Queen's Brian May, an astrophysicist, finds AI "massively scary" & dreads what it could do to music

[highplainsdem]

Excerpts from three articles on AI in music, and AI in general, below.

I found the one from NME, the UK's New Musical Express, first, and was going to use its headline, then discovered that not only had the headline - " Queen’s Brian May says use of AI in music is “massively scary” - scrambled part of what Brian had said in the Guitar Player interview they were quoting, but they also misrepresented what Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins had said earlier about AI. I will correct sloppy journalism.

From Guitar Player:

https://www.guitarplayer.com/news/brian-may-artificial-intelligence-star-fleet-project-interview-guitar-player-2023

There’s a lot being made about AI right now, and its potential use in the music world. That’s a technology you’ve probably been involved with and even used in your scientific pursuits, no?

It is, and my major concern with it now is in the artistic area. I think by this time next year the landscape will be completely different. We won’t know which way is up. We won’t know what’s been created by AI and what’s been created by humans. Everything is going to get very blurred and very confusing, and I think we might look back on 2023 as the last year when humans really dominated the music scene. I really think it could be that serious, and that doesn’t fill me with joy. It makes me feel apprehensive, and I’m preparing to feel sad about this.

I think a lot of great stuff will come from AI, because it is going to increase the powers of humans to solve problems. But the potential for AI to cause evil is, obviously, incredibly huge – not just in music, ’cause nobody dies in music, but people can die if AI gets involved in politics and world domination for various nations. I think the whole thing is massively scary. It’s much more far-reaching than anybody realized – well, certainly than I realized.

It's clear from the original quote that what Brian finds "massively scary" is AI in politics and international conflicts. He's right about that, and if you don't find that scary, you haven't been paying attention.

As mentioned in the thread title, Brian studied to be a scientist, and he's brilliant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May

At Hampton Grammar School, May attained ten GCE Ordinary Levels and three GCE Advanced Levels in physics, mathematics, and applied mathematics.[23] He studied mathematics and physics at Imperial College London, graduating with a BSc degree in physics in 1968 with honours.[24] Following his graduation, May received a personal invitation from Sir Bernard Lovell to work at the Jodrell Bank Observatory while continuing to prepare his doctorate. He declined, choosing instead to remain at Imperial College to avoid breaking from Smile, the London-based band he was in at the time.[25]

So if you assume rock musicians are Spinal Tap-style idiots, think again. Brian understands tech and AI. He still finds AI "massively scary."

I was at first surprised by the way he worded his comments on AI and music: "It makes me feel apprehensive, and I’m preparing to feel sad about this." But he's distinguishing between the current feeling of apprehension/dread and what I think many of us who love music expect to be feeling in the future - sadness, even grief, over human creativity and human musicians' artistry being lost in a flood of AI-generated synthetic music that will be mostly crap.


I'm glad NME at least called attention to that Guitar Player article, even if they scrambled what Brian said about AI in music with what he said about AI more generally.

And they brought up what other rock stars have said about AI, though they messed that up a bit:

https://www.nme.com/news/music/queens-brian-may-says-use-of-ai-in-music-is-massively-scary-3496017

Earlier this year, John Lydon described the method as “very dangerous” as it has the potential to “ultimately make decisions for you”, while Ed Sheeran described it as “weird” and likened it to the Hollywood films where the use of AI will eventually “kill us all”.

Nick Cave also labelled ChatGPT and AI songwriting “a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human”, while Sting said AI “doesn’t impress” him and that songwriters will have to defend “our human capital against AI”.

Smashing Pumpkins‘ Billy Corgan, however, was more supportive of the prospect and said “AI will change music forever” since others can “game the system” and “not going to spend 10,000 hours in a basement”.

Another music figure supportive of the concept was Grimes, who recently gave her fans permission to use her voice to make their own music with AI platforms – provided they share the royalties with her.

First of all, re Grimes - she's already had to backpedal a bit on how much free rein she gives fans playing with her voice as if she's a singing puppet, after inevitably finding out it would sometimes be used for stuff she doesn't want to be associated with. I'm surprised she didn't see that problem coming a lightyear away. But then, she got involved with Elon Musk...

I've already posted in other threads here about what most of the other musicians named said about AI. Don't think I posted about Lydon. And while I bookmarked an article on.Sheeran and AI, it might have been one of many articles on AI that I've bookmarked and didn't post about, because there are so very many news stories on AI. But I've posted about what Nick Cave and Sting said, and about Billy Corgan, and I could not believe how wrong this new NME article got what he'd said on AI.

This new article said he was "more supportive" of AI in music.

Hardly.

https://www.nme.com/news/music/smashing-pumpkins-billy-corgan-says-ai-will-change-music-forever-3446083

-snip-

The Smashing Pumpkins frontman spoke out about the increasing rise of AI-led songwriting and how young artists will be able to use it to “game the system”, in a new interview with US radio DJ Zach Sang.

Corgan said: “AI will change music forever. Because once young artists figure out that they can use AI to game the system and write them a better song, they’re not going to spend 10,000 hours in a basement like I did.

-snip-

He also said AI will make it harder for organic artists to compete.

