don't really understand what the GAME PLAN is of all these corporations that are using AI to reduce labor costs...
I honestly think the Tech Bros don't care if there's anyone left to buy their AI services... I think they're building them simply for their use and pleasure. The rest of us will be without paying work and simply starve. No more problem of selling anything anymore--the Tech Bros/oligarchs/billionaires will just enjoy themselves and be taken care of physically by their AI run robots and drones. That's their plan in a nutshell. It's why we must lock them all up immediately. It's for the good of humanity.
>>"t's why we must lock them all up immediately. It's for the good of humanity"
It's nice of you to be so polite and kind. I was thinking more along the lines of removal from planet Earth...
AI is a copy.
It steals from other sources- any that are available to it- all archives, every BOOK that AMAZON SHREDS to feed into it, every artwork or film or song that a HUMAN made, it copies.
Do you know where the INSPIRATION to hit that note comes from? When you play piano for fun- making music? When an artist decides what brush stroke or where to draw that line... does anyone know where that comes from inside? An artist can say they were inspired or had a burst of inspiration- even they do not know where it is coming from!
AI is a fake of that feeling.
AI makes Humans LAZY - FACT.
AI makes Humans DUMB - lose their critical thinking skills- FACT.
AI is a TRICK - some people will get rich convincing others that AI is Humans' Buddy. But at the SAME TIME, Techofascists are saying AI is dangerous and will "Create" a SUPER VIRUS to kill most of us for the Rothschilds-Epstein Class! Bill Gates is nearly salivating over Depopulation!
AI isn't a tool to create New Music & Movies so we do not need Actors or Artists anymore. AI isn't a fuzzy funny friend to help when you need a pep talk. Just think, AI can replace OnlyFans, and then sex and human attraction can REALLY become plastic and devoid of emotion! MORE Isolationism! YAY!
MORE Humans who have no idea how to learn or love or live because they do not do anything that makes life worth living... NO human connection AT ALL. NONE. Is this how we want Children to grow up being their guide, the AI created by people like Peter "Not the Antichrist" Thiel, Alex "Cant Sit Still" Karp, and Sam Altman? Ask his Sisiter how Sam is with children... how he was with Her.
THAT is who is building the New AI Tool to "help" humans.
Gussie it up all you want... paint lipstick on a pig.
Give your soul to a machine, just like the Sociopaths who created them.
AI is a TRICK and a LIE.
Last week, AI was gonna kill us all. Remember? Now AI is just another Artist's Tool, like a new medium? Wow... what a flip of the switch, huh?
The Rothschilds-Epstein Class is building Our CAGE and Their new workforce
🚫ALL DATA CENTERS ✌️
Chetzmom4, you're sounding UNHINGED - especially when you repeatedly say things like "Rothschilds-Epstein" in EVERY comment (and blame it for the cause of everything wrong).
Just look at what you wrote - "...SUPER VIRUS to kill most of us for the Rothschilds-Epstein Class! Bill Gates is nearly salivating over Depopulation"
You need HELP.
I can only surmise, but it seems the goal is the obsolescence of money since the establishment of power hierarchies will be in place which ensures the position of the TechnoLords in the overarching scheme of existence. Since the same philosophy of being also assumes prefect control of human function including life everlasting, money is unnecessary. Of course the TechnoLords are the Kings… or Queens maybe.
You can try to make an argument based on the unassailable philosophical absolute interiority of your experience, but it’s not going to be very satisfying for other people. Maybe you are indeed a human who is wired differently, such that “clever solution coded!” moments feel to you exactly how the sublimeness of a certain passage in a good novel feels to other people (though I think probably not), but your trigger wouldn’t be “soulful” in a way that most people would commonly agree with, I’ll wager. We all have lifetimes of experience to compare each other against and against the backdrop of the world. Common human understanding is important on this issue. And I hear what my soul and the majority of people are saying about AI-produced or significantly AI-assisted works that claim to be creative.
And significantly, coding and computing (I have a masters in computer science) just don’t, and can’t, give us spiritual understanding, or connection with others beyond shared intellectual endeavor. There’s no “there” there. It doesn’t teach us anything. It doesn’t truly know about the world. It doesn’t feel.
JG, I want to take your last comment seriously, because there's a lot packed into it.
First, a few comments ago you told me that coding can be intellectually satisfying, "absolutely." Now you're saying that it doesn't teach us anything. Those two don't fit together. Something can't engage and satisfy the mind while teaching nothing, so which is it?
