(RightWing.org) – The recent appearance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools capable of writing reasonably good text has sparked a debate. Is there any point in grading students on essays when they might have been written by an app? Is there a future for human writers at all? Now, the debate is expanding to other fields. Can AI apps compete with human musicians? Nick Cave doesn’t think so.
"This song sucks"
Nick Cave criticises AI attempt to write Nick Cave lyrics https://t.co/V1ZFJPMpgZ
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) January 17, 2023
Earlier this month, a New Zealand music fan called Mark asked the popular AI app ChatGPT to write a set of song lyrics “in the style of Nick Cave.” The robot writer obediently came up with four verses and a chorus, which the proud fan then sent to Cave with a note asking, “What do you think?” The famously plain-speaking singer didn’t hesitate to tell him.
In a blunt putdown, Cave said he had already been sent a slew of AI-generated songs “in the style of Nick Cave” and added, “Suffice to say, I do not feel the same enthusiasm around this technology.” He warned that AI could lead us “toward a utopian future, maybe, or our total destruction” before slamming the computer-generated lyrics claiming AI created “replication as travesty” and “it cannot create a genuine song.” Cave argued that songs come from the complexity of human experience and “algorithms don’t feel.”
Cave is obviously annoyed that a computer program is imitating his art, but he’s not the only one worried about AI. Advocates claim the technology is “not a job killer,” but even they admit it will wipe out whole categories of jobs — and, for the people who work in those jobs, retraining could be difficult or impossible. We’ve also already seen that social media bots are very good at spreading fake news. A true AI system could do it even better.
Artificial intelligence is a technology with huge potential, but it also comes with risks; the replacement of human artists is just one of them.
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