You don’t have to be a tech-nerd to know how big AI is in the world right now.
It seems wherever you look, AI is doing something to affect an industry, with people either embracing it with open arms or turning away in disgust.
For the most part, the benefits of AI seem to outweigh the negatives. Across the world, it is being utilised to save costs, cut down on time-consuming tasks, and it can achieve this without any interruption or downtime.
But there are negatives, and they’re worth talking about.
A Question Of Creativity
When looking at the downsides of AI, the majority of them can be found in relation to creative industries – most significantly, the music industry.
When it comes to a creative industry like gaming, the argument is more balanced. Of course, we want developers to retain their creative spirit, but the ability to personalise online casinos or ease out the difficulty tuning make the innovation of AI far more rewarding than debilitating. The already incredibly personalised experience of live casino shows that a human presence is key.
Not that AI is debilitating to musicians – quite the opposite. Like online or offline gaming developers, musicians and producers suddenly have a new range of tools to aid the process of creating and producing their music, but this isn’t such a great thing for the listeners.
The Reason For Listening
The reason we factor in the gaming industry as a parallel is because, quite simply, it’s wrong for people to suggest AI will ruin the creative industry as a whole.
Games are not real, and players know they’re not real. When players become immersed in a game, they are becoming immersed in an un-reality that offers experiences other than their own. Why not utilise AI to enhance these experiences? They’re not designed to be relatable.
The same cannot be said for music. When people listen to music, they are tuning into a completely human experience. Our favourite musicians shed light on their own personal experiences, and in doing so reach out to the listener in conjunction with theirs.
This isn’t just done in the lyrics, it’s done in the sounds, the vocal inflections, the choice of instrument, the rise and fall of a melody. All of this adds to the emotion of a track, whether that’s happy, sad, angry, or despairing.
Perfection In Imperfection
Not to mention, music is imperfect, just as we are. The troubling thing about AI is that it can completely eradicate dead-ends – or “writer’s block”. Why is this troubling? Because musicians need to go through these experiences, and they need to work their way out of them.
The crazed orchestral crescendo at the end of The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life” may have come out of a stressed Sgt. Pepper recording session, where no-one could figure out how the album should end, but it has meaning and emotion inside of its imperfection. That, in turn, makes it perfect.
Would AI have come to the same conclusions? Of course not. Nor would it have been able to relay any real human emotion throughout the rest of the album, or any album that has come out since, for that matter. This is because music is about lived experiences. The reason we love it is because it harnesses all the things that AI never could: feeling, emotion, a life lived and a life conveyed.
As the world grows more accustomed to AI, it’s important we all remember that certain things should remain human if they want to retain meaning.
