🔗 Share this article

The innovator's estate functions as part startup commune, part luxury crash-pad, and part demonstration space for coming innovations. Such residences dot the landscape of the tech heartland, inhabited by startup pioneers and forward-thinkers. The grandest I’ve encountered sits in one of the Bay Area's wealthiest neighborhoods, one of the Bay Area’s wealthiest enclaves. Interior, polished marble shines underneath affixed pictures of technology luminaries; in the gardens, stones are arranged in precise circular patterns and reflecting pools glimmer behind the shrubbery.

It was a sunny June afternoon, and I visited alongside my production partner to record interviews for a feature about the collision of artificial intelligence and traditional music in the Bay Area.

We moved so quickly from talking about how AI could help the creative industries to hearing, quite casually, how easily it could replace every role within them

Every working artist, the message delivered brightly, would shortly become mere amateurs. This wasn't meant as challenge. Without sarcasm. Pure truth. This represents the instance in our recording when we hear my collaborator's reaction. She abruptly interrupts, concerned: “So machine learning will remove my job?” It’s brief. Automatic. However, it shifts the mood completely.

When we commenced creating the documentary, I shared the widespread interest. “The cat’s out of the bag,” I remarked humorously. It felt like the sensible thing to say. The innovation was present. Preferable to engage rather than dismiss.

When we discussed the matter later, she remembered the moment clearly. “We moved so quickly,” she noted, “from discussing potential benefits cultural sectors to being told, rather matter-of-factly, how simply it might displace each job existing. The tone was friendly, optimistic, like this was thrilling news.”

That exchange feels like the hinge of the story: a brief, personal instance of confusion, when the conversation stopped being theoretical to actual consequences.

The goal involved rendering us obsolete.

It happened months ago. Currently it's autumn, and after months featuring high-profile musical events, my mind has turned to an alternative grand residence: the group's historic show at a famous venue. A quarter of a million people during multiple evenings, holding flames rather than devices. Among the final massive group performances prior to digital transformation. Before digital distribution and electronic files. Before mobile phones. Before the quiet rearranging of culture via unseen digital systems.

What came next was gradual yet transformative: a shift from ownership to access. Curated selections supplanted collections, not curated by artists but by software, created to accompany daily tasks. Audio for labor, sound for shopping, accompaniment for browsing. We thought we were watching the direction of sound. Maybe that was true.

That is why I hesitated when, well after completing the documentary, I discovered an innovative cultural program. It's an innovative project through an established performance company exploring how the arts might “interact” with AI. This originates from an organization I value, run by people I respect and admire: which has consistently backed my work plus countless creators. It's described as a courageous, future-oriented discussion linking machines and imagination: the beginning of what could be a fascinating partnership. Yet what stands out within the publicity materials is not what’s there, but rather the absent considerations.

There’s no mention about ethical concerns, concerning learning materials, about permission, about sustainability consequences, or of jobs. No awareness appears that this technology now threatens to render creators and the craft the establishment has nurtured, and that whole ecosystem of labour, mostly unnecessary.

The attitude, comparable to our experience at that tech residence, remains consistently positive. “Artificial intelligence is permanent,” a programming head announced during a recent interview. “We can either put our heads in the sand or adapt to developments.”

Except that no one I encounter among innovation circles – where this technology is being dreamed up, built and sold – is riding a wave. Going with the flow suggests relinquishing control. The people here have no interest in that. They're working to master the forces, to alter fundamental realities.

I don't propose neglecting machine learning. Yet my initial statement, “the technology is unleashed”, currently seems like ethical avoidance, like moral considerations vanish when innovation emerges. Following months immersed in technology, it’s unsettling to watch prominent establishments treat AI like atomic energy for the arts: impressive, lucrative, presently creating problems, but surprisingly lacking safety notices.

It’s unsettling to watch major institutions treat AI like atomic energy for the arts

Progress happens quickly within technology circles that our project seems like a relic, a postcard from the last moment before the future stopped asking for permission. That afternoon in the hacker mansion, featuring arranged stones, brightness and tranquility, appears preserved: the still point before acceleration.

When I listen back, I notice the mood transforming. The pause after the question, my nervous chuckling. This represents anxiety, of something human still holding its ground.

If the legendary concert marked the conclusion of pre-digital collective performance, perhaps this brief instance we recorded marks the uneasy breath before systems generate autonomously.