The aspect of AI that's not discussed is its potential algorithmic ability to read our blogs (or playlists etc) and come up with a personalized product that's the utter fulfilment of our every wish - as individuals. What then? When it greets you every day with that day's perfect song, and perfect singer? It'll be a lot harder to say no to AI then, it'll be saintly to do so.
Doubtful this would ever be very successful -- the failure of algorithms to do much for discovery until I'd already done a lot of legwork of research is one reason I started the process that became this newsletter! There's no replacement for just listening to lots of stuff more or less at random and seeing where it takes you.
I do think eventually the algorithm can help you, but it's most helpful when it's most human -- mapping geolocation and listening history to build communities who are effectively recommending things to you. But Spotify in particular is going in the opposite direction, using "A.I." that de-emphasizes community data maps and instead emphasizes some alchemy of being able to "hear" the right songs, which so far seems not only worse than the previous era but actively counterproductive to finding good music.
Spotify's algorithms are all about giving you what suits Spotify, which is, to water down your original impulse and sell THAT dishwash back to you. YouTube is a little more impressive. But no-one yet has tried to crack the individual by making an unsolicited A.I. product purely for him, her or even them, and certainly the results aren't nearly good enough yet, but if this became possible (god knows how much human creativity you'd need to pour into it) that would be the scariest/most wow thing ever. I should probably pray that it's out of the question. Einstein would have nothing on that bot.
The aspect of AI that's not discussed is its potential algorithmic ability to read our blogs (or playlists etc) and come up with a personalized product that's the utter fulfilment of our every wish - as individuals. What then? When it greets you every day with that day's perfect song, and perfect singer? It'll be a lot harder to say no to AI then, it'll be saintly to do so.
Doubtful this would ever be very successful -- the failure of algorithms to do much for discovery until I'd already done a lot of legwork of research is one reason I started the process that became this newsletter! There's no replacement for just listening to lots of stuff more or less at random and seeing where it takes you.
I do think eventually the algorithm can help you, but it's most helpful when it's most human -- mapping geolocation and listening history to build communities who are effectively recommending things to you. But Spotify in particular is going in the opposite direction, using "A.I." that de-emphasizes community data maps and instead emphasizes some alchemy of being able to "hear" the right songs, which so far seems not only worse than the previous era but actively counterproductive to finding good music.
Spotify's algorithms are all about giving you what suits Spotify, which is, to water down your original impulse and sell THAT dishwash back to you. YouTube is a little more impressive. But no-one yet has tried to crack the individual by making an unsolicited A.I. product purely for him, her or even them, and certainly the results aren't nearly good enough yet, but if this became possible (god knows how much human creativity you'd need to pour into it) that would be the scariest/most wow thing ever. I should probably pray that it's out of the question. Einstein would have nothing on that bot.