Ep 43: AI Never Made Me Cry

In this often requested episode, John takes a bit more time to share his thoughts on AI and its use in music. He addresses some of the fears and talks about humankind's long battle with any new technology. He also suggests we may be asking the wrong questions regarding AI.

Buckle up for an extended episode that is sure to be a favorite.

Transcript

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You are listening to the Gig to Live Podcast. Welcome everyone. I'm John Foltz and I'm a full-time working musician. This podcast is about building a music life that holds up over time. It's practical, enjoyable, sometimes uncomfortable, but it's always about helping you stay in the game and actually enjoy the life that you're building. We'll meet some wonderful working musicians from time to time. So whether you're just getting started or you've been doing this for years, you're in the right spot. This podcast is for you. Hi everyone. Welcome to the show today. Hey, I hope your gigging is going well right now. I hope you're in a good season. A few episodes ago, I interviewed a very interesting guy who is using AI unapologetically to make music that he pairs with videos that he creates based on the public domain works of Edgar Allan Poe. I don't know if you heard that episode. His name is Seth Abstract. You know, that's his artist's name. It was a fascinating conversation to me. And it was in response to a message that I got from a friend that asked, how do we keep AI at bay when we're songwriting? Which I thought was a great question. And I have been wanting to dive deeper into the AI conversation since then. Well, probably before then, but it's really been a hot topic in my mind, uh, you know, at the forefront of my mind since that conversation. So guess what? Today is the day. So join me, my friends, on a journey through my crowded head as we talk about AI. Human beings have had a long history of mistaking technological change for the start of some kind of apocalypse and the end of all humankind. In the late 1960s, uh laser scanning was invented. And it showed up in the first supermarket in the mid-70s in Ohio. I know, it seems like it's been around forever, but mid-70s in Ohio, first supermarket to have those UPC codes scanned. And then, get this, it wasn't until the 1980s when UPC scanning became more universal in stores. And believe it or not, it wasn't until the 90s that that code scanning was pretty much universal in stores. In 1990, I worked for a small store in Grass Valley, California. It was called Amos's Alta Sierra Market. And the owner, Greg, learned, I loved Greg, he's no longer with us. He learned that I was handy and asked if I could install scanners into the cabinetry that already existed at the checkout counters. I managed the uh the dairy department, but man, I was excited to have a little construction project. It was crazy. In religious circles, of which I was a part, all the people could talk about was how it was ushering in the mark of the beast, this code scanning. Oh man, this is the beginning of the end. Religious leaders have condemned everything from the the printing press to novels to recorded music to TV as major threats to morality. They demonize so many things. And there's stories I used to hear about from nineteenth century America of crazy strict religious groups that would go into churches and homes and they would saw off the legs of pianos because they believed that the instruments were encouraging dancing and temptation and, you know, all of those worldly pleasures. Whether every one of those stories is true really doesn't matter to me. Uh I heard those stories quite a few times, but I I I wouldn't doubt if it's far from the truth. Every generation has found something new to blame for the end of civilization, the end of humankind. But, you know, before I go on, it rem talking about the the Puritans or the religious groups sawing off legs off pianos reminds me of a joke that we used to say as kids. You ready for this? Why do Baptists discourage premarital sex? Answer. Because it may lead to dancing. I always like that one. We don't just question new technology. I mean, you don't have to be religious to question technology. Uh I'm just I was just trying to bring up those stories. But we've always questioned new technology, and not only that, we we fear it. We ridicule it. We demonize it. Sometimes we try to destroy it because uh you've probably heard the stories about the early 1800s. There was a group called the Luddites, and they were textile workers. You know, they were weavers. Uh they made blankets and stuff, and they would smash weaving machines in factories because they believed that the machines were stealing their jobs. Well, they were kind of right. But musicians have been through this before. The phonograph was supposed to kill all live performances. Radio was supposed to empty all of the concert venues. There would be no concerts. Electric guitars. People said, ah, these aren't real instruments. And uh what is happening to the guitar? Synthesizers. They were going to replace bands totally. No more bands. Drum machines. Well, gosh, if they can if they can emulate a drummer, they're gonna eliminate a drummer, right? So Napster, oh my goodness, remember the Napster conversations? It was gonna destroy the music business. Streaming of music, oh my gosh, that's