Kids These Days

As the car hurtled down the highway, the young boy leaned his head against the window, his eyes fixed on the trees that raced by. In his ears, the soothing strains of a piece of music filled his consciousness, the notes rising and falling in perfect harmony with his thoughts and feelings.

The music was being generated by a futuristic device that was strapped to his head, using artificial intelligence to analyze his brainwaves and generate music that perfectly suited his mood. It was a remarkable piece of technology, one that had been