Second, you wrote that coding can't give us "connection with others beyond shared intellectual endeavor," like that's some kind of lesser thing. Shared intellectual endeavor is one of the oldest ways that people connect. Friendships, communities, and entire careers get built on exactly that. You're free to prefer a symphony, but that's your preference, not a fact about coding.
Third, you brought up your masters in computer science AGAIN. First it was "I've coded for a living," and now it's the degree, as if that's supposed to add weight to what you say. Millions of people have computing degrees, and none of that has any bearing on whether AI music can move someone or whether my experience of it is real. A credential doesn't make an argument true, especially when it gets dragged into a conversation it has nothing to do with. Your points have to stand on their own, same as mine do.
And then there's the "spiritual understanding" part. I'd like you to notice that none of this needs it. I'm an atheist, I'm not spiritual at all, and I'm still moved by music, including AI music that I've helped shape. So deep feeling in music clearly doesn't require anything "spiritual."
Here's what I don't get about how you're using it. If you mean that something is emotionally powerful, fine, we can talk about that, and it needs no spirituality. But if you mean something beyond that, then you have to tell me what it is and how you know. Because "spiritual" can't be checked by anybody, which means anyone can invoke it to justify anything. It ends up working like a trump card: whatever you already value is "spiritual," and whatever you don't isn't. That's not an argument. It's a way of avoiding having to make one.
We've now spent a whole lot of comments on coding, degrees, and spirituality, and none of it changes what I said in the first place: that I'm someone who plays piano, loves concerts and recordings, and enjoys AI music, and that Caitlin's claim about people like me is wrong. Nothing in any of this changes that.
JG, seriously, go read my comments again. Because you keep answering things I never said, and at this point I'm starting to wonder if you're reading what I actually wrote or just what you imagine I wrote. (Do check out strawman arguments/fallacy here - as you keep making them).
I never claimed that my experience is the standard for everyone. Not once. What I did was respond to Caitlin saying that people who enjoy AI music are shallow and hiding from real connection. I'm a software engineer who plays piano, who loves going to concerts and listening to recordings, AND who enjoys AI music. That alone is enough to show that her claim is wrong. A counterexample doesn't have to be typical, that's just how it works. It doesn't need to be "absolute interiority" or whatever you want to call it, it only needs to exist.
And look at where your comments went. This thread is about AI music. I mentioned programming ONCE, in passing, as one of several ways that I use AI, and you grabbed onto it and made it the whole conversation: coding is soulless, computing doesn't teach us anything, it doesn't feel. That's a RED HERRING, plain and simple. Notice also how you keep running away from the one subject this thread is actually about - AI MUSIC! I'll let other readers draw their own conclusions about why.
Then there's "what my soul and the majority are saying." Think about what you just did there. You brushed off my experience as too personal, and then your whole case is your own soul, projected onto "the majority." Where's the evidence about who the majority even are, or how they feel about AI-assisted music? You haven't given any. And even if you had, popularity doesn't decide what's soulful. There was a time when plenty of people called jazz soulless, and synthesizers too, and that tells you nothing about whether they were right. What the majority feels describes THEIR reaction. It doesn't overrule mine, and Caitlin's claim was about people like me anyway.
Same goes for "it doesn't feel." A piano doesn't feel anything either. A score doesn't know a thing about the world. Yet nobody looks at someone playing a piano and says that it's soulless. The feeling comes from the person at the keys, and that's true whether I'm playing a piece myself or shaping an AI variation of it.
And the "bits flowing through overpriced memory on Amazon servers in Virginia" line? Every streamed recording of a human pianist reaches your ears the exact same way. So if that makes music soulless, then every Glenn Gould recording you've ever streamed is soulless too. And if it doesn't, then the servers were never the point to begin with.
You strongly intimated in an early comment in this thread that coding can be a soulful experience for you. Please examine your own writing. My further arguments flow from that.
Your frequent chiding references to a naughty list of bad argument types smells of debate culture and black-and-white tech culture.
JG, you asked me to examine my own writing, so I did. In my original comment, I said that AI helps me be more creative in music, in software development, and in writing. That's all. Nothing about coding being soulful. Then you declared that coding is soulless, and I said that it can be soulless and it can be something much more, depending on the person, the environment, and the purpose. That was me pushing back on your sweeping generalization, NOT me describing how I personally experience coding. Those are two different things.
And honestly, even if I did find coding deeply meaningful, so what? You said that your further arguments "flow from that." Spell it out for me. What's the step from "coding can be meaningful to this person" to "AI music is soulless"? Because I don't see one, and you haven't shown it.