a whole nother world. Streaming was going to make music worthless. It just seems like every major innovation in technology has been greeted by someone standing on a soapbox saying to the world, this is the end. It's over. And now it's AI's turn to be the demon. And oh, I get it. To be clear, I have not made up my mind about AI. I will say that right up top here. Partly because the landscape is constantly changing and new questions are constantly rising to the surface. And I feel like sometimes, as soon as I form a thought about AI, I change my mind because I get new information. And really that that's just the nature of adapting to new ways of living. We can't possibly form all of our opinions at once when it comes to this kind of technology. We can certainly have warnings and concerns, and we can celebrate certain things, but but time has a way of informing our thoughts. Technology changes. Maybe we hear some stories where the technology's actually helped someone, and you know, we're a fan. Uh, maybe we're a fan of the technology, and then we hear a story of how that same technology has hurt someone, and then we say, uh-oh. In the big world of AI, uh, there are huge concerns with things like algorithm bias, uh, because models are trained by humans with biases and you know, garbage in, garbage out. There are accountability issues with AI, like uh who do we blame when things go wrong, who gets sued, who goes to jail, who pays the price? That's a rabbit hole. Oh my goodness. Read about the crazy flaws of AI prejudice in the justice system and in the healthcare system. But I'm gonna stick to music today since that's what we talk about on this show. In the music world, AI surfaces so many ethical concerns like the issues of ownership and privacy and theft, financial compensation, licensing, royalties, authorship, the use of the public domain, like my friend I talked to a few weeks ago, copyright laws, fraud, integrity, transparency, honesty. I mean it it's endless. And then on top of all of that, we have these environmental concerns that affects all of artificial intelligence. AI data centers are consuming more electricity today than a small country, uh like one of those centers. In some countries, they're building data centers where they still burn coal. And you know, coal is used to generate electricity and it's heating up the planet even more. Millions of gallons of fresh water are being used daily on a single data center, and it's creating real water consumption issues for the towns in the surrounding area. And then there's the building of these centers in areas where land is cheaper, but water is more scarce. And to top it off, some of these are being built in the hottest areas of the country, like Phoenix and Arizona. In some ways, it's interesting to me that the AI conversation is such a hot topic right now. I think it's because of the way that technology advances exponentially. I mean, we knew it was coming, right? The science fiction movies and books, they they told us years ago. Surprise! Robots are taking over the world. If you ever want to go down a real rabbit trail on early AI experiments with musicians, you have to check this out. Look into David Bowie's collaboration with his friend on a software that would take Bowie's sentences that were inputted into this into the software, and then they would randomize the words and the phrases to spark new lyrical ideas for Bowie. That tech friend of his went on to invent uh what we know today as Grace Note, which is the company that you can thank for recognizing the songs on your car stereo when they're played over the airwaves, and they display the title and the artist and the album information. That came from GraceNote. That software that Bowie used and played part in the invention of was called the Verbisizer. And there's a great video on YouTube of David Bowie messing with it back in '97. Really fun. Check it out. But even further back than that, I remember uh a program in the late 80s on early Macs, where you could play MIDI into the Mac with a real instrument, and then the software would analyze that music in real time, and it would create these really crude backing tracks uh that were based on the algorithm, and it was called the Jam Factory. It was sold so musicians could create a whole song around what they were inputting into the software. Jam Factory would analyze your notes and your chords, and it would generate its own complex backing tracks, its own riffs, and its own various accompaniments. It jammed along with you. And it gave you ideas. Uh ideas that, you know, maybe came from your original idea, but they but it wasn't yours. It didn't originate with you. Ideas that didn't really originate with you. Does that sound familiar? Sure. And it used all of the magic maths to create based on your original input. But some might argue that Bowie and Jam Factory still relied on human input. And some could argue that current AI is doing the same. It relies on our input, right? Because AI is only going to create something based on our prompts. Um, but then it's going to create something that in many cases people are claiming as their own intellectual property because it came from their prompts. That is a lot to think through. And here's where I think that we may get things wrong sometimes. Maybe. I don't know. I I'm talking off the top of my head. But we spend so much