Corgan added: “The problem with it is, if you’re an organic artist like I am, it’s going to be really hard to compete with a whole bunch of people who don’t know how to write songs but have good discernment, can’t sing but have Auto-Tune. You think there’s a lot of bad music coming out now, just wait.

He's talking about people with little or no talent, who don't want to take the time to develop any talent they might have, using AI to churn out music they didn't really create themselves, in the (usually) completely misguided belief that they can recognize a hit when they hear one.

This is why one AI company alone that lets users create music via AI has already put 15 MILLION music tracks on Spotify.

Without, as far as I've heard, a single great track, a single hit, in that AI dump.

Apres AI, le deluge. Of bad music from people who aren't musicians but would like to be music stars anyway.

I don't know how that NME journalist could have so completely misunderstood what Corgan said.

But Brian May understands the risks of AI, and at least NME got that partially right and called more attention to what he said.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

1. If anyone in Rock Music knows the Science of AI...it's Sir Brian May, PhD.

He and every Rock Legend out there need to be paying attention on how Artificial Intelligence could have a devastating effect on music in general.

[link:https://dailyprogress.com/life-entertainment/nation-world/music/sir-brian-may-is-apprehensive-about-the-rise-of-ai/video_bf4a1be0-a368-56bc-87e3-a98de72853b1.html|

[edisdead]

2. How so?

[LearnedHand]

6. He's an extremely serious astrophysicist (thus the PhD)

And much of science, including astrophysics, is almost indistinguishable from big data analytics. If he speaks about AI, it’s good to hear him out.

[edisdead]

7. You didn't answer my question.

How so?

Will there be no more music? Will people not make music? Will western music no longer have 12 notes?

Just how exactly will music be so badly damaged? I am sure there will be impacts to the music INDUSTRY…. Like every other thing that was going to kill the music industry (which by the way may be the only thing that outlives cockroaches).

He is a musician who gets paid money for making music.

[LearnedHand]

11. Ugh sorry. Misunderstood what "how so" applied to

I’m making this up, but I think he’s talking about the damage to music when people creators are out of the loop. I’m withholding judgment for the nonce about AI, but I can already see that AI writing and poetry and art are lacking some unnameable fundamental something that humans with actual lives lives infuse in them. Stringing perfect words or notes together is not the same as creating because you will die if you don’t get it out.

[DJ Porkchop]

12. You nailed it, but...

Axiom: Stringing perfect words or notes together is not the same as creating because you will die if you don’t get it out.

Now, does the AI know what that plaintive voice sounds like? Can it emulate explosive yearning? To be seen...

[highplainsdem]

3. +1,000,000

[quaint]

5. + ∞

[stuck in the middle]

13. To be fair to Brian May, ...

…there’s nowhere in the article where he himself makes that claim, or even anything remotely close to it.

If anyone in Rock Music knows the Science of AI...it's Sir Brian May, PhD

(It is also worth noting that nothing he says depends on any such claim.)

[highplainsdem]

4. Kick

[crickets]

8. Kick for the late night crowd.

[highplainsdem]

9. Thanks!

[Bucky]

10. The fear: Music, despite feeling like an infinite creative space...

... is in fact created by a finite number of notes arranged in a finite number of sequences, beats, and chord progressions. So AI does have the capacity theoretically to generate every tune and arrangement possible, effectively ending music composition as a field of human inquiry.

On the other hand, that's like saying that literary and poetic compositions are created from a finite number of words and sentence constructions. I somehow doubt that human writers are going to run out of ideas and plots to describe.

It's definitely going to contribute to the field of creative ingenuity in music, but I think Mr May needs to have a little more faith in the artistic capacity of his fellow musicians.

[Earth-shine]

14. "the artistic capacity of his fellow musicians"

I don't think that AI will cause people to be less creative.

It's just that the market will be flooded by AI-produced media squeezing out the stuff created by humans.

[stuck in the middle]

17. Quantity vs Quality

It’s just that the market will be flooded by AI-produced media squeezing out the stuff created by humans.

[hunter]

18. The "market" is already saturated by crap produced in human minds.

How does this change anything?

[hunter]

15. Spider Robinson wrote a story about that in 1982...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancholy_Elephants

It's about a time in the future when all possible permutations of art have been copyrighted.

AI doesn't really change anything in the larger scheme of things but the means by which crap art is manufactured.

[Bucky]

16. AIs are definitely burning thru the finite number of chemical combinations for new medicines

That was an article I read about biochemists struggling with the infinite and exhaustive intent of artificial intelligence chewing up the fertile grounds in their field

[stuck in the middle]

20. Sounds like a fun read.

I liked sci-fi as a child.

I always wanted to read an alternate history where mathematical theorems could be copyrighted, and royalties needed to be paid just to make use of somebody’s Lemma in a proof, but so far as I know, nobody has ever tried that angle.

[justaprogressive]

21. Great story

She had to kill someone to keep the appointment...

[stuck in the middle]

19. A room full of monkeys...

…banging on an old-school typewriter (or their descendants) has the theoretical capacity to eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare, with probability 1, given enough time.

The fear: Music, despite feeling like an infinite creative space...
... is in fact created by a finite number of notes arranged in a finite number of sequences, beats, and chord progressions. So AI does have the capacity theoretically to generate every tune and arrangement possible, effectively ending music composition as a field of human inquiry.