We’re living during this paradigm shift where everyone’s thinking about the soulfulness, or relative

un-soulfulness, of A.I. he said.

I’ve been struggling with the question of how we might navigate technology’s role in the arts, and
A.I.’s nonfeeling, data-driven means of creation.

Or to ask it to write a scene in the style of a specific writer and, even with the odd phrases and weird
artifacts typical of A.I.-generated writing, hear an eerie sense of familiarity in the scene’s tone.

We’re living during this paradigm shift where everyone’s thinking about the soulfulness, or relative
un-soulfulness, of A.I. he said.

Lopatin’s work with A.I. owes at least a theoretical debt to the French composer Edgard Varèse, who
was bored by the limitations of acoustic instruments, and who, in 1936, described “the electronic” as
“our new liberating medium.” Varèse thought that only electronic instruments could effectively
“satisfy the dictates of that inner ear of the imagination,” and dismissed fears that these new modes
might challenge composition. “Anything new in music has always been called noise,” he wrote.
Lopatin finds most of the hand-wringing about A.I. to be silly. “It’s over, we’re all gonna die, the
machines are coming to get us,” he said, laughing. “That’s really boring. What’s more interesting for
me is seeing how A.I. fails.” He went on, “When it fails, which it does a lot right now, it creates these
insinuated arrangements that don’t sound anything like any music I’ve ever heard. It’s so broken that
I can only compare it to, like, the most extreme music I’ve ever heard in my life.”

A.I.’s wonkiness—all of these networks are still in their nascency—forced Lopatin to reëxamine his
most instinctive and well-worn habits. “It reminds me a lot of Paul Schrader’s transcendental-cinema
thing,” Lopatin said. “He always talks about how there are films that are formulaic and ones that
aren’t. The ones that aren’t do weird things with time. They dwell a little bit too long on the wrong
object, like a door after someone has passed through it. You’re usually following the person, but now
we’re staying on the door. That’s what A.I. is actually doing really well. What it’s not doing very well is
following the person.” He continued, “When I first started using A.I., I would basically just give it
metadata. I’d say, ‘I want you to make a Smashing Pumpkins song.’ It tries, and it can’t. That’s a lot
like me.”

“[I was considering] how impossible and futile it is to try to undo humanity’s mistakes, and what a
horrific situation it is to be stalked by the future. That [made] a huge impression on me, it’s been in
my music pretty much the entire time.”

He thinks current AI is something to be experimented with rather than a horrifying,

incomprehensible intellect.
We have so much to learn from this stuff right now: about its failure to compute, about arrangement
and incorrect choices, about lingering on an idea a little bit too long, about dissonant qualities in pop
music… not even to sample [it], but to really think about its form and apply it to your own writing.

I’ve been struggling with the question of how we might navigate technology’s role in the arts, and
A.I.’s nonfeeling, data-driven means of creation.

Or to ask it to write a scene in the style of a specific writer and, even with the odd phrases and weird
artifacts typical of A.I.-generated writing, hear an eerie sense of familiarity in the scene’s tone.

We’re living during this paradigm shift where everyone’s thinking about the soulfulness, or relative
un-soulfulness, of A.I. he said.

Lopatin’s work with A.I. owes at least a theoretical debt to the French composer Edgard Varèse, who
was bored by the limitations of acoustic instruments, and who, in 1936, described “the electronic” as
“our new liberating medium.” Varèse thought that only electronic instruments could effectively
“satisfy the dictates of that inner ear of the imagination,” and dismissed fears that these new modes
might challenge composition. “Anything new in music has always been called noise,” he wrote.
Lopatin finds most of the hand-wringing about A.I. to be silly. “It’s over, we’re all gonna die, the
machines are coming to get us,” he said, laughing. “That’s really boring. What’s more interesting for
me is seeing how A.I. fails.” He went on, “When it fails, which it does a lot right now, it creates these
insinuated arrangements that don’t sound anything like any music I’ve ever heard. It’s so broken that
I can only compare it to, like, the most extreme music I’ve ever heard in my life.”