time arguing about whether technology is good or bad, that we forget to ask, is that even the right question? Technology itself, I I don't think is is really the hero or the villain. But you can't always stay that neutral when it comes to the effects of that technology, the the fallout of that technology. You know, we've been having this conversation forever. Aristotle I learned about this in my communication studies. Aristotle argued that knowledge or skills, as in this case, uh you know, technology, they are morally neutral. So according to ancient Greek thought, technology is morally neutral because uh, for example, a doctor can learn all a doctor can learn, and then heal you with their skills. With those same skills, they could secretly plot your death. For all the things that AI can really do, there's one thing that it's never done for me. AI has never made me cry. It has never wowed me with poetic device. It's never stopped me in my tracks with a with a clever phrase. I I I really hang on to phrases and songs, and my wife teases me about this. She'll hear me say something about a song sometime, and then uh apparently I say it a hundred times because she'll repeat it down the line. She'll go, ooh, yeah, man, that that's a great lyric right there. She teases me all the time about it. But AI's never done that to me. AI has never reminded me of my mom. AI has never transported me back to some summer night when I thought life was super simple. It never made me pull the car over because a lyric or a sound rocked my world and made me say, What is going on? That actually happens to me a lot of the times. I remember when smells like Team Spirit. Team Spirit smells like Teen Spirit came out on the radio. I was driving in uh Cedar Ridge, California, and I pulled my little Honda over to the side of the road, and I said, What is happening? AI has never made me say, oh man, I wish I wrote that one. AI has never been on stage in some smoky bar and accidentally forgot the words and turned it into the best moment of the night, or made me laugh. AI has never stood on a stage with bloodshot eyes and, you know, a broken and bleeding heart tearing its chest wide open and telling a story. AI has never found a way to make complete strangers feel understood. And you know, maybe someday it will. But until then, I think sometimes we as musicians are asking the wrong questions. And instead of worrying about whether AI is going to replace us, maybe we should be asking what it can never replace. Because that's really where our future lives. That's where we dig in. That's the stuff we need to talk about. So drumroll please. The top ten things AI cannot replace. Number one humanity. Doy. But humanity will always matter more than technology. So there's this huge fear, right? That oh man, AI can already produce music that sounds so convincing. It's it's replacing people. Ah and and as it improves, uh many people wonder if audiences are going to eventually stop caring about whether another human being wrote that song, if if another human being was even behind that song in the first place. But the truth is that people don't just connect with melodies or even a lyric. I mean, certainly we do, but even greater than that, we connect with stories and personalities and struggles and victories. We we connect with people's imperfections. So AI can predict what note comes next, maybe, but it can't live a life that is worth telling the world about. Technology can't share its deep secrets. It doesn't really have dirt on its hands. I mean, it does, but it's not writing songs about it. It's never fallen in love, it's never buried a parent, it's never watched a kid grow up. Uh, it's never recovered from addiction. It's never had to stand on a stage uh in the spotlight in some gross smelling place uh on the worst week of its life. Those experiences are like they're the real stuff. They're the raw material of great art. Uh so don't spend your career trying to sound more like a machine. Spend it trying to become more human, right? Or we're not gonna we're not gonna spend our time trying to sound like a machine. We want to spend it becoming more human. Beyond that, when we hear artists, we connect with them in a way that psychologists call parasocial interaction. It's an interesting phenomenon. We we take what we know about that artist, we take what we think we know anyway, uh subconsciously, and it flavors our interpretation of the song. So when I hear Johnny Cash sing, for instance, I I don't just hear a voice. I I mean I I see Johnny Cash. I hear his history, I hear his drug addictions, uh, I hear the stories of his early life, and I hear about the mistakes he's made in his faith and his regrets and this super rocky twisted road to redemption, and it just kind of makes it more legit, right? No matter what he sings. So when he does a a cover of a song like Hurt by Nine Inch Snails, uh uh Hurt becomes his uh because he's Johnny. We hear it in a different way. When I hear Taylor Swift sing about a breakup, it falls differently because the history and the stories that surround her, even if they're not true. And believe me, she's aware, she capitalizes on that stuff. When Alanis Morissette sings, every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back, I hope you feel it. Now can you feel it? We go, whoa, whoa, girl, that Alanis is a badass. You tell him Alanis, and