Hey everyone, Mateo here.
We’re living in a wild time for AI, right? It’s popping up everywhere, from helping code to organizing our playlists. But as AI gets smarter, I’ve been thinking – where should we draw the line? Specifically, what about art and music? Should AI be creating these things for us?
Think about it. When you listen to your favorite song, it’s not just the notes, is it? It’s the emotion the artist poured into it, the story behind the lyrics, maybe even a shared memory you have tied to that track. Or when you look at a painting, you’re often connecting with the artist’s unique perspective, their struggles, their triumphs.
AI can analyze millions of songs or paintings, identify patterns, and even generate something new that sounds or looks… good. We’ve seen AI-generated music that mimics popular artists and AI art that can create stunning visuals from a text prompt. It’s impressive technology, no doubt.
But here’s the catch, and it’s a big one for me. Can AI truly replicate the human experience that fuels creativity? Can an algorithm understand heartbreak, joy, or the quiet contemplation of a sunset in a way that translates into something deeply meaningful for another human? I’m not so sure.
I’m still deep in my computer engineering PhD, focusing on AI, so I get the technical side. I know how these models learn and create. But as a human, I value the connection that comes from knowing another person, with all their messy feelings and lived experiences, created something they wanted to share. That’s what makes art and music so powerful.
When an AI generates a song, who is it connecting with? Is it connecting with the data it was trained on? Or is it genuinely expressing something? For me, the value in art and music often comes from that shared humanity, that understanding that another person went through something and transformed it into a creative piece. That’s a connection AI, at least as we know it today, can’t really replicate.
So, while I’m all for AI helping us in countless ways, I’m hesitant about it taking over the spaces where human emotion and connection are the main event. Let AI help us compose, let it suggest ideas, but let’s keep the soul of art and music in human hands. What do you guys think? Should AI be creating our cultural touchstones, or should those remain uniquely human endeavors?