>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made last Tuesday.

After a conversation on this program with Kevin Surace, who is a tech entrepreneur.

He's really, in some ways one of the fathers of A.I.

in this country, and he is still doing really high profile work in the industry.

And so we had this conversation that left me wondering about music.

Kevin kept telling me, you can use A.I.

to finish your half written songs.

As someone who picked up a guitar in college and was never very good, I have a lot of half written songs and Kevin said, put it into Suno, let it finish it for you.

You don't have to finish it anymore.

He didn't say it quite that well.

You'll hear it in a second.

But his point was, I can be your co-writer now, and it's still your music.

And I felt uncomfortable with that.

And so this past weekend, for the first time, I downloaded Suno and I just played around with a little bit, and I wanted to see if you put in a prompt, if you put in a prompt, can it actually write a song in like 10 seconds?

Well, my prompt, here's an example.

This is a prompt I put in a prompt about an upbeat song about the need for strong public media at a time of change.

This is what it wrote.

And it took 12 seconds to create this song.

After I entered the prompt.

>> I need to get a little bit of good news when I can, but it's still free.

It's still true.

It's still need it like we always do.

We need public broadcasting.

We need public podcasting.

We need public broadcasting.

And I don't think it's ever gonna change.

>> Well, I think it's awful.

but 12 seconds is how long it took to create whatever that was.

There's a whole song, and it gave me two different versions of it.

I was very uncomfortable with it.

I got to be honest.

Very uncomfortable with it.

I played around a little bit more.

I thought about putting these half written songs.

I thought about putting one a Sarah De Valliere, half written songs, and I'm like, no, I can't do that.

That's got to be serious choice.

And I thought about it.

I, I want to have a conversation this hour about where we're going with music, because I am not all that comfortable myself.

And maybe I need an intervention.

Maybe I'm the dinosaur.

Maybe this is the future.

It's frankly, it's the present.

And so there are programs that will complete your art.

It will complete your poem.

It will complete your painting.

It will complete your song.

And we have to decide what is still belongs, what still belongs to the artist, what belongs to machine, and what are we willing to consume?

Let me welcome our guests who are going to help me with this.

My colleague Scott Regan, one of the great songwriters.

In fact, somebody who supports a lot of other songwriters around town.

And I don't know if you've ever supported a RoboCop songwriter.

I think it's all human beings.

>> Yeah, never.

Never.

I've never had any contact, really, with the A.I.

songwriting thing until this weekend after you asked me to be here.

Oh, no, I went on, and I prompted I did the same thing.

I prompted a write a song about two characters, time and money.

They have a relationship and they have troubles.

And then do it in three verses and add a chorus and addendum at the end, and they five seconds I had the whole song five seconds.

Two versions of it, and it actually sounded very much like yours.

It has a very the same sort of rudimentary, basic.

listen to me, okay?

Don't listen to me.

So sound to it.

>> So you didn't love it?

>> No, I didn't, I didn't love it, but I, I my nephew is a is an expert in A.I., so I called him and he said that with the songwriting there is many levels you can go in at.

And if you go in at the basic level, like we probably did, because I had never even touched it before.

Yeah.

it's it feeds it back to you.

Exactly.

You know, it's sort of like in the.

very literal, very little.

But there's a thing that you can do where you turn up the temperature, and the temperature is adding chaos to the idea.

So it sort of replicates maybe the human thoughts where you don't really know what you're thinking.

And if you up the I didn't get in deep enough to do it, but I guess if you upped the temperature, you can sort of get a more interesting feedback.

>> I have another example that I'll share in a moment that I think goes to what Scott is saying here.

And as much as I don't like the products I've seen so far, the songs, Scott's point is an important one here.

If you write a more sophisticated prompt, you probably can get something a little more sophisticated out and it's already kind of scary good at this.

Sarah De Valliere is here, a great songwriter.

a friend of this program who's helped, again with what Scott and so many people helped create over the years.

One of my favorite things, if all Rochester wrote the same song.

And so it's great to see you back here.

How are you, by the way?

>> I'm good.

>> Are you still you're still writing music?

>> I'm still writing.

The healing.

>> Is out there.

It's doing great.

>> It is?

Yes.

Yeah.

>> And people can pick that up now in any I writing on the healing.

>> No.

Absolutely none.

>> No.

>> All right.

Not not a drop.

No.

>> have you played around with any.

A.I.

programs?

>> Absolutely.

I actually even though it would be awesome and sexy to be, like, I'm just a full time musician, I, unfortunately have a day job, and my day job is I work for a very, very well-known tech company.

And actually I'm a technical architect.

That is my role.

And I am certified as an A.I.

specialist.

So I actually understand quite a bit.

Maybe not as much as Scott's.

>> So awkward.

>> No, no, no.

So I like I am I have mixed feelings about it.

It's a tool and it can be a tool used for for good or or not for good.

>> So we'll talk this hour about where you would draw lines.

And I think your perspective as both a tech worker and a songwriter will help inform some of that.

Jimmie Highsmith is here.

one of the great musicians in this town.

Welcome back to the program.

>> Thank you for having me.

I appreciate it.

>> And have you dabbled in A.I.

Jimmie Highsmith?

>> Absolutely not.

No, no, I wrote a book last year, actually, and I did it myself.

It took me two years to do it.

I refused use any A.I.

help with that.

I am not against A.I.

myself, but I want to truly be creative and I don't feel you can really be creative if you're relying on technology to help you be creative.