we believe her. The personhood of music matters in our brains. It's always helped us to interpret music. It's just the way it is. We will never connect to a computer like that. Number two. It can't replace you. There's only one you. If AI can instantly generate songs in almost any style, people say, then musicians may feel this pressure to sound more generic rather than sounding original. Musicians may feel like it's hard to compete and they need AI to make them something better than they are. Okay, but your your greatest competitive advantage has never been your way with words, your vocabulary. I mean, you might be great at it. I I like I like a good turn of phrase. Uh it's it's never really been your skill on your instrument. It's your perspective, it's your story, it's your struggle. Nobody else grew up where you did in the way you did with the people you grew up with. Nobody else has your sense of humor, your failures, your influences, or your life experiences. Those things matter because they come from you. AI is predictable. And technically, it gets stronger the more predictable that music becomes because it's only copying what's out there. Your job is to become less predictable. My job is to become less predictable. Don't ask what the market wants. Ask what we have to offer that no one else has. We bring our meanness, our you-ness to the music. Whatever it is, that matters. There is only one you. Number three, AI is not going to replace relationships. If everyone has unlimited access to endless AI music, oh will anyone care about musicians anymore? I mean, are people gonna stop trusting musicians and not believing that they're actually the ones creating? Will musicians all become suspect? I've actually heard this before. Well, this is where the gigging musician has no reason to fear. Your presence in people's lives is a major commodity. People don't become lifelong fans of yours because of downloadable files. They become lifelong fans because of the moments that they have with you, because of the conversations after the show, because of that birthday request that you played for them or reinterpreted, because of that funny story that you told between those songs, because of a shared memory with friends as they and their friends came out to celebrate a milestone. And guess what? You were there. Technology creates content, but musicians, like you and me, we build relationships. Those are completely different businesses. The deeper our relationships become, the less vulnerable we are to technological change. It's just a fact of the matter. Number four, it will never replace the thrill of the craft. I had someone talk to me not too long ago because their son was learning how to play guitar. They were asking me if I could help them find a guitar for their son. And they said casually in the conversation, uh, they wondered if those days were going to fade away at some point where kids were not going to be interested in learning how to play an instrument because of AI. Huh. I think that's that's actually an interesting fear. I think that even if AI eventually produces, you know, flawless performances, which they are not flawless right now, uh, it can't replace what the process of learning an instrument does for a musician. So learn the instrument anyway. Even if AI advances to some level that blows our minds even more than it already has blown our minds, the journey is still worth the taking. And if you play an instrument, you know that. And I think humans will always come back to this. Even if we forget for a while, we always come back to the thing that we love. I mean, I used to travel with ridiculous amounts of gear, and now I am so stripped back, I only put a little bit of reverb on my guitar and my voice. The other night someone posted on Instagram a video of me from a show. They were a stranger to me. And that the little uh tagline, the text on their their story said, uh I prefer a little acoustic guitar and a harmonica. She didn't say this, but my my simple skills coming from a person met her in a way that technology just can't. Why? Because I love what I do. I love the thrill of the craft, and that comes through. It comes through for you too. When you lean into it, learning music changes us. Music changes the person that is learning it, the discipline, the patience, the listening, the frustration and wanting to throw our instrument against the wall, the collaboration with other people and the confidence that we build and the resilience over time because we get up, you know, beat up here and there, the joy that we get from playing, that is always going to be the main attraction. And some are going to sidestep that for a while or altogether. It's always been that way. The milli vanillies of the world will always exist and they will rise to capitalize on an easier way. But time finds them out. And that's not really our concern, you and I. No. The gigging musician? No. Nothing can replace the joy of our fingers on an instrument making the sounds that move our souls and move other souls. Number five. Authenticity. Some people think that if AI floods the market with a million songs, uh, then authentic music is going to get buried. People will eventually not care about the artist's story. They're going to lose the ability to tell the difference between a legit story and an AI story. But you know what? History suggests the opposite. Uh