What AI Can’t Do
In 2018, Yuval Noah Harari sparked something in me with his book Homo Deus when he wrote about artificial intelligence and how drastically it was going to change the world. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d read, particularly the section where he outlined how AI-infused microchips were being tested to treat PTSD. It really stuck with me. To be fair, I’ve always had an overactive imagination and it’s common for me to fixate on a topic. My daydreams are often very pleasant but in this instance I felt like I was doomscrolling through Skynet CCTV footage.
Homo Deus was a best seller but AI was far from the center of culture in 2018. Why weren’t more people talking about this? For starters, it can be a curse to arrive at the party early. Just ask Jonathan Fire*Eater or the team at work on the Metaverse. I responded the only way I know how- I wrote a song about it. The band, god bless ‘em, dove in with me and the was result was our song “Bad Chemicals.” It’s a song written from the perspective of a pre-op veteran. Sonically, we mixed a big rock ballad with pulsing synths, intending to evoke a fusion of the human and artificial.
But I’m not writing this post to re-hash a 2018 press release. Today, The New York Times published an op-ed by Yuval Noah Harari, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin on the AI arms race and, as much as it pains me to boost the NYT opinions section, it’s a must-read. Now that groundbreaking AI is publicly available to chat with us, thwart our safe guards, and break up our marriages, it’s making daily headlines. We’re told this is just the tip of the ice berg. But Harari has been thinking about this topic for a long time and he can see the forest through the trees. He’s asking the right questions.
As I read the article though, I was struck by what hasn’t changed. By what AI can’t do. In 2018, we cut out a small slice of this debate and tried to crawl inside it. We shouldered the heavy weight of the arguments and tried to stand still. We thought, maybe if we make something musically compelling we can invite others to sit in the contradiction for a few minutes. We wanted to make something that would let you come back again and again, to experience the ideas in different lights. Experience yourself in different lights. That’s what my favorite art has given to me. Something distinctly human. I can’t say if we succeeded but looking back five years later, I think we set off in the right direction.
-Phiz