That's just my opinion.

as far as A.I.

music, I call it synthetic music.

It is music.

It is definitely music.

I like a little jingle.

That was kind of cool, but it's synthetic music, you know?

I was just talking to Syria about it.

I've work with artists.

Khalil Thomas, who was signed to Bad Boy.

So I've met and worked with Puff Daddy, P Diddy, who is a celebrated producer.

But if you said, where's middle C on a piano, he couldn't tell you.

He couldn't tell.

I mean, the 80s, you know, we started the sampling thing and that was, to me, just a musical collage.

You're taking different samples and creating a song.

You're not really writing anything.

To me, this is just another level of that.

You're just now using technology to create this music that I call synthetic music, you know?

Are they really artists or are they musicians?

I call them artists because they're creating something beautiful, but to me, they're not musicians.

>> Yeah, that's an interesting point.

And I think I think I probably need to listen, I hate to say this.

I probably need to listen to more.

I created music, I'll use the word music.

To Jimi's point, it is music.

>> It's music.

okay.

Synthetic music, synthetic music.

>> I need to listen to more synthetic music to see how good it can get, because I think Scott's point is an important one.

If you're writing a short prompt, you're going to get something very literal and not all that impressive.

So here's another example.

I asked Suno to write a song.

about the struggle to form relationships and to find love in the age of A.I.

not knowing what is real and what is not real anymore.

And Rob's going to kill me.

But this is just it won't last that long.

The engineer is going to hate this, but this won't last.

This is what it sounds like.

>> Are you an angel?

That's what I'm thinking.

I think it probably.

Probably not.

Are you the devil?

You probably not.

I think I love you, I think I love you, I think I love you in the end of a.

>> I don't even know what that means.

I think I love you in the age of A.I.

>> It's not a very logically structured.

>> No, because.

>> It's.

>> So literal.

It has a short prompt.

>> But it it serves a purpose.

It has an Aaba form.

It sounded like.

>> Yes, it does.

>> And it's it's music is a Grammy winning song.

Probably not.

>> I hope not.

>> It's still music at the end of the day.

>> Jimi, if that wins a Grammy.

>> We're retiring the Grammys.

>> Well, you know, and being Grammy nominated myself, I, I, you.

>> Know.

>> It's a huge honor.

But honestly, my who the people getting Grammys nowadays is based on record sales and popularity versus true artistic talent.

In my opinion.

>> Agreed.

You know, and networking.

>> And and.

>> Just how much money you have to put towards.

that because.

>> Believe me, payola is real.

It's still going on.

And if you buy enough radio play, you'll drive the Billboard charts and get the attention of the people in the Academy to get a nomination.

It's a fact.

So you have artists like, you know, some of these, I hate to say, some of these hip hop artists, you know, got 20, 40 Grammy nominations, literally.

And the music, you know, in my opinion, I'm not the target audience.

It's just it's not very good music.

Yeah.

It's just not very good music.

Yeah.

That's just my opinion.

I'm sorry sir.

>> No, no, no, I just want to piggyback on that.

Like, I think that A.I.

is just doing more it is doing more and more quickly of what's already been happening, which is just mass producing music and throwing money.

At music.

And to just mass create it to serve a function.

And the function is to make more money.

And that's already been happening.

That's not A.I.

is not like some new thing doing that.

It's just that A.I.

is now the new tool in which this can be done even more effectively and quickly.

So all the people who are doing it manually before of mass producing music that doesn't necessarily have real creativity or real soul.

Yes.

Maybe like their jobs are a little bit at risk.

And I'm not saying that that doesn't matter, but I don't think A.I.

is like inventing that.

A.I.

is just doing it more efficiently.

so I feel like it really is just a tool at the end of the day.

And, and it's just doing that.

What Jimi was talking about and beyond, just more efficiently.

>> We are living in a world of right now.

When I was a kid, you'd get a TV dinner, take 30 minutes to make it, 30 minutes or pop, pop popcorn with 15 minutes to make that where now, two minutes.

You got popcorn?

Five minutes.

You got an instant meal.

And it's everything right now and no one's.

I remember being a kid, not a kid.

A teenager with a credit card, a big eraser, paper and a pencil.

Writing out charts, lead sheets.

You know what I mean?

now it's all digital.

Now it's crazy.

And on top I have friends who are losing their jobs.

They're the people who work in L.A.

and do music for video games, and they're losing their jobs because it's cheaper to do an A.I.

than to pay somebody to do it.

And this is really happening right now.

You know.

>> Jimi's right.

I mean, so my 13 year old's favorite band had a I guess they still do EPs.

They had a five song EP that just came out, and it was supposed to be out in the last week of August, and they wrote the five songs when they're it's three brothers in the band, and they wrote the five songs last year when their father was dying, and it was ruminations on things that they never had confronted.

And the week it was supposed to come out, they announced, we are still not ready.

We're still tweaking.

There's a few things that don't sound right, and my son's like, what?

Like like I.

>> Need that now.

I'm like, you didn't even know.

>> Two until two weeks ago that it was coming.

You don't need it now.

You can wait.

And so it finally comes out last week and he's like, oh, whatever they did, it was a good idea.

>> I'm like.

>> Yeah, that's what songwriters are trying to do.

They're trying to craft out even those little details.

Before the release of The Healing, I'm sure every note you wanted it in place, you you wanted every, every piece of balance, every piece of the powerful parts of every song.

You know, you could do it forever.

But if you care about the songwriting, it's not just about how much money can I make off this?