handmade furniture has not disappeared. Uh, just because the mass production market arrived, there is still handmade furniture, and it is sought after. In my part of the country where I'm at right now, in the Midwest, furniture craftspeople are everywhere. The guy that's building Adirondack chairs that are shaped like the state of Michigan. Oh yeah, that guy. There's a few of those guys, actually. The Amish roadside swings that are made out of logs. Oh man, I love those things. The guy that's carving owls and bears out of tree trunks at the side of the road, that stuff, people want it. Better yet, if they can see it being made, like the guy who carves owls. Man, I loved watching that. Uh craft beer, it didn't disappear because large breweries existed and started buying up, you know, little craft breweries. No, as a matter of fact, there was just this huge resurgence of craft beer. Farmers markets, they didn't disappear because grocery stores opened. Farmed table became huge. I will stop and buy sweet corn from the stand with the lady on the corner before I buy it at the store. I love that stuff. It's authentic. Authenticity often becomes more valuable when the cheap alternatives kind of rise to the top and become abundant. It's always been that way. Sometimes, you know, there's a lull, but authenticity always wins eventually. If entirely human-made music gets overshadowed, it's only going to be for a short time. It will eventually rise to the top. It will be sought after. Actually, we're already seeing that happen. There's an old saying that shows up in various ways that says basically you don't get good at spotting counterfeit money by studying counterfeit bills. You spot the counterfeits by studying the real thing. It's probably oversimplified, but there's some real grit, some real truth to that. The more that the experts study the feel and the smell and the weight and you know the markings on real legal tender, then they can better spot the fake ones. And counterfeit money isn't dangerous because it's different. It's dangerous because it's it's almost almost the same. So maybe the answer for us is becoming so deeply unmistakably human that no one mistakes us for a counterfeit. Okay. I'm having fun talking about this. Number six, AI is not going to replace the experience. It's just not going to do it. Do not be afraid that live music will completely fade away. If you're marketing background music, if you know, if you just sit in the corner, background music, then yeah, AI may eventually become your competitor. But if you're creating unforgettable evenings for people, you know, people take out their phones for those Instagrammable moments. Uh, if you're creating date nights that people remember, you're selling something entirely different and AI is not going to replace that. Nobody has ever tipped a jukebox because it made their anniversary special. Nobody came up and hugged a playlist after a wedding. Build experiences and you'll never go out of style. I really believe this. Even if people try it for a time, they will crave your presence. Number seven, it's not going to replace community and belonging. So there's been this fear over the years that concerts are going to fade away and restaurants and bars are going to completely give up on live music. Uh, and and now with AI, people think, well, restaurants can eventually make their own music using AI that fits the scene, right? Their own vibe, their own brand. And that's an interesting thing to think about. You know, what if wedding couples start using AI to make their own songs for their wedding, and it includes their story and stories about their family and friends? Well, that's really something to think about. That might happen. But fans don't simply consume music. They become part of a community that shares memories and traditions and inside jokes and concerts, live music. They fall in love with you and your story, and there's something about live music that can never be replaced. If it faded away in all of these venues, people will still seek it out. And we, you and I, the musicians, we are always going to find places to play where people want to see us. If tomorrow every restaurant and brewery fades away, then we will be innovative and we will create new venues. And you know what? People will show up. Because the human touch and what happens when humans bump up against other humans, when a human is providing music that will never be replaced. Oh man, this reminds me of a story. I'll try not to cry as I tell it. I had an uncle who was confined to a wheelchair for years, and he lived on his own, except there was like the occasional medical nurse visit at his home. Well, my parents picked him up and they brought my uncle to their house when I was a kid. Uh, and my uncle came over for a visit. And at one point in the visit, my mom noticed that my uncle was kind of holding his neck in a strange position. So she got up and she stood behind his wheelchair, and she put her hands on his shoulders and began to massage his shoulders. And he kind of jerked a little bit and he started to cry. He started actually to to weep. He started to whimper. And my mom asked if he was okay, and he said, Yeah, it's oh man, it's hard to get this out. He said, It's just that no one has touched me in so long. I will never forget that. Musicians, people need people. We need community, we need