AI is the subject everyone is talking about, in fact more than many of us would like. I can’t recall a subject that has been so dominant in almost every aspect of business, the arts, and the news in general, that people are already thoroughly sick of it before its full effects have even been felt.
A recent article in Bluegrass Today about what seems like a very useful book, designed to help musicians navigate and make use of this technology (BandBoost by Tim Johnson), generated quite a bit of controversy in the comments section. I’m pretty sure some of those comments were written with AI, using this prompt, “Help me write a comment for an online bluegrass music publication expressing my displeasure with AI, using the bare minimum of profanity.”
In fairness to Tim Johnson, a lot of the backlash had more to do with some provocative statements made in the article about the book, not with the book itself. Referring to those who resist the use of AI as “a few holdouts,” the article adds, “. . . that war is over and their side lost. AI is a genie that won’t go back in the bottle.”
One reader in the comments said, “This is ridiculous. According to who is this battle over?” The reader went on to suggest that the low standards of AI were exemplified by the graphic portrayal of bluegrass instruments at the top of the article, the kind of reality-bending graphic design we’re almost getting used to, like the three-string bass, a dobro with a banjo bridge and completely random inlay work. I would counter that a three-string bass is exactly what’s needed for a three-fingered bass player, also not an unusual sight in AI graphics.
Of course AI in our business is controversial for a reason: it’s already having a marked effect on the livelihood of bluegrass musicians and people involved in related fields, like graphic design discussed above, songwriting, studio work, and loan-sharking.
Human beings have been known throughout our civilization for never thinking about the long term effects of something that seems efficient or profitable at the time. This applies to everything from automation that leads to a reduced labor force, and therefore to increased unemployment, to an agrochemical that increases crop yield and therefore profit in the short term, but may have unintended long term consequences, economic and environmental.
Perhaps it’s fair or realistic, though, to say that “the genie won’t go back in the bottle,” for better or worse, as though the tractor was ever going to be abandoned in favor of a return to the traditional draft horse, or we were going to go back to keeping paper records of everything and throwing our computers away, as appealing as it might sound some days.
Is accepting it and embracing it in all its forms a forgone conclusion, though? It’s worth thinking just a few years down the road to the future we might be creating: once the songwriters, studio musicians, DJs, and music journalists have all been replaced or reduced to the one or two people who write the prompts, what will we all do, and what happens to human creativity, or even soul or good taste?
It’s interesting that the safer jobs nowadays are the very ones we were always told would become obsolete with increased automation and technological advances, namely the manual labor jobs, skilled or unskilled: the call center operators or the writers of training manuals are all looking pretty replaceable now, but the janitors who have to keep the offices clean or the people who build the office buildings and data centers are people we still need.
What might we have left in the bluegrass music world, when AI is generating all the “art” and taking care of most of the business?
Here are a few jobs we can still consider safe:
Festival parking attendant – Until a robot with a bright orange T-shirt can be trained to do this, we’re still pretty safe.
Food truck operator at a festival – ChatGPT still can’t make a decent taco.
Roadie/guitar tech – even if the instruments on stage are just being used for appearance, while AI-generated music is coming through the speakers, someone still needs to help lug these things around, help set things up on stage, etc.
Groupie – while not necessarily a paid position, the need for human contact is still going to exist in our new world.
Luthier – this will be a relief to many, because even if playing actual music on instruments becomes strictly an amateur activity done purely for the enjoyment or the novelty of it, you still need a good-sounding guitar to play around the house.
See? We’ll still have lots to do. Stop worrying.
If I retire the band, an AI voice named “Oscar” replaces me on the radio, and this column is generated weekly by asking ChatGPT to do things like “write a humorous Hallmark-style Christmas movie plot involving Chris Thile,” you’ll find me, unemployed, sitting in the corner, listening to my LP of Jimmy Martin Good ‘n’ Country, relishing every scratch and pop in the record. A sandwich or something would really be appreciated.