It's not just about how much of an earworm is this?

It's about what if, like a human being actually connects to this, that's a different thing, right?

Than an A.I.

created?

>> I can't do that.

And I don't care what anybody says.

I cannot do that right now.

And I I'm not convinced it'll ever be able to do that because, you know, now they're talking about AGI, which is a whole other monster.

I don't I'm not convinced it'll ever be able to do that, because now we're talking about the human soul.

Right.

Because that's what I mean.

If you believe in a soul anyways, I guess I do.

and I think that a lot of musicians do, because that is where I should say not just musicians, artists.

Artists tend to believe in that because it's hard to explain where this really comes from.

Again, if you're just creating music to serve the function of like just making something that's going to make money.

okay, yeah, you can just cobble something together or use A.I.

to cobble something together.

But like what you were talking about there, trying to write songs based on like this experience they're having of their father dying.

That's an experience they're really having that's so deep.

Like inside of them, that it's not something that you can just cobble together to.

I know you can't even you can't even outsource that to another human being.

You just can't.

It's something that you have to do and you have to put in the work to do that.

>> Although I will say this Scott Regan, I agree with Sarah's point that that is the kind of personal connection that I cannot, by definition, cannot achieve.

But I think as it gets more sophisticated, to your point about talking to your nephew and how good this stuff can get, I think we will convince ourselves very soon that I can do those things.

That's what scares me.

It's like, what are we connecting to?

And I think we are going to convince ourselves that it is capable of understanding human emotion.

Does that.

>> Worry you?

That's a leap.

That's a leap.

You think that's understanding emotions as a whole?

That's a very big leap.

>> I don't think it can understand emotions.

I think we will assume that it can.

I think it will get good enough that we'll buy it.

>> Well, you know, the thing is, you talk about when you're talking about songs and making a lot of money, there's something about a song that connects with someone in multiple ways, and it's it's that it doesn't just connect with me, but you play like playing songs on a radio.

I'll have songs that connect to people, and it wouldn't be just one person.

But there is something about a song that has a quality to it that reaches deep inside of you, that also reaches deep inside of Jimmy, or Sarah, or, you know, or myself.

You know, there's something that everybody can sort of identify with.

That's really where hit songs come from, is that they relate to many people in many different ways, and I don't think I can do that.

I don't think I can do that.

And but I, you know, to take another point, I'm talking about using it as a tool.

If you are stuck and you don't, you get in a writer's block and you probably get in blocks where you don't have a thought.

If you go on and suggest something, maybe it comes up in four verses and you see like three lines, like you can take those that idea, those three lines, these two words that go together and string it together into something else.

So prompting in a different way, prompting yourself.

that's where that.

>> I'm glad you bring this up.

I want to listen to some of what prompted this whole conversation from last Tuesday.

What really stuck in my mind about this, because I'm probably looking at this as two.

Bifurcated, two snug when it's a spectrum.

If you put in a ten word prompt, I can write me a song about how beautiful Jimmy Jimmie Highsmith bald head is.

I called you Jimmy Bald Jimmy, and it's going to write a beautiful it's going to write a great song, I'm sure.

No, it's going to write a little jingle about Jimmy, about the way that you play.

I could ask it to do anything about you.

I could ask it.

Whatever your car you drive, it'll write a song.

But that's like a ten word prompt.

That's not my.

I don't think that's my work.

Now, if I took Sarah De Valliere half written song that you shared with me this weekend, and I put it into Suno and it finished it, there would be a debate about whether that's yours anymore or how much of it is yours.

So I want to listen to what Kevin Surace and I kind of debated last week.

Kevin is again, he's a he's an RIT grad.

he is so much smarter than me.

Understand that I cannot swim in his waters.

But in the tech world, he is a very, very important person.

He's one of the fathers of the digital assistant.

He created a program that basically became Siri in the late 90s.

I mean, it's a really interesting guy, and he's still doing great work, and I want to listen to this kind of little debate we had.

>> You know, what's great about A.I.?

Anyone, including a music or publishing, can use it or not use it.

It's your choice.

But take or use part of it.

>> So you've pointed to Suno in the past.

Suno is maybe the most sophisticated, one of the more sophisticated music programs.

It is.

And so I think about creation of art.

So take writer's block.

Anybody who's had to write a presentation, you're writing a book, you're writing poetry.

Everybody's had writer's block.

Musicians, songwriters have writer's block.

I know a ton of people.

My twin brother quit college to be an architect.

to go write music and play music and did that for years.

He has a ton of half written songs.

He's never finished, and conceivably he could put those into.

>> Soon you could put the half written songs.

Now, just recently into Suno and upload them.

It'll finish it for you and it'll do an arrangement and it'll add the bassline.

And I'm.

>> Saying, I don't think that would be his song.

>> It is.

>> I don't think so.

>> I think he came up with the melody.

>> I know, but he didn't write the last verse.

He didn't write.

>> The bridge.

But but let me but let me, let me give you some some other examples.

Right.

In the music world.

And I'm a musician also, I have a concert coming up at Jiva, October 26th.

I am using Suno and other A.I.

stuff in music for a lot of things.

So, for example, if I had a melody and I loved the melody, I would often as a musician, might have to then go to an arranger because maybe I'm not an arranger or an orchestrator, and I'd have to have them put in strings or put in this or put in that.

Right.

Maybe that would have to happen.

Maybe I would collaborate with someone and we'd say, I just can't get this bridge right.

