Welcome to the Inquisitivists. Thank you for being here. I am Paul Mariz: software engineer, musician, and artificial intelligence researcher. Sometimes those projects are separate. This project -- AutoHarp -- is not one of those times.
AutoHarp is a computer program I wrote to produce music algorithmically. Push a button, and the computer program generates a song. It’s that simple. If you’re imagining the weird, meandering beeps and boops and pings of a mall arcade in 1985, you’re off by, well, three decades. Music that AutoHarp generates sounds like this:
AutoHarp is a computer program I wrote to produce music algorithmically. Push a button, and the computer program generates a song. It’s that simple. If you’re imagining the weird, meandering beeps and boops and pings of a mall arcade in 1985, you’re off by, well, three decades. Music that AutoHarp generates sounds like this:
and this:
and this:
and that's before I start using decent sound fonts, overdubbing, and mixing. After all of that it sounds like this:
excerpt of "Thief of the Daylight" from the Lost on this Island e.p.
So, in fact, if you’re a music journalist or blogger, if you own a radio station, I hope you’ll play and talk about this music. It stands on its own as, well, music. Its origin couldn’t matter less.
If, on the other hand, you’re an AI researcher, software developer, or tech journalist, its origin couldn’t matter more. For starters, it passes with flying colors (soaring arias?) a whole new kind of Turing Test: as a listener, you can’t tell that this music wasn't composed by a human being. Second, the music itself represents a whole new kind of collaboration: the algorithm’s melodies and construction with my guitar and lyrics with the computer’s rhythms and drumbeats.
On the one hand, that’s amazing. On the other, it’s a little terrifying. The computer will get better and better. Soon, it won’t need a human designed algorithm. Soon, it will write its own lyrics. Today, we think computers can replace concert box offices but not the artists on stage or the songwriters, soloists, performers, and producers who support them in the wings. Very soon, computers will do all of that.
Many smart, insightful people -- Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk to name two recently vocal examples -- are worried about the current state and direction of Artificial Intelligence work. Indeed, we seem at this moment to be approaching AI via the worst aspects of humanity: violence (autonomous killer drones, robot soldiers) and greed (you can now have your stock portfolio managed by a bot). You can imagine the problems of an AI designed to kill; now imagine an AI designed to maximize corporate profit. If a human or a board of them would go so far in that pursuit but no father, a machine so motivated will not stop until profit is indeed maximized at any cost at all. The human imagination has long worried about a future in which machines surpass us in intelligence. As we begin by building them to be greedy and warring, we are right to worry.
What AutoHarp offers instead is the pursuit of artificial intelligence based on the best aspects of humanity: creativity, intelligence, connection, collaboration. It makes pretty music. It might also change the world.
A detailed whitepaper on the construction of my forthcoming e.p., Lost on this Island, and the roles played by the machine and by the humans in that construction can be found here. I would also love to answer any questions and/or further discuss this project--you can contact me here.
PRESS:
If, on the other hand, you’re an AI researcher, software developer, or tech journalist, its origin couldn’t matter more. For starters, it passes with flying colors (soaring arias?) a whole new kind of Turing Test: as a listener, you can’t tell that this music wasn't composed by a human being. Second, the music itself represents a whole new kind of collaboration: the algorithm’s melodies and construction with my guitar and lyrics with the computer’s rhythms and drumbeats.
On the one hand, that’s amazing. On the other, it’s a little terrifying. The computer will get better and better. Soon, it won’t need a human designed algorithm. Soon, it will write its own lyrics. Today, we think computers can replace concert box offices but not the artists on stage or the songwriters, soloists, performers, and producers who support them in the wings. Very soon, computers will do all of that.
Many smart, insightful people -- Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk to name two recently vocal examples -- are worried about the current state and direction of Artificial Intelligence work. Indeed, we seem at this moment to be approaching AI via the worst aspects of humanity: violence (autonomous killer drones, robot soldiers) and greed (you can now have your stock portfolio managed by a bot). You can imagine the problems of an AI designed to kill; now imagine an AI designed to maximize corporate profit. If a human or a board of them would go so far in that pursuit but no father, a machine so motivated will not stop until profit is indeed maximized at any cost at all. The human imagination has long worried about a future in which machines surpass us in intelligence. As we begin by building them to be greedy and warring, we are right to worry.
What AutoHarp offers instead is the pursuit of artificial intelligence based on the best aspects of humanity: creativity, intelligence, connection, collaboration. It makes pretty music. It might also change the world.
A detailed whitepaper on the construction of my forthcoming e.p., Lost on this Island, and the roles played by the machine and by the humans in that construction can be found here. I would also love to answer any questions and/or further discuss this project--you can contact me here.
PRESS:
- Ex-Amazon Software Engineer Creates AI Music Playing Program AutoHarp by Dave Segal. The Stranger. 12/09/2015
- The Calculus Affair: Pipe Dream by Rachel Kowal. NPR: Second Stage. 04/06/2009