Found the guy with the AI girlfriend
I guess people with no arguments to support their positions have nothing left but stupid comments to make - noted "Lisa".
PS: human STUPIDITY (some of what you display here) is far more dangerous (and has been throughout history) than anthing else AI (or any other technology) could do.
Lol
You clearly have more time and energy and willingness to rehash and try to win points than I do. My writing is more economical the older I get. I think I made my position pretty clear to most people who might read this thread.
What you've demonstrated (in spades) across multiple comments, is an inability to support your own opinions/arguments, but rather to use tricks like "red-herrings, strawman arguments, and much more" to distract and evade the ACTUAL material involved.
Not only have you "imagined" and "mis-represented" several things I stated (which all readers can examine for themselves), you've continued to REPEAT this pattern even when I pointed it out to you.
Now, that's argumentation in bad faith...I expected better from you (even if we disagreed on our opinions of AI Music).
I follow Duke Ellington. He said it if sounds good then it is good. Here's some AI music I like. Judge for yourself. I'm not going to deny myself this because of politics or philosophy. It's a lot better than today's industrial popular music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1anEApaI4Oc&list=PLBdQsB1FgRvI
As far as I'm concerned this is the best pop music of 2026 by a big margin. I will note that there is a key human element. The appeal comes from songwriter/musician Keodo48, who appears to be 78 years old. He/she would never be able to produce music like this without AI assistance. I doubt AI could write songs so well, but it has surprised me before.
I also note that pop music is already largely divorced from the artist. The income of musicians have been declining ever since hifi recording appeared in in about 1950. Big Money took over radio and got rid of the DJs. Drum machines came to be. MBAs and accountants took over the business. The appeal of music was analyzed scientifically, this producing disco and continuing to the present day. Little originality or inspiration is allowed to intrude. In contrast AI enabled Keodo48 to reach an audience, empowering him versus the for-profit music business.
On the other hand, I can't get interested in AI-assisted visual arts. The art site I used to visit sold out and AI took over. Everything now has the same plastic look with those fake too-beautiful people. I don't feel a thing. I completely lost interest.
Is that the best example of AI music you can offer? It’s inoffensive, bland, uninteresting, unoriginal. It has a structure very similar to a hundred thousand other melancholy pop songs - it’s good at recapitulating that genre because there’s so much human material available (likely that the AI’s corporate owners stole) that it can slice and dice to create a good facsimile.
I completely disagree that being able to produce something like that is a victory for a solo producer. I’d rather scream at the world on my way to the grave.
Thank you for sharing.
I'm sitting in a coffee shop so can't play the video, but it needs to be pointed out that most of today's popular music is incredibly mediocre, so saying that it's better than anything else made this year isn't really saying much at all. I remember when songs told stories, created by the words and music working together, when music was dynamic and emotional. Now most everything is formulaic, designed to create a certain feeling without being based on actual feelings. Last night I listened to Dire Straits live performance of "Telegraph Road" from 1983. Is there anything made today that even comes close to the power and emotion, much less the musical skill of that song? Not that I know of.
In fact we live in a world of posturing and the creation of vignettes. The rocking chairs on the front porch of an expensive home that nobody ever sits on. Just there for show. As Paul Simon might say, it's all a Kodachrome moment (apologies to a generation that has no idea what Kodachrome is). From that point of view, AI made pseudo art is the logical destination of a pseudo society.
There’s AI music ? The horror !
Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. The further debasement of music is yet another example of the corrosive influence of capitalism on popular culture. I believe popular culture reflects rather than leads society. The state of popular culture, at least in the degenerate West, is horrifying. Kardashianization, Taylor Swift and “Superhero” movies are hardly indicative of an enlightened populace. To be fair, ameriKKKa leads in the production of said garbage. There is hope. Coming to terms with the reality of the Zionist entity and its 80 year genocide of the Palestinians, apparent rejection of the MAGA freaks and a nascent anti war movement are hopeful signs. Time grows short. Worldwide general strikes remain our only choice.
Whose streets ?
Our streets !
Lee Camp reveals the real problem behind AI in his latest: https://realleecamp.substack.com/p/ai-execs-admit-to-the-largest-labor
With AI we simply won't have any new art, because AI will put the human creators of music, prose, artwork, etc. out of business. AI is literally eating up the internet as I type this line as it steals everything ever put online. Humankind can't afford AI because it will starve artists and leave nothing for AI to steal. A losing proposition all around.