A.I.’s wonkiness—all of these networks are still in their nascency—forced Lopatin to reëxamine his
most instinctive and well-worn habits. “It reminds me a lot of Paul Schrader’s transcendental-cinema
thing,” Lopatin said. “He always talks about how there are films that are formulaic and ones that
aren’t. The ones that aren’t do weird things with time. They dwell a little bit too long on the wrong
object, like a door after someone has passed through it. You’re usually following the person, but now
we’re staying on the door. That’s what A.I. is actually doing really well. What it’s not doing very well is
following the person.” He continued, “When I first started using A.I., I would basically just give it
metadata. I’d say, ‘I want you to make a Smashing Pumpkins song.’ It tries, and it can’t. That’s a lot
like me.”

“[I was considering] how impossible and futile it is to try to undo humanity’s mistakes, and what a
horrific situation it is to be stalked by the future. That [made] a huge impression on me, it’s been in
my music pretty much the entire time.”

He thinks current AI is something to be experimented with rather than a horrifying,

incomprehensible intellect.
We have so much to learn from this stuff right now: about its failure to compute, about arrangement
and incorrect choices, about lingering on an idea a little bit too long, about dissonant qualities in pop
music… not even to sample [it], but to really think about its form and apply it to your own writing.

I’ve been struggling with the question of how we might navigate technology’s role in the arts, and
A.I.’s nonfeeling, data-driven means of creation.

Or to ask it to write a scene in the style of a specific writer and, even with the odd phrases and weird
artifacts typical of A.I.-generated writing, hear an eerie sense of familiarity in the scene’s tone.

We’re living during this paradigm shift where everyone’s thinking about the soulfulness, or relative
un-soulfulness, of A.I. he said.

Lopatin’s work with A.I. owes at least a theoretical debt to the French composer Edgard Varèse, who
was bored by the limitations of acoustic instruments, and who, in 1936, described “the electronic” as
“our new liberating medium.” Varèse thought that only electronic instruments could effectively
“satisfy the dictates of that inner ear of the imagination,” and dismissed fears that these new modes
might challenge composition. “Anything new in music has always been called noise,” he wrote.
Lopatin finds most of the hand-wringing about A.I. to be silly. “It’s over, we’re all gonna die, the
machines are coming to get us,” he said, laughing. “That’s really boring. What’s more interesting for
me is seeing how A.I. fails.” He went on, “When it fails, which it does a lot right now, it creates these
insinuated arrangements that don’t sound anything like any music I’ve ever heard. It’s so broken that
I can only compare it to, like, the most extreme music I’ve ever heard in my life.”

A.I.’s wonkiness—all of these networks are still in their nascency—forced Lopatin to reëxamine his
most instinctive and well-worn habits. “It reminds me a lot of Paul Schrader’s transcendental-cinema
thing,” Lopatin said. “He always talks about how there are films that are formulaic and ones that
aren’t. The ones that aren’t do weird things with time. They dwell a little bit too long on the wrong
object, like a door after someone has passed through it. You’re usually following the person, but now
we’re staying on the door. That’s what A.I. is actually doing really well. What it’s not doing very well is
following the person.” He continued, “When I first started using A.I., I would basically just give it
metadata. I’d say, ‘I want you to make a Smashing Pumpkins song.’ It tries, and it can’t. That’s a lot
like me.”

“[I was considering] how impossible and futile it is to try to undo humanity’s mistakes, and what a
horrific situation it is to be stalked by the future. That [made] a huge impression on me, it’s been in
my music pretty much the entire time.”

He thinks current AI is something to be experimented with rather than a horrifying,

incomprehensible intellect.
We have so much to learn from this stuff right now: about its failure to compute, about arrangement
and incorrect choices, about lingering on an idea a little bit too long, about dissonant qualities in pop
music… not even to sample [it], but to really think about its form and apply it to your own writing.

I’ve been struggling with the question of how we might navigate technology’s role in the arts, and
A.I.’s nonfeeling, data-driven means of creation.

Or to ask it to write a scene in the style of a specific writer and, even with the odd phrases and weird
artifacts typical of A.I.-generated writing, hear an eerie sense of familiarity in the scene’s tone.