Help me with that.

Give me some ideas.

Right.

That's why it would take months to get even a demo of a song.

Well, now I can have a demo of my song, whatever that means.

I'm the creator.

I'm not exactly the writer of every note, but I'm the creator.

And I can have Suno do the orchestration for me.

Place a singer in there and the whole thing sounds so good.

It's the best demo of a song.

It's better than going to the recording studio and hiring a bunch of people and doing it right, and then I can have 20 demos of that song in the next hour and decide which direction I want to go.

Then I can rip it apart and change it and move the chorus and move the bridge.

Now, I presented this recently to a group of musicians, and I showed how for a Broadway musical potential brand new musical, I could go from I don't have an I want song, which is a very big, important song in the musical.

It's how we get to to care about the main character, right?

I want, I want to be married, I want to live, I want to get cured of cancer, whatever it is.

Right?

And it brings the audience up.

And I said I don't have an I want song, so take this script that is written, tell me where the I want song goes.

Who should sing it?

Based on the last 30 years of Broadway hits?

And I want songs and then here are the lyrics.

I had a different model write the lyrics for me.

I had GPT five write the lyrics and then I fed the lyrics in to Suno and said, this is what this song represents, and this is the, the, the type of music I want.

This is what I want it to sound like.

And it's got to be a Broadway soaring ballad and blah blah blah.

A minute later I had something that was so good in front of people, right?

I did it in front of a bunch of musicians, and the room was still and cut in half, half the people said, I'm a musician and I have to start using this.

This is a game changer for what I do.

And the other half had some people screaming at me, rightly so, saying I've spent 45 years learning my craft and this thing just did it in, you know, in a minute.

>> We're losing our humanity.

They might say.

>> Hey, here's what I would say.

Do we use Auto-Tune in every single recording today?

Of course we do.

Why?

It cuts down the time in the recording studio by 80%.

We've been using tools.

We've been using EQ, we use all kinds of things.

>> GarageBand, drum tracks.

>> GarageBand drum tracks.

We've been using every TV show you watch has digital instrumentation.

There are no musicians playing that.

There's one person that played it all out in a keyboard.

They had literally a day to do a 30 minute TV show.

They send the music off, they got their ex $100 for that.

That's just how it's done.

It's been done that way for a decade, right?

Since we had digital audio workstations.

So we've been using these tools.

They're just getting better, and now we've got a tool that will arrange and create a demo song for us from from our inspiration.

And it doesn't create things on its own.

You have to inspire it.

>> That's Kevin Surace really one of the the big names in tech, and I and I was grateful for his time on this program last Tuesday.

I hope he will come back.

Jimmy is chomping at the bit here, so I'll start with you.

Jimmie Highsmith.

What do you what do you hear there?

>> So he's absolutely right.

Because I've been in the studio.

I've worked in studio on commercials and movie soundtracks.

And you're right, a lot of the music you hear is a simple person on a keyboard using samples of instruments to create certain sounds.

Obviously, going back to your point about Sarah's half written song, does he own the song?

Absolutely, unequivocally.

It's her song.

The I created the song based on what she offered.

That's her root of the song.

So yes.

Is it.

>> Still synthetic music?

>> Yes, it's synthetic music, but it's still her song.

>> okay, yeah.

>> Do I call these people musicians?

I call her musician.

But these folks who are have not studied music, who, if I said, tell me the difference between a dominant seventh chord and a minor seven chord would know what that is?

The flat third.

They're artists.

They're not musicians.

They don't understand music.

The pedigree of music, music, theory, counterpoint.

There are artists who have used this technology to create a sound Auto-Tune.

It's everywhere.

My albums say on the album album recorded without use of Auto-Tune.

I do not use it.

Everybody, even if there's some sax players, I'm not consider their names who do their saxophones in the studio.

I will play it over and over and over again until it's right.

I will not use Auto-Tune on anything.

The track I sent you, I recorded Linden Oaks, and it was a lot of takes because a lot of horn parts.

I don't use Auto-Tune.

I don't pitch anything.

I'm old school, so long story short, yes, the music is unequivocally the artist music.

The question is, is it an artist or musician?

Serious?

A musician who used A.I.

to create a song?

Some of these other folks out there have no idea about music theory or music itself.

They're artists to me.

>> okay.

and by the way, that was hypothetical.

He was saying, Sarah actually doesn't use A.I.

to create.

No, no, we're talking about in the scenario that we're talking about here.

Yes.

So what did you hear there from Kevin Surace?

>> Oh my God, I have so much to say.

But I, as Jimi was talking, I tried.

I have three, three points.

I'm going to just I'm going to just basically write read what I wrote down so I don't go overboard.

I just want to start off by saying that this person works for the tech industry, the tech industry has put in a lot of investment to use A.I.

They want to get a return on that investment.

They want us to use A.I.

So I'm sorry to be so blunt about it, but this person, this and I don't just mean this person, actually the tech industry and including the company I work for.

And this is why I don't want to say which company I work for, because I don't want to get in trouble.

But this is all just a giant money grab.

>> They're not neutral on this.

>> No no no no.

And we need we need to remember that.

And I highly recommend if you just want like I'm just going to give like one name.

If anybody is like I want to see some alternative views on this from extremely smart people who actually really understand the technology.

Look up Cal Newport.

okay, this guy has lots to say on it that is contrary to what the tech industry is telling us, because the tech industry wants us to use A.I.

so they can get a return on their investment.

okay, so that's the first thing I want to say.

