Birth via AI

If you haven't heard, this trumpet intro constitutes the birth of jazz. Of course it's Louis Armstrong's West End Blues:

Historians, upon analysis of musical styles, genres, innovations, feel that this is the moment...when jazz, as a separate and distinct musical genre, was born. 

Yours truly has been doing a lot of experimenting/communicating with AI of late, namely Gemini, Deep Seek, and Grok (via X), and it has been fascinating the level of depth I get in return from conversations about theology and philosophy. So on my lunchtime run I began thinking about Louis Armstrong and the birth of jazz, probably prompted by a Conversations With Christian (McBride) - a kindof History of Jazz in real time - where a veteran jazzer talked freely about Charles Mingus and his exploits. I still love the part in Ken Burns' Jazz, where one historian tells the story of Sydney Bechet pulling out a pistol during a gig...something akin to cutting your losses..."But not Bechet!"

I could go on.

Anyhoo, I ingeniously (he said with a sheepish grin) combined the two: let us try to see if AI can find the moment in time when something is born. In this case, let us not go with a genre, but with an artist. 

The question would be something like this: based on your analysis of music, when, at what musical moment in time did, let us use Eric Clapton to start, Eric Clapton stop emulating other players and idols and create the first musically Eric Clapton moment? 

So now, I'll go over to Gemini and ask and report back. 

Check it out: https://g.co/gemini/share/353200f3675e

What does Jason Isbell have to do with Artificial Intelligence?

 

What does Jason Isbell have to do with Artificial Intelligence?

 

Many fear artificial intelligence; that it will in essence, at the end of the logic, replace us. A fortiori, AI will replace artists. As chatbots and AI grows in power and seemingly to expand the definition of intelligence to the point of replacing us and our aesthetic endeavors, I propose that Jason Isbell puts this idea to rest.

If you haven’t heard, Jason Isbell garnered Grammy nominations for Best Americana Album for “Weathervanes,” Best Americana Performance for “King of Oklahoma” and Best American Roots Song for “Cast Iron Skillet.”

Some background on Isbell is relevant for my purposes. Per the Music Box documentary, the divorce of his parents impacted him greatly. He is a recovering alcoholic, at one point he overdosed while he was in Drive-By Truckers.

What does this have to do with AI?

The driving idea behind AI replacing us and our aesthetic endeavors, is that if we just feed the software enough data and provide enough computing power, AI can produce art.

But I contend that art requires a body. Art can’t be produced with just data and computational power.

I contend that Jason Isbell’s trauma is in his body, and that it feeds his art. His body is a resource for aesthetics. The word I used with my therapist is “incarnate.” Isbell’s experience, interacting with his memory and his skill and craft, honed over decades of practice and performance and listening (which necessitates a body) produce art. Art that moves you and me, and him.

In the Music Box documentary, he gets choked up singing one of his own songs. The power of Cast Iron Skillet isn’t really measurable. Watch CBS’ John Dickerson hold back emotion after Isbell performs Cast Iron Skillet here at 39:45. It took this guy about 2:17.

Art requires emotion, production and reception. Emotions require bodies with hormones and chemicals and electricity in a delicate balance.

The delicate balance of guitar, harmony, and lyrics is what Isbell manipulates in Cast Iron Skillet, and in my humble opinion, Isbell is a master at a level few humans will ever reach.

Reaching requires a body. Art requires a body.

Culture is in his songs.

Tie in George Carlin’s line about “a little secret about the blues. You don’t just need to know which notes to play, you have to know why they need to be played.”

AI doesn’t possess a why. AI isn’t motivated. AI doesn’t feel compelled to write songs.

Jason Isbell does feel compelled.

Be thankful for Jason Isbell, and don’t fear for artists.

Truman Capote, AI, and Comedy

I recently reread Truman Capote's La Côte Basque from my Great Esquire Fiction book and it prompted my research into this story, which prompted this post on Artificial Intelligence and Comedy.

In researching this story and Capote, google kept popping up things about Capote's IQ. After I finished my research of this story (and how it basically ruined Capote's life and resulted in his slow suicide via drugs and alcohol) I went back to the Capote IQ.

Now the internet isn't exactly the place for unequivocal truth, but let's say that Capote's "internet" IQ of 215 is close to the truth. 

Now we know that AI can now write novels and poetry and there is cause to believe it can be "good" or "decent" writing. 

Because AI is a matter of pattern recognition. Recognize enough patterns and you can create, be it skyscrapers or stories. 

This is a crucial point. 

So I thought of comedy. If AI can recognize the parts/patterns of a joke, (set-up, punch line, etc.), it can in theory, create comedy.

So in time we can expect computers to be comedians?

Naw.

Part of what computers and AI can't access or pattern recognize, is feelings. Humans have feelings. And pain. Certainly what drove part of Richard Pryor's comedy was pain. Part of what drove George Carlin's comedy was anger.

Can computers pattern recognize their way to pain or anger?

In my estimation, no.

Pain and anger, (and I say this in my 51st year on the planet, and in therapy), require a biography, a full narrative to draw from.

Computers and AI don't have a past, replete with feelings and memories.

Can computers and AI pattern recognize their way to feelings and memories?

You can see where this is going. An infinite regress, a homonculus with a homonculus with a...

Kurzweil is probably correct about the future and the singularity may be near. And he's probably correct that we shouldn't fear it or the algorithms.

Probably.

I have always been more afraid of humans than anything else, being a student of history.

I certainly do not fear robots and AI creating anything artistic that will rival what humans can do. 

Capote, IQ of 215 and all, was, per Nietzsche, human, all too human, and imperfect and flawed and capable of sadness and regret and shame, in incredible proportions.

Ah feelings, nothing more than feelings.
Trying to forget my feelings...

AI can't feel or forget.

Our (human) art is safe.

Just not from humans.

Get it?