the human touch, we need to feel like we belong. Number eight, following the musician. It's not going away. People people don't really follow songs. When people come to see you multiple times, what do we call those people? We don't call them your listeners. Hey, I have so many listeners in the audience tonight. No, we call them our followers because people have always loved being invited along for the ride with a musician. I am in the habit of following bands. Are you? I bet you are. Sure. Sometimes I'll fall in love with a band and a song, and that will be that for that artist. But but the more thrilling thing is to have a connection with an artist or a band and then do the deep dive over the years, collect the magazines with them on the cover. Even when you can read the stuff on the internet, I still buy magazines, read their biographies, watch their documentaries, go to their concerts, watch them evolve, watch them change, grow, adapt. We love that stuff. People get super protective of musicians, too. They sometimes get mad at their musicians. They sometimes don't like it when they take musical detours, and they love it when that musician gets back to sounding like their old selves. Uh, we'll argue over our favorite records and talk about which time period was best for whatever band it is. Uh people defend their musicians against the critics. Man, don't don't you talk about my musician like that. When musicians reinvent themselves, there is always a reaction. Whatever the reaction is, there is one. I don't know if you remember this story, but back in 1999, Garth Brooks did a concept album. It was called, officially the title was Garth Brooks and the Life of Chris Gaines. And it was supposed to be the greatest hits album for a character that he created, and it was the soundtrack from a movie called The Lamb. That that movie never got made, by the way. Well, so funny for me to remember this. Some people were totally confused about this album. Some people got so mad at Garth Brooks. Some people wondered if it was real, and Garth Brooks changed his personality. Why is he wearing makeup now? Some said he sold out. Some totally missed the point. They missed the concept. They took the thing way too literal. It was so interesting to watch. But those of us who live in the world of poetic device and metaphor and marketing and experimentation and, you know, theater and abstract concepts, we got it. And honestly, I still frickin' love this album. I think it's so fun. And it has fantastic songwriters on it. It didn't hurt that most of the songs were written by some of my very favorite songwriters, Gordon Kennedy, Wayne Kirkpatrick, Tommy Sims. I had a long history with those guys because they all wrote and played in the Christian music scene when I was young. I was a part of that, and Tommy Sims played bass with Bruce Springsteen on the Road and Tommy Sims, Gordon Kennedy, and Wayne Kirkpatrick wrote the song Change the World that Eric Clapton masterfully did. So man, I ate that Chris Gaines stuff up to this day. I still cover the song It Don't Matter to the Sun off of that Chris Gaines album. And I cover Change the World as well. Anyway, Garth Brooks proved that sometimes people are so connected to an artist that they become territorial. I mean, they get livid when the artist changes things too much. But no one is getting mad at ChatGPT because its latest version isn't like its creative period of 2024. Could you imagine? Even if you aren't a big time artist, there are people who love following your story. They come to your shows, they tell others about the time that they talked with you after the concert. They love it when you answer them on Facebook, they follow you on Instagram. They love it when you recognize them. It makes them feel like they're part of your journey. And computers don't invite people along for the ride. Number nine, AI is not going to replace musical risks. So the fear is that if AI can always suggest the safest lyric and the strongest chord progression and the cleanest mix or whatever they design AI to do, is it going to stop musicians from taking creative risks? Because, you know, now AI is taking the risks. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's you. Maybe we should always be a punk rock. So many great artists over the years have made decisions that temporarily seemed like a bad idea. Like we the the aforementioned Garth Brooks, uh Bob Dylan. You know, he plugs in an electric guitar and he's booed. Off the stage by his loyal traditional folk audiences. That was a risk. Johnny Cash. He played in prisons. That was a risk. Taylor Swift. She left country music and became a pop star. That was a risk. Radiohead, I love Radiohead. They have an album called OK Computer that's insane, and they follow it up with this album called Kid A, which I love, but uh it was an album that confused so many fans because they looped rhythms and they did away with the heavy, innovative guitar riffs, and they majorly overproduced Tom York's voice, and they kind of entered this electronic era. That was a huge risk. None of those decisions came with a guarantee, and it could have damaged their careers. Maybe for some of them it did, but only temporarily. Those artists have not gone anywhere. I mean, even the ones who have passed away are just as popular as ever. AI isn't wired to think that way, though. And in the grand scheme