Tobi Opeyemi Amure
Highlights
- Barack Obama believes AI lacks the creativity and nuanced expertise to replace music professionals.
- AI is redundant.
Barack’s ravenous devotion to music, his love for books, his impeccable fluency, and his tenderness for the vulnerable fabrics of society are some of the favourite traits of the former U.S. president. Instead of dropping a Spotify wrap or an Apple wrap, what Barack does is drop an exhaustive list of his favourite songs and artists.
As customary, the list ranges from Caribbean groovy songs to bouncy Afrobeat tunes, traversing the lofty rhythm of major R&B tracks. In 2020, Barack included one of Afrobeat’s sensations, Rema, as one of his favourite artists. In 2022, Afrobeats’ superstars like Burna Boy, Ayra Starr, Tems, and Rema made Barack’s elite list again.
As a famous music addict, Barack has expressed what he thinks about the place of artificial intelligence in the global music industry. He thinks of AI as a second-year law associate without nuanced expertise and top-notch creativity to replace a music professional who has squashed many years in a corner, tirelessly working and enhancing the grit of their expertise.
AI is not messy
The clamour around AI has been its ebullient charge to replace and render many professionals useless since its algorithm can create and dissolve workload easily and faster. Barack noted that AI can proficiently churn out legal briefs or research memos but lacks the rigour to provide seasoned innovativeness, a reoccurring problem of some AI tools like ChatGPT and Bard AI.
During a recent episode of The Verge’s Decoder podcast, former US President Barack Obama said,
“People have asked me around AI, are there going to be artists around and singers and actors still, or is it all going to be computer-generated stuff?… My answer is, “For elevator music, AI is going to work fine.”
Barack Obama
Obama goes on to reiterate that AI technology has the ability only to make “predictable” music rather than “weird” or “messy” music.
“Bob Dylan or Stevie Wonder, that is different,” he says. “The reason is because part of the human experience, part of the human genius is it’s almost a mutation. It’s not predictable. It’s messy, it’s new, it’s different, it’s rough, it’s weird. That is the stuff that ultimately taps into something deeper in us, and I think there’s going to be a market for that.”
Barack Obama
The convergence of AI and the global industry has raised heated debates. The global technological advancement is good. It deserves the remarkable heights it has ascended. But right at the deck is how much human emotion is missing in the resonance of AI.
Tobi’s take
AI is doomed for immense success. Yet, its rise must incessantly absolve its ditch— an endless cycle. Obviously, AI proffers better navigation and humans with a sight for relevance must integrate its metrics into work. But AI can not replace every one. As Barack said, it can not replace the singer, the producer, or the AR because it is not messy— redundant, and redundancy triggers excitement. Music professionals should find ways to infuse AI into their works, but the fear of getting replaced by AI should never be entertained. As Barack rightly said, it lacks nuanced expertise.