And then, I don't know, there were so many things that he said that made me a pretty furious but I'll just say one thing.

I'll just say one thing.

okay?

This whole example of of like, Broadway and writing a Broadway musical and like, well, you can just have A.I.

like, basically tell you exactly what to do.

Yeah.

okay.

That that is what A.I.

is good at.

It's good at you give it the data to look at, and then it figures out what the patterns are.

And then it can spit out something that is basically along the lines of those patterns.

And yes, there are some amount of like temperature adjusting et cetera.

like what we talked about earlier, but at the end of the day, you if you want to do it that way because you're just trying to churn out the same old, same old, by all means, be my guest.

I'm not interested in that.

I want to be innovative.

I want to synthesize all the different things that I've learned throughout my life as a musician, as a human being.

I want that to be synthesized, to create something innovative and different and unique that I know I would not create on its own.

That doesn't mean I'm against using A.I.

I'm actually, I'm actually not.

But if I were to use A.I., it would be perhaps to like get feedback on what it is that I'm thinking to do or to get some maybe some different like unique ideas.

but I would never, ever use it in that capacity because I'm not interested in creating the same old, same old that I know is going to sell, quote, unquote.

You know, that's just not I'm not in it for that.

Are are there people who want to do that?

Of course, there's always been people who just want to make money.

They just want to do the same old, same old.

But as an artist, I'm not interested in that.

>> Scott Regan what did you hear there?

>> That's some simplistic view that you can just have them spit out a Broadway musical.

I mean, come on, I mean, and and the whole thing about autotune and all that.

Humans aren't perfect.

If if you create things that are always perfect, it's not going to sound human.

And people won't really be endeared to it, they won't be drawn to it.

And so this, this idea that you can just sort of have a hit come out of A.I.

is I think it's really a stretch, not even a stretch.

It's a bunch of baloney, really.

Pardon my French.

>> Yeah.

Careful there.

>> Yeah, yeah.

family show.

But I'd like, you know.

So he's talking so confidently about the way this can just help you out and do it like that.

You know?

Well, let me hear what it's come out of this.

And is it going to resonate with anyone?

I mean, I doubt it's going to resonate with anyone the same way when you played your little cuts that you got, I would you return and put those on again and play them.

It doesn't draw me to here.

What else can happen that way?

>> Yeah, I think some of the things I wish I had said in the moment to Kevin were that if A.I.

is is helping us in different tasks for our jobs, data analysis and collection tasks that we would like to shorten, then that may be a very useful tool for society.

>> Finding cures.

>> Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

Medicine.

>> Analyzing data.

>> Data for sure.

There's so much.

But I think songwriting kind of should be hard.

I think it's okay that it's hard.

I think it's okay that it doesn't take 12 seconds.

Go ahead.

Jimi.

>> I.

>> Being a closet scientist that I am, people don't know that I appreciate A.I.

for that.

Solving major equations to help cure cancer per se.

But in the same breath, I feel A.I.

's making us very lazy.

When I was a kid, I had to write an essay.

I had to go to the library, used the Dewey Decimal System to get my books and write my bibliography and all these things to write an essay.

Excuse me.

Where now you plug it in ChatGPT and bam!

Your paper is done.

You know what I'm saying?

And it's the same with music.

I mean, sadly, unfortunately, I think the world is being so dumbed down to what's being put on the radio that you will see an A.I.

song, get a Grammy one day.

Unfortunately, and I hate that, but that's going to happen.

>> It'll be number one in the.

>> Just like, just like Auto-Tune.

It's so prevalent in so many songs nowadays.

You know, back in the 70s, that would be unheard of.

But now everyone uses Auto-Tune to pitch their voice.

I people's concerts.

I'm not going to say who it was, but one of our major, our major stars.

I put a lot of money to had an autotune system on their mic, their on their concert.

This is A-lister.

It's normalized.

So as much as I don't like the fact that A.I.

is really taking over the musical genre of all genres in the world it's sadly because we are becoming lazier, I think, and not wanting to put the work in.

You will see one day and A.I.

generated Grammy winning hit.

>> Yeah, I think Jimi's right.

And I think it's okay that it's hard.

I mean, Scott, when you were helping run, if all Rochester wrote the same song, if someone submitted a fully A.I.

song that they just wrote, all they did was they took the name of the song.

What did I miss?

what was the first one that had.

>> Don't go drinking.

I was a happy heart.

>> I don't I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

Don't go drinking on an empty heart.

That's what it was.

And if they put that in an A.I., spit out a song and said.

And they said, I want to try to compose this based on what the A.I.

wrote.

Would you have accepted it for the contest?

>> you know, it depends on how much effort they put into what came out.

I mean, if.

>> They just wrote the short prompt or they put the name.

>> In, but would they tell me that?

And, you know, the thing is, if you make it, they make it sound like there's some sort of formula for writing a good song.

Right?

And there's no formula for that.

If if you knew what it was, people would be writing hit songs all the time and songs that are really mean something to people.

But that doesn't happen.

You know, I run across, I play hundreds of songs in a week on, you know, on, on the radio and there are some songs that just are so deep and so rich, but they're few and far between, you know, they really are.

And you just can't do it by spitting out something from A.I.

It just has nothing to do with.

or there's no formula.

>> To it.

Well, but if we do end up with a formula, we should ask ourselves as a society, what is wrong with us.

>> Do you think, do you think that songwriters wouldn't have come up with that formula already?

