Meditations On: Humans v the Machines & I Can't Just Make Drum Covers Anymore

In today’s video the young YouTuber laments that she’s made the worst investment of her life. She bought a recording studio because she wants to create a physical space for musicians to do their best work, even though all trends point towards all of the money in the music business eliminating humans and farming it all out to A.I. It’s a dilemma being faced by all artists trying to make their way in the world and hoping to realize their dream of doing their art for a living.

Truth be told, this is hardly a new struggle. The idea that one could paint, or write, or sing or do any form of art and still put food on the table and provide for one’s loved ones, this is a concern and a challenge that’s been around for centuries. Hell, I’ve been writing for over fifty years and I think in all that time I’ve seen one check for my writing and it was a very small check. It’s just that we had a brief moment where a musician could put their music on the Internet, like Jonathan Coulton or Justin Bieber, generate some buzz and leverage that into a career. But now it feels like that moment is over and the tech we trusted has itself, replaced us.

Again, it’s not the tech that’s replaced us. It’s the folks who write the checks, ever looking for ways to increase their percentage of the haul, are looking for cheaper ways to sell “art,” and if they can do it without the complications of including you… Hey, it’s not personal, it’s just business. For most “artists” that is the problem, the business end of things and why it is that we’re doing any of this to begin with.

Back when I used to play music, I needed it to express the confusing stuff that was going on inside me. Alas, that wasn’t a very good mix in that I was playing “Christian music,” which was supposed to be all about having discovered the “Light” and how perfect a solution that was, all the while being very conflicted about a lot of stuff. Oops. I guess there wasn’t much of a market for “Christian music” that was really just a cover for my form of therapy via music. Now that I think about it, there probably could have been. But I was still trying to play the game and the disconnect probably came off as a lack of talent or “not what they were looking for” as far as someone to bring Jesus to these young people. See, you don’t need to blame technology when it comes to having ones artistic dreams unrealized, you just need a little self-doubt and immaturity and there you go.

Sorry… A.I. is really messing things up. Am I right? It is a huge challenge. But isn’t that a fundamental part of becoming a better artist? To overcome the endless number of challenges, to battle with why it is that this thing, this art, is so important that you don’t want to give up, even if no one else seems to be able to see what you see?

The chances of “making a living” have never been great, and we only tend to hear about the ones who “made it.” But that’s not why I picked up a guitar when I was 15 or worked on a journalism degree in my twenties. It’s different for everyone, but I have to write as a means of figuring out all of the different stories and experiences in my head. I do it because I like working through problems this way, and on those special occasions when someone else sees what I see through my writing… that rebalances the universe for me. I have thoughts about A.I. (real A.I., not these complicated chatbots with no self-awareness), but that will have to wait for another day. Right now, A.I. is just more monkeys on keyboards and the powers-that-be selecting the A.I. wouldn’t recognize Shakespeare if they were hit with a page of quilled pen insults.