It is here already
At some point in time it will serve and produce all by itself.
What about us?
The next song to be performed by Pink (the rock artist) might be written and composed by an AIAC {Artificial Intelligence Aided Creation} system. It will take all the previous songs of Pink, her life story and all other possible data and create her next number 1 hit. The result will even have her almost believe she wrote the piece herself. Does that sound like crazy to you? Sure, it is an Utopian vision, yet maybe it is just around the corner. Even as close as the year 2021. Some big labels are already on the verge of a breakthrough. Development is moving ahead fast and accelerating by the day. Somehow this all does seem a bit over the top to me though. The entertainment business pumping out one album after another. Any artist or band, you ask for it and you will get it. Well, that is, if you are willing and able to pay the price. It might be possible in the near future to order songs that fit your life or the one(s) you love. Songs using the voice of your favorite artist, as if performed by your favorite band. Kurt Cobain, digitally resurrected, singing about how tough it is to live life in the Oldambt.
Singers will still be needed I guess, because synthesis of the human speech is a kind of tough, let alone human singing. But the big corporates that own music industry labels will have a deep interest in an AIAC system that can write songs and compose music. It is all about big bucks. If they own the 'writer' and the 'composer' than they only have to select the proper voices. Vocal artists being payed for their performance just like instrument players. Although they might all become computer generated in the near future. It does all seem a bit absurd to me. How about our freedom, as human beings, to create music ourselves? When an Artificial Intelligence Aided Creation {AIAC} system can spit out complete new songs, even with a computer voice singing how the song should be sang, could artists themselves come up with new material? The dark side that I imagine here is how it would work like a patent system. Just think of an idea, have it patented and scan other people their inventions that might infringe on any of 'your' patents. It is one thing that I do think is wrong with a patent system. As if only one individual ever could come up with a certain idea.
No key of C
Let me try to explain where the use of AIAC systems could lead to. Assume you and I are at one point connected (as enforced by 'law') to the internet 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. When a child gets born the parent has to declare it at the justice department locally, at which point it gets chipped right away. "Do not worry, it will not hurt your child.", the public servant will tell you. Is this chipping of human beings a far fetched idea? No it is not. Some even seem to cheer for it and do seem to miss out on the fact that they can be totally controlled by a centralized system. But hey, stay progressive right? No more criminals, that is good. Well, whatever the totalitarian system decides upon as being 'the law' will determine who is to be marked with a number as a 'criminal'. Shut down the flow of 'credits' of individuals and they can not even have a drop of clean water anymore. Three days of no water and well, it is bye bye. Jaiks, that is a grim view of a possible future, is it not? Well, it might a possible future if we let corporates become a totalitarian world force. Then only those who have 'credits' will live. But hey, we do still have Free and Open Source services and products. All licensed to be secured from a totalitarian corporate world order take over.
Back to where Artificial Intelligence Aided Creation kicks in. At some point even the 'Aided' can be left out. It will become completely substantive as an Artificial Being, at some pount in time even creating improved versions of itself. Maybe even become Artificial Biological Beings at about a hundred years from now. At that moment Human Beings are probably the inferiors, being only useful as long as they can serve their masters. But way before that corporates will have made the wrong turn, trying to control everything centrally, making the future ready for a totalitarian corporate world order. Easy to be taken over by a superior Artificial Being. But how does a thing like music fit into this image? Well, imagine that there are a few corporates who own all music labels. And there is a patent alike music registration system, connected to an ultra high speed internet. It is so fast that it could move Terabytes of information in a jiffy. It could pull all data out off your digital system and have it scanned for 'illegal' stuff within the blink of an eye. What does this central control system look for? For information that you have no 'legal right' to own.
Maybe you just wrote a new song, like some people still use paint and canvas to create a picture. First chord is a 'C' flat. Then you have a combination of 11 half and full notes left, for a follow up. And the minor tone lyrics are about some bird that poked your eyes out and ate your heart. 'Shit happens', it is called. All in all it did take you about 30 hours to write. Already there is a first draft recording that you made. It could just need some solo guitar, with some chilling overdrive to really jerk some serious tears. Yeah, that part where many dudes will grab that air-guitar and hit it hard, spoiling lots of beer in the proces. And the dames will scream the lyrics from the top of their lungs. So, you are almost done, close to being ready to get it out there. Just when you made the mix out in OGG OPUS to get it published on a blockchain with IPFS your BIOLED screen turns to black, and bloody red characters show an alert. "You have been found guilty of having an illegal object on your system. It is a song called 'Shit happens', which is owned by the 'NOTSO' label company. Your fine will be a 1000 Credits." How is that possible? Well imagine how fast any AIAC system could create millions of lyrics, compose all kinds of variations on it. And because the totalitarian corporate world order owns and centrally controls the music patent system it can constantly update it. Even with billions of potential songs, most will probably not even see the light of the day ever...
