music technology caught up Cascade And deadmau5 recently before their exhibition at Printworks London. As the pair battled jet lag and socialized, the conversation eventually turned to the proliferation of AI and how it could affect the future of music.
deadmau5 might be one of the best artists in dance music for giving perspective on evolution, sharp tongue and never too shy to share their opinion. He’s also renowned for his mastery of technology, which becomes clear when you think back a few years to touring his home studio with Linus Tech Tips. And even that was six years ago, so we’re sure it’s had a few upgrades since then.
When it comes to AI, a big worry is that the technology will rob people who have dedicated years of their lives of jobs and expertise, because technology that learns from tens of thousands of people instantaneously a day becomes increasingly adept at a variety of tasks. Others believe that today’s narrow AI will never be able to fully replicate the creativity of a human, but an AI is now only as powerful as the prompt given to it.
As for deadmau5, he seems pretty confident that even if AI were to start making full-length pop songs, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
“It’s pretty scary,” said deadmau5 music technology. “But it’s scary in the sense that the music is already stupid anyway, so it’s not that scary. Like, ‘This thing can make a song pop!’ Did you hear a pop song? Great. Let it go. Unleash the beast, you know – damn it, would that ever open up the niche market for true musicality.
“[ChatGPT] is good. But it’s as good as he knows. It’s a huge training model, isn’t it? So take the collective stupidity of the world and have a robot vomit it up. It won’t be that genius, but it will get you what you want.
We’re already seeing AI programs that can emulate voices, and we’re already seeing some studios creating entire visual sequences with the technology. But limitations and expertise will continue to differentiate human capabilities from machine applications. At least for now.
Photo by Graham John Bell for Insomniac Events