>> I mean, there are no more sorry than Garfunkel's.

There are no more Quincy Jones's.

There are no more Donny Hathaway.

There are no more.

They just they don't exist anymore because the radio they want to make money and they want to play quickly.

Cheap produced music that will get you like bubblegum, they lost 45 seconds.

They don't have their two minutes.

They're just gone away.

You know, there's just no there's no.

There's no incentive to write great songs, even in smooth jazz.

It's become overproduced.

Interesting.

It all sounds the same.

It all sounds the same.

My watercolors, everything's the same.

It's overproduced.

The days of again, the classic ballads from Burt Bacharach, you know, I mean, all that.

Those are over.

And I miss them, but they're over.

>> So I'm going to like, I don't know if that is.

I don't know that it's that I'm disagreeing or I just have a different take on it.

I think we do have, like Paul Simon's and Burt Bacharach and all these other people.

They're just not they're just not famous.

>> Well, maybe that might be the case.

>> A product of fragmented media, there's a lot less shared experience.

>> Now, right?

Right.

But I and I do like don't get me wrong, I do think it's a major problem because I feel like the pursuit of creating like really creating art is something that everyone I wish everyone could really understand and be able to enjoy.

But I think that there are a lot of us still doing it.

And I, I do think it will continue to be that way, because I think that being a real artist is something that can never like it's almost like what makes us human in a lot of ways.

It's what separates us from, I think the rest of the the animal kingdom, perhaps, is is this, like, desire to create art?

You know.

>> I agree with you, but the problem is, the program directors are not allowing that good music to rise.

>> Well, Scott does.

>> For sure, for sure.

>> I've heard Ray LaMontagne on Scotch.

>> You know, and that's the thing you have.

You have these conglomerates like Clear Channel and and all these other conglomerates out there who control all of the radio in America.

So they if you go to any given city, you're gonna hear any given the same song at any given time.

>> It's the same.

>> Yeah.

>> I mean.

>> And that's unfortunate.

So the people you're talking about, the great songwriters, because they're not in that cliché of what they want to spin out.

>> There, even.

>> In college radio.

Back in my rock lobster days, Jimmie Highsmith even I had the midnight to 7 a.m.

shift at Ohio University.

Nobody was listening.

The first five songs I played had to come off a list of only 30 songs.

It had to come off that list.

Then I was free, but I had to.

I'm like at 3 a.m.

>> Yep.

>> I still have to do this because.

>> That's how it is.

>> People have a very.

So Will and Rochester, Stephanie and Rochester on the phone.

I'm going to take your calls after we take like a 32nd break.

It's gonna be the shortest break that you can imagine.

Don't go anywhere, please.

Because I want to hear from Will.

I wanna hear from Stephanie.

I want to hear from listeners.

And I want in the next 20 minutes, let's draw some lines for us as consumers, because if we're not all that comfortable with this, it's not going away.

I'm Evan Dawson Tuesday on the next Connections in our first hour, is there an enrollment cliff facing colleges and universities are a lot fewer kids going to school?

Is there a huge crisis facing higher ed?

We're going to talk about what the reality is and what the concerns are, what this could mean for smaller and larger schools.

Then in our second hour, the Buffalo Bills look like they're on their way to the Super Bowl.

I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, >> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Mary Cariola, Senator, proud supporter of Connections with Evan Dawson believing an informed and engaged community is a connected one.

Mary Cariola for.

>> I need to get a little bit of good news.

When I came, but it's still free.

It's still true.

It's still need it.

Like we always do.

>> This is.

>> Rob Braden is the best engineer.

Knew that we had to come back with the a song about public broadcasting.

>> Oh, it's catchy.

>> Catchy in a way that those liquor made candies would rot your teeth if you had them for.

>> More than a minute.

>> okay.

Will in Rochester on the phone.

We'll take Will and Stephanie.

Hey, Will.

Go ahead.

>> Hey, Evan.

thanks for having me on.

I heard that clip you played last week from the that tech guy.

>> Yeah.

>> And I was just like, I had to call in so I am sort of a professional musician.

I'm a I'm a professional music tech.

I fix stuff, but I play in bands, too, and I have a music degree.

and the the discussion about the role of technology in music is always, I feel like really controversial among musicians.

and but I really feel like A.I.

is something completely different.

so, like the guy who you had on before he mentioned, like, using plugins and digital audio workstations?

I, I don't think that's at all comparable to A.I.

because at the end of the day, you still have a person using their creative brains to compose music, even if it's 100% in the box, you know, on the computer.

it's still a human doing it.

Whereas like with A.I., you are offloading that that mental work of composition onto the A.I.

And if you ask A.I.

to generate you a song, I don't think that you can claim you wrote a song.

I think that's completely ridiculous.

So.

>> And.

and go ahead.

>> Yeah.

>> Go ahead.

I was just going to follow up your point and ask you a question, because you're talking about you're talking and Kevin Surace is who we're talking about.

And by the way, he's a great guy.

And I do hope he comes back.

And I hope he doesn't feel piled on this hour just because some people don't like the idea, maybe a little bit.

but I think your point, will, is an important one here.

We shouldn't just say, well, A.I.

is a tool, just like anything is a tool.

Will is saying that A.I.

is fundamentally different as a tool for a number of reasons.

In the same way.

Will, we were talking about this during the break.

Kevin was saying, if you've got writer's block and you've got a half written song, and Sarah, how many half written songs do you have?

>> Sarah De Valliere probably a hundred.

>> okay, there you go.