So true. It would be nice if the creators could be compensated but that seems impractical. Too bad.
It seems inevitable that AI will make people stupid and ignorant. Just like machines made people weak. I read about 1817 and what people could do then seems almost impossible today. But not everybody. There will always be people around who want to understand things.
This has been going on for a long time. A fourth grade textbook from 1890 is about like a 12th grade textbook today. My uncle taught in a junior college in the 90's and he had a student who could read but not write. Recently I heard a middle school band teacher say half of her students didn't know the alphabet. Is that really true?
Don't just give in and say everyone will make be "stupid" and it's "too bad." Fight back! That's one thing that AI doesn't have--the human will and the power to stand up and fight for what is right and just.
Some people run away from human connection because of PTSD and toxic shame that has them terrified of people finding out that they're the bad person their mother (or father) convinced them they are. I'm talking about A LOT of people.
So true! But then again, you must remember most people have been trained to just follow, to flow on the surface of things, to be culture's dolts. And so many wannabe artists who now have just enough push to get their lazy ass off the couch for a second or two to "build" not create -- big diff. So with freedom, true personal freedom at such a low, the robotic voices have a chance. Oh yeah, and then there is the $$$ carrot. Oh well, there goes the neighborhood. I'm looking for a cave far away from everything, even these shadows.
100% agree.
One of your best!
Caitlin, I’ve read your uniquely brilliant work for years and enjoyed every word, but today you're dead wrong.
I’m a retired engineer and a lifelong musician. Music isn't a closed transaction between two egos; it’s vibrating air molecules reaching a human receiver. If a bird, an avalanche, a four-piece band, or an AI algorithm moves air in a way that sparks the divine in my heart and brings me to tears, that IS music. Art doesn't live in the machine or the medium—it lives in the capacity of the listener to feel.
Dismissing a profound spiritual response to sound just because of how the signal was generated isn't defending humanity—it's gatekeeping grace.
This is an AI song setting Rumi's words to music. It never fails to make me feel wonder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgXilc-AvWE&list=RDdgXilc-AvWE&start_radio=1
Thank you for all you do. You are a light that shines so bright in the darkness.
I agree with you…it is just a tool…not an ANSWER. Having said that I feel that this is where KRAFTWERK were in 1978/9 when computers were used to generate music…and much frowned upon by the ‘elites’. When CD’s first came out, and as a DJ of alternative music in South AFrica, it became impossible to buy vinyl literally overnight. The last vinyl I bought was TROMPE LE MONDE…and now even CD’s are ‘collectible’ and there has been a huge reversal back to vinyl…and as a DJ vinyl is way way superior in ‘dynamics of sound’ quality. If you know, you know.
People can be moved to tears and have divined hearts by all sorts of invalid ideologies and spiritual blasphemy. Doesn’t make either worthy of praise or rationalization.
Sooner or later anything produced by Ai becomes boring… Why?
Simple, it never changes and it is based upon what is supposedly perfect.
It’s known that Beethoven struggled with his music at times, this is the difference because Ai would never have progressed beyond early versions that Beethoven rejected. And thus the whole world would lose that beauty of his creation.
Ai is nothing more than a stupid tool, listen to the difference of contemporary and early contemporary popular music, Ai simply cannot produce.
"Don’t life your life running from true human connection. Don’t be a coward hiding from your own inner dimensions. Dive into the depths of this crazy human adventure. Explore. Expand. Be vulnerable. Be brave."
Caitlin: You're making the unsupported assumption that the Rules of Engagement With Life that work well for you will by definition work well for everyone. Please be aware of that error in your reasoning.
Not to play the role of Debbie Downer, but this wonderful tool that some of you defend and gush over, comes with a tremendous carbon footprint. Somebody, something, somewhere has to pay the price for your "assistant" in creativity. The green balance sheet doesn't add up for me but just takes us deeper into the rabbit hole. I prefer to just be happy with my own limited, unassisted creativity. its good enough.
The entire US military is 0.1% of carbon release. Surely data centers are much less than that.
But even if worldwide carbon release were cut 50% it wouldn't make much difference in what's coming.
Point taken, Patrick, but for some of us, its a moral issue more than its an economic issue. Rationalization is what got us here. The American government is loaded with Foghorn Leghorns: "I'm no chicken--over there's a chicken"
Too funny and perfect analogy. Speaking of which just had a dream I was popping AI pills. No clue what brought that on.