AI? Hold back a little on the hissing and booing. Me, I like some of what it can do a lot – get those headphones or earbuds

I doubt everyone and her or his pet hamster has now heard of ‘AI’ and most recently how AI is likely to see the end of humanity at some point in the coming two weeks (or something like that – subs please check.)

That almost everyone, including me, doesn’t have the first clue what AI ‘is’ is neither here nor there.

But not knowing what the fuck we are talking about has rarely, if ever, stopped us doing so. And once again modesty prompts me to volunteer that I cannot necessarily exclude myself.

The bod who broke the sad news to humanity and advised that there was now really no more point in buying green bananas was Jacob Coxon, who ‘helped train the latest versions of AI at San Francisco-based Anthropic’, so he is bound to know what he is talking about.

I have no doubt at all that he is ‘an expert’, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he is a ‘respected expert’. Can’t have too many of those, can we.

Tracking down some of the headlines I’ve used in my piccy reminded me of a splash head that appeared in the Daily Mirror (as then was, not just The Mirror. Why? The fuck knows) informing readers 

IN TEN YEARS ONE MILLION OF YOU WILL BE DEAD!

Well, we don’t doubt it, many said. That’s what happens when folk get old. What the Daily / The Mirror did not point out – probably because it would considerably have weakened the headlines shock value – was that Aids would be the cause of death.

NB Even at the time I noticed what we white honkeys in the Western World were alarmed at the rate white honkey gays were dying. That in Africa, where Aids took no note of sexuality and straights were also a target, the decimation was appalling but rather less alarming in New York, London, Paris, Munich.

Now, in 2026 an estimated two-thirds of folk worldwide are carrying the HIV virus of whom 40 million live in sub-saharan Africa. But don’t worry, chaps, these people are not white but black, so panic over. OK, a cheap and predictable crack but still relevant. But that’s enough social consciencing for the time being as it has nothing to do with what I want to write about in the is post.

For most of us, and certainly for me, AI is just ‘computing’ on steroids. There is a lot of loosed talk about AI developing ‘self-consciousness’ but don’t run away with that thought. As we don’t yet know what ‘consciousness’ and ‘self-consciousness’ are, it strikes me as more than previous to pat ourselves on the back and believe we have ‘cracked it’, though what the ‘it’ is we have cracked I have no idea. But what the hell, he have cracked it!

That this whole ‘AI’ is going to be the death of us is, believe it or not, more than a little cock-eyed, though media reports along those lines are certainly serving their purpose: one very useful sales strategy with a long history which first newspaper then their broadcasting siblings adopted to put achieve the media equivalent of ‘bums on seats’.

That strategy is to scare the bejesus out of readers, viewers and listeners who then feel a shiver of horror and count their blessings that they were not in a middle of a wildfire or in a valley into which a glacier has just collapsed killing several thousand. And then are nosey to find out more and so . . . buy, buy, buy, people and don’t miss out on more horrific details.

That is nicely, though obliquely, summed up

Ever wondered why we are always encouraged to ‘keep up with the news’ and by whom. Certainly in a functioning democracy where we are asked to decided who should govern us, knowing what is going on is important, though undercut by the tendency of all of use to discount ‘news’ we don’t like or which doesn’t substantiate or prejudices.

Before we gather straw and kindling for the bonfires on which we will burn all those nasty AI company execs and march off with scythes and flails to seize them in their castles, it might be worth reminding ourselves what we also know about AI and the several uses it is already being put to.

We are told, though no doubt MAGA cretins and others of that ilk will insist it if ‘fake news’, that AI is being put to good use in healthcare: having AI analyse and x-ray and medical test result is, we’re told, far, far faster than having that work done by ‘humans’ – henceforth known as and to be referred to ‘the expendables’.

AI doesn’t ‘get tired’, demand ‘toilet breaks’, get bored. But, you cry, can we trust AI? From what we have not been told . . .

Well, we can trust them as much as we can trust ‘the expendables’, that’s for sure. Perhaps a back of a fag packet summary of the capabilities of AI boils down to ‘it does several tedious tasks faster’.

So far, so – well, I won’t say ‘interesting’ for fear of being jeered at as conceited cunt, but you get my drift. And I haven’t yet touched on the capabilities of AI in ‘making music’.

We have heard of the production by AI of ‘Bach fugues’, Mozart concertos and Stravinsky symphonies and the like, but are alway assured these are superficially alike but not a patch on ‘the real thing’ the lads themselves produced. Hmm.

Anyone out there prepared to join me in confessing that I can’t tell the difference between the one or the other and just accept that’s what ‘the experts’ are telling us. I have not doubt at all that after several years at the Julliard, the Royal College of Music and Conservatoire de Paris, any number of musical lads and lasses can easily spot a fake. But the rest of us? Not so sure.

Perhaps to make my point, you might care to listen to the following tracks. I would dearly love to claim they are ‘my music’ but sadly that would be dishonest. As a rule of thumb, the credit can only be between 25% mine (33% if you are feeling generous) and 75% (66%) AI. What I can tell you is that when I first came across the software * courtesy of my German nephew Johannes A., I was astonished.

Give them a listen: I wrote all the lyrics and the melodies / chord sequences are – more or less – mine. But the rest of the production is AI. Now go ahead and indulge: I have very catholic tastes in music and prefer to list what I’m not particularly interested in – a far shorter list – than what I like.

So, I don’t spend any of my time listening to (and because I am not interested, I might well get their names wrong) grunge, really heavy metal (‘speed metal’?) or any of its close cousins – thrash, power metal and the rest.

But the rest – the whole gamut of ‘classical’, the whole gamut of jazz, folk music (as opposed to folk singing – I loathe all that finger-in-the ear reverence, get to fuck!), loads of ‘pop’ and so on.

So take a listen, people, and pity me that these productions are superb whether you like the genre or not and it eats me alive that most of it has fuck-all to do with me. Lyrics, chord sequences and the basic melody are mine, but sadly that is it!

* Try your luck here 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

That's enough to be getting one with. 

NB I get no comments on my blog posts as is fuck-all every, but I would be very pleased to get some feedback on these toons. Bear in mind, though, how much is me and how much is some fuckng evil compute on some fucking evil data centre somewhere in the word.

 Oh, and there is a lot more to say about AI, not least the ethics of using this kind of software and possibly trying to pass it off as original. However, in some way it is original, so . . .