A day in the life of Ai

My music session with my B&B guest wasn’t going well. The background music I was playing on the piano wasn’t in the right key for her singing. I didn’t know any of the songs her friend wanted to sing.

Then, magic! Melissa McMurrick got out her phone and said,“I’m going to create a song right here on my Suno App. Watch!”

She dictated about 10 words for lyrics and then told the app how much guitar and drums she wanted and the mood of the piece. Out came an amazing song. Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lennon and McCartney: You are obsolete.

Another song she had done about aging was so good, I asked her to send it to me. Uh-unh! She is having her friend sing it and hopes to collect royalties.

Educated by this experience, I went to my writers’ group that afternoon. One participant said she had written a poem and got AI to turn it into a sonnet, which has a more fixed structure. We decided we would rather hear her read her poem than a machine-written work. (No machines attend our monthly sessions.)

In the evening, I finished a new novel by one of my favorite authors, Michael Connelly, called “The Proving Ground.” An AI company is sued after a teenage boy kills his girlfriend, encouraged by a character in one of its apps. I don’t think this has really happened, but I understand there have been suicides by AI-using teens.

So, what do I make from all this? I use ChatGPT frequently to answer questions. So do 123 million people worldwide every day. It is just amazing! If I can’t work my coffeemaker, I don’t have to comb through the manual. I just ask ChatGPT a question. It’s not always right, but it is often enough.

There’s a lot not to like. Teachers hate it because kids use it to write essays and do other homework. Some teachers use it to grade them. So, it is a machine talking to a machine, but the grade goes to the kid. AI steals the work of writers, artists and musicians. With a voice generator, you can get anyone’s voice to say anything you want. And AI is eliminating jobs.

But I look at it this way: Blacksmiths didn’t like automobiles. Stagecoach drivers hated railroads. A lot of us wish there was no atomic bomb. But they aren’t going away. Boundaries need to be set, sure, but AI is here to stay.