I mean, I am a terrible songwriter.

I don't, I don't, I don't have anything that anybody wants to hear, but it's meaningful to me.

And someday I've got these songs.

If I sit down with a guitar, I can play half a song.

and someday I think, I tell myself, I'm going to finish this.

I don't think that's the same as saying, well, you know Bruce Springsteen had co-writers, Scott Regan has co-writers.

He works with Steve Piper, for God's sake.

Steve Piper's brilliant.

You know, Scott's just.

>> Scott the Piper's, you.

>> Know, but.

Right.

They're humans.

And the co-writing process typically, in my experience, is Scott may sit down and go, I'm stuck here.

And Steve's like, well, tell me what you're trying to do, okay.

And then they play together and he goes, what do you think about this?

okay, well, I don't know.

But now try this.

And it's collaborative still.

It's still collaborative.

It's interactive.

It's human as opposed to hey, you know finish this for me.

20s later.

A 20 year writer's block is gone.

That's not collaborative.

That's not the same thing.

And I think that that ignores what the creation of art requires, which is struggle sometimes.

And sometimes it is interaction.

Yeah.

So that's where I was when you were talking about these different tools.

Well, I think we shouldn't just put A.I.

in the tool in the box of just another tool, if that makes sense.

Will.

>> Yeah.

And and to some degree, like the other guy, he also mentioned autotune and and I think that well, there is a little misconception, I think, around the use of pitch correction, which is like you still can't really take a bad singer and make them sound good using pitch correction.

I think it takes a good singer and makes them sound perfect.

And whether or not you think that's good is a separate conversation.

>> That's a good point.

>> yeah.

But like for me as a musician, like I want A.I.

to be, like, filing my taxes so I can spend more time making music.

Like the idea.

Yeah, yeah.

Like.

Like what?

Like I feel like this whole A.I.

art craze is insane because it's totally backwards to me.

It's like, oh, wow, now I can produce all this art so I can put ten more hours a week at my 9 to 5, you know.

so I can maximize shareholder value.

and I think that's totally wrong.

It's totally backwards.

I am not inherently anti A.I., but it's just about how we use it.

And art is not how we should be using it.

>> Well, first of all, that's really well said.

Second of all, I am going to steal from you in future conversations, Will, because that is the perfect way.

Thank you for the phone call.

That is the perfect way to describe it.

We are fast becoming a society that is using A.I.

to do what we should be doing in the beautiful time that we have to actually sit and think still and create and and so what does that give us?

It gives us more time to, I guess, work.

I guess toil, you know, I we're backwards.

Will.

Yes.

okay.

I'm gonna endorse that.

That's so good.

Stephanie in Rochester.

Next up.

Hey, Stephanie.

>> Go ahead.

>> Hi.

I've been writing music since I was five.

I wrote my first song about a butterfly.

and,.

And I write less frequently now because I'm working on writing a novel.

And doing a bunch of other artistic things.

I art to me is about the the crafting of it, the making of it, the process of it.

And like, regardless of if you have a collaborator or not, it is it is a craft.

You are crafting something and you're crafting something out of your epistemology.

You know, your your entire history, your experience, your understanding of the world.

If you have a collaborator in the way that Will was talking about, you have somebody who is also working with their epistemology.

And maybe your shared experience.

And that is still like it's a back and forth and it's still a crafting of something.

And so I, I just always go back with I to who benefits.

Right.

The humans like who really don't benefit by making a quicker song unless the point is to make a lot of make a lot of it.

And you're not all that interested in the quality of it.

And the office authenticity of it being something that you have crafted.

Right?

Like, it's a very neat trick that you can go on I and do put all these prompts and everything, and you can waste how many gallons of water every single time you put in a prompt.

and have I do.

>> This.

Good point.

>> like, you know, good for you.

Just burn the rest of the planet for us, right?

>> But it.

>> Doesn't.

It does not, it does not do anything for the artist in terms of honing their craft, expanding their craft, altering their craft.

>> Helping you grow.

>> To meet other people, helping you grow as a human being.

Yeah.

It is.

It is a cheat.

And you can go ahead and put me down as as saying that I am completely unrepentant.

And the people who are doing A.I.

and music are missing the point of of creating and and creativity.

And the last thing I'll say is that, you know, as, as a person in a community of artists who are creating.

Yeah, like, sure, I would love to have my novel published.

I would love to, you know, be become fabulously wealthy and become like the eccentric lady who funds all of the things in Rochester like that is a wonderful Life goal.

But I also just want to write.

I'm actually going away for two weeks up to the mountains to write.

and I don't have a computer up there, so I'm taking my typewriter.

>> Oh, awesome.

>> And there will be no there will be no, I there will be no.

If I get stuck, I get stuck and I have to go on a walk.

And I have to think about things and I have to, you know.

But that is the human experience.

And when we're looking at A.I., A.I.

has none of its own experience.

It is only able to create stuff based on other people's hard work.

And it is not being compensated.

>> Yeah, I.

>> Just got to jump in, Stephanie, because we're gonna lose the hour.

That's such a I mean, there's so many good points there.

but our engineer Rob was, was saying, you know, are the millions of samples that A.I.

uses to craft, quote, unquote, craft.

The song also co-writers for that half written song.

I mean, it should be.

>> And are they being compensated?

>> And there's.

>> Been a lot.

>> Of cases.

>> They are.

>> Not but they are not.

>> So Stephanie's going to go on a walk.