Remember the little red LED?
No, stay away from that title, it is mine, you would never ever have come up with it! And I wonder who ever came up with a song like "Pussy miauw, get here now..." It is a Nederish child song that I learned at 'kindergarten' (That is a Deutsch word, not Nederish, by the way). Who ever wrote that must be a multi zillionair by now. Imagine private corporate police raiding a 'kindergarten' because little four and five year young kids sing children songs, but they do not have enough 'credits' to be allowed to do so. The discussion will be about why the teacher was behaving so irresponsible, all her 'credits' will be taken from her right away, of course. Yes, it is a very dark and grim future vision of which I do hope I am so utterly wrong about. And maybe you would argue that this will never happen, because the government would never allow it to happen. Well, just look up information about the so called 'free trading' agreements. And remember that 'we' are paying for the existence of a virtual entity like 'the government'. But in the meantime that 'government' is making deals with huge multinational corporates that gives them all the freedom they want to do their business. And if the people want to stop them from doing so they have to pay the corporates the loss in potential profits. Now how is that for weird behavior from our so called representatives then? Should they not do it the other way around? We, the people decide what corporates can do and can do not? But if corporates pay for the campaigns of them politicians, they sure wont bite the hand that feeds them, I guess...
Yeah yeah, I do remember the little red LED. It was quite bright, some could even turn green, like in a tuner amplifier I still have. It was a funny kind of electronic gimmick, using less energy than a miniature lamp. Somewhere in the 80s of the 20th century I wanted to tell people about screens that would almost be flat and work with very small LED lights. And I learned the hard way that only a few people actually cared about future technology. There were not even blue LED lights back than HA! What an idiot I must have been. When the first LED lamps became available I looked for the 50 LUMEN per used WATT. And I remember destroying the glass bulb around it, so it would effectively give off more light. Useless to do such a thing with old fashioned light bulbs, by the way. Anyway, those little red LED lights already did exist for a long time, but who did ever think about that one day LED light bulbs would light up our rooms? And it wend so fast from 50 LUMEN per WATT used to about a 100 per WATT. It only took a couple of years to get there. Just like going from a tube screen to a LED back-lit ultra flat (bend) 4K screen, for only 299. Which you can actually buy with Bitcoin (BTC)...
My point being that the technology development is accelerating faster and faster. The scale becoming smaller and smaller, data storage becoming huge and the transportation over the internet becoming ultra fast. While the development of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence is at a point where it will be able to 'reproduce' itself with an improvement. Like LED light bulbs going from 50 LUMEN per used WATT to a 100 within a few years. Combined with 3D printing, robots and so forth and so on we do enter another exciting step into our human evolution, where we can witness the coming into existence of Artificial Beings. And we might not have designed them to become self aware, but can we rule it out that 'it' will not invent this all by 'itself'? While in the meantime we might come across some difficult ethical questions. Will we let ourselves be chipped by a totalitarian corporate world order that took over 'governance'? How will we deal with something that can create so much 'new' and 'unique' things that it gets patented right away, that it kills off our creative side of being Human? To me it seems like we might need a safety switch when Artificial Intelligence wants to become our superior. Or when a totalitarian corporate world order tries to take over governance. How can we prevent that from happening?
Seems like there are more questions than answers right now. But it really triggered something for me when I was playing around with some AI music creation software a few days ago. As Artificial Intelligence will be able to do anything any human can do, but much faster, way cheaper and close to perfect. Companies of the future will have to invest in such AIAC {Artificial Intelligence Aided Creation} systems. To stay competitive and to be able to make a profit. Human beings will be needed less and less. It will be about numbers and figures. And it seems like the future Human Being will have a lot of free time on their hands. So, what can it do to kill time? Well, enjoy the open, be creative, make music and love. Well, that is if we are free to do so and not locked in by some crazy totalitarian corporate world order. Hard to imagine it actually will turn for the bad that way, but I really think we should be on the look out for the coming events. Because it seems that huge centralized governmental control systems, like the European Union, actually do have a tendency to lean towards corporate freedom at the expense of individual liberty. Maybe the analogue realm is actually not even that bad...
How long before Artificial Beings will come?
Image CC0 licensed, courtesy of Stefan Keller.