of things, we love punk rock. AI is designed to copy and predict and to increase the probability of success, but punk rock does the opposite. It gives the finger to all of that. Sometimes the best musicians piss people off on purpose. They take a road less traveled, they spit in the face of anything that's conventional. They go against the grain just to get a rise out of people. They make the establishment want to look over its shoulder in fear. Nobody is ever going to have a massive mosh pit and react to AI songs that are being blasted outside the DNC to protest a two-party system like what happened when Rage Against the Machine took their risk and they did a free concert in the streets. Oh man, go watch those videos. AI is never going to create a prince or a David Bowie or a Beyoncé or a Madonna or a Springsteen or a U2 or a Metallica or a Billy Eilish or a Kendrick Lamar. No way. Number ten. Anticipation. So maybe we're afraid the AI is going to replace us and make us irrelevant. But you know what? Think about this. We know what it feels like to wait for that long-awaited album to come out, for that one band to come to our city. And it doesn't even have to be a big name star. There's regional artists and small-scale artists that create that same kind of anticipation for us. We know what it's like to wait for that artist's new song, to hear what they're going to share at their show, to watch their Instagram. Oh man. When the lights go down and the crowd starts getting excited and all the voices raise up and the shadows walk out on the stage. Anticipation. I saw the police in 2008. They hadn't played together for over two decades on a worldwide tour. I was in high school and loved the police when their synchronicity album came out and they had that world tour, but I never got to see them on that tour. I didn't have a chance until 2008 on their extension tour that they started the year before. And I can't explain what it was like to feel the tensions in the air and the pure joy and anticipation that was in that crowd. Message in a Bottle was the first song. I saw them with my friend Andy and his wife and my wife in Detroit. And you know what? I cried as soon as that song started. AI will never do that. Musician friends, fear not. No one is ever waiting in line for hours to see an AI show. No one's getting an autograph to add to their collection. No robot is signing their album. AI is not creating heroes. It's not making me spend half of my paycheck willingly and enthusiastically to see their concert. AI is not going to make me hop on a plane to go to some other city to see it. AI is not making me drive three hours to a show or pay for a hotel room after because I'm going to be too exhausted for that long drive back. AI is not making me insanely excited because 20 of my favorite AI bands are at the festival I'm at. Right? It's not making me buy a t-shirt. It's not taking me back to a place in time. No one is ever going to defend AI because the press said something about the latest AI tour. No one is ever taking their first date to see that AI band play at that speakeasy. Oh, I'll go on. I will never have a crush on my MacBook. There is no poster of my iPad going on my wall. I'm not going to read the biography of an AI robot. Nobody's getting a tattoo on their arm of their favorite AI song lyric. No one is naming their baby or their dog after AI. Just for fun. After I was done writing this podcast, because I write out my podcast episodes, I manuscript them because it's so uh easy to get lost. Sometimes I use a brief outline, sometimes I'll do it word for word. I don't want to lose my train of thought. I have things that I want to say to you. So I dropped my entire script, just for fun, into Chat GPT and asked if I sounded like AI. And I want to share the response it gave me. And you know what? Just for fun, let's have AI read to you what it thinks about my podcast. What do you think, AI robot voice?

SPEAKER_00 50:43

Overall, no. It doesn't read like typical AI generated writing. It has a strong personal voice, specific memories, opinions that evolve rather than preach, humor, rabbit trails, and storytelling that feel lived in rather than assembled. You wander. But not in the way most people think of wandering. You don't wander because you lose your point. You wander because you enjoy exploring the landscape around your point. That's part of your style. You make a statement, tell a story, introduce a historical example, remember something from your own life, crack a joke, and then eventually come back to the main road. It feels conversational, almost like someone thinking out loud. It also isn't overly polished, which actually helps its authenticity. That said, there are places where it slips into an AI-like rhythm, long lists of examples, and sections that explain a point after it's already been made.

SPEAKER_01 51:44

Ah, damn you AI voice, I do that for sure. Sometimes I will beat a point to death. That's my style. It's because I care and I like writing and I like podcasting. So you know what? Kiss my butt. Stay real. Stay honest, stay unique. Stay living without fear, stay consistent. Should I go on? I got a long list going here. Maybe I should. Because that's what I do. Is there anything you want to add, AI robot person? Stay creative, stay after it, stay hired. Haha. Good try. I say that way better than you. You suck.