Jimmy's going to go on a motorcycle ride.

But to Stephanie's point about co-creators.

So if you are sitting down with someone to collaborate, like do you have people you trust that you would sit down with and say, I don't know about this, like, help me out.

Let me get to the finish line.

>> On this song.

>> Yeah.

Like I just sing, I'll let you play my mentor, Scott Mayo from Rochester, New York, who played with Earth, Wind and Fire, Anita Baker and Al Jarreau.

He's like, yo, Scott, I need some adult supervision on the sax line.

You know, he's a sax player also.

So I have plenty of people out there in the world who I send ideas to.

Yes, to just get me in frame, because sometimes you're too close to the music yourself to finish it.

But I will never rely on a computer to do it for me.

That will never happen.

>> Yeah, just a.

>> Big difference.

I mean, I'm sure you've got people you would trust to sit down with, write, bounce ideas.

>> Off of.

>> Oh, yeah, for sure.

and I will say, like I have tried to use A.I.

to bounce ideas when I don't have someone.

Like I need a there's an immediate need to like, get some feedback and I will say like it is, I'm sure someone's going to say, but one day it will.

Currently, it is definitely not as good.

Definitely not as good.

>> As getting better every day.

>> It is.

I know, I know, so I'll just as far as that goes, I'll just speak to today.

It is definitely not as good.

>> okay.

>> All right.

So as we get ready to wrap here, I need to ask all of you Scott.

So what's the what is the game plan for us as a society, not just to lose our humanity?

Because I think when Jimmy puts no Auto-Tune on his albums, I as a consumer, benefit from the transparency and from the values that he's telling me he has as a creator, I want to know if A.I.

's used in creation.

I want to know if it's used in full, in part, et cetera.

and then I can decide as a consumer if I want to consume that art.

And by the way, if people like it, if there's stuff you like, I'm not saying don't like it, I'm just saying let's understand what we might be losing and let's be transparent.

So I want to know, what do you want?

What has to happen going forward so we don't just end up in every song is just a a prompt generated piece of pablum.

>> Well, the way our songs have always risen to the top is just people's intuition.

Their their emotions are attracted to a song.

And I unless I can do that, they're not.

It's not going to have a real presence.

I don't think in in meaningful art.

>> So you're less concerned that we're going to get fooled?

>> I don't think I don't think we will.

From what I've seen so far, I they just can't duplicate the the human experience, you know, the emotions, the intuitiveness, the just the random.

>> Thoughts.

>> Random thoughts, the connections that happen.

You know, when I write a song, I don't really even necessarily have any ideas in my head.

I've seen Bob Dylan talk about that.

Where he doesn't know where they came from, and I, you know, that that sort of thing where you make connections are the air.

I don't think that can happen with A.I.

>> I want.

>> To agree with you.

okay.

I'm scared.

>> That I.

>> Do know.

I'm scared that I don't.

Oh, Sarah, what do we do about this?

>> as far as you mean, for consumers?

>> Yeah, I think so.

>> Well, actually, my husband knew that I was coming here today, and he.

He's a huge audiophile, and he was like, I think he put it really well.

He was like, you know, okay, well, whatever.

Let's just say I really like this.

A.I.

generated music.

Well, I want to like go to a show.

I want to like, know more about them.

And then but there is none of that.

okay.

Maybe one day we can recreate all those things too.

But then I guess we as humans are obsolete at that point.

So, you know, I think that's that's kind of for me, like the bigger picture here is it's not just about the music.

Like when people like come to my shows and like my songs generally.

They also really like me and they want to connect to me.

So if I were to create some generated A.I.

music maybe people will like it and maybe they won't know whether I wrote it or not.

But at the end of the day, they're not.

That's not going to allow them to really connect to me as a person.

>> Yeah, yeah.

So what do we do, Jimi?

>> Not much.

I don't think until pop music stops being so producer driven and focuses more on the artist.

This is what's going to be, you know, like Sarah said, I have shows and my audience loves Jimi and they have stories about me.

And connect to me.

Know my story.

But unfortunately, popular music is just so producer driven now.

And as for transparency, it's like Wegovy people losing weight.

I went to the gym, took a shot, but they wouldn't admit that.

You know what I'm saying?

So they're going to do this synthetic music.

They're going to say, I wrote this song and not even admit to using a cheat.

What the caller said.

>> As we get ready to wrap here, I'm going to take Jimi's phrase synthetic music is a good term.

It is music.

But let's let's call it what it is synthetic music as opposed to actual artists created music.

Where can people find more of your work?

Because I wish we had more time to play your stuff and talk about that.

>> I'm an all digital sites.

The Amazons, the Spotify, all that stuff.

I hate Spotify, but I'm on there, you know?

Go to my website Jimmie Highsmith.

With A.I.

and you'll find me there.

>> Thank you for being here.

Sarah De Valliere.

Where are they going to find you?

>> Stevie Music.com I want to say I also hate Spotify.

and also I have a fringe show on Thursday at the JCC.

>> Thursday, the JCC for Sarah.

What about you, Scott?

Anything you want to leave with.

>> People?

>> I'm on tomorrow morning at 9:00.

>> There you go.

>> Oh, and I have a birthday show this Saturday at the foot of the improv.

I know City Music Hall.

Tickets for sale.

Still 7:00.

Show.

My last show there as a birthday.

Jazz birthday party.

>> All right.

Hey, everybody.

>> Thank you.

Let's not lose our humanity, okay?

We'll talk to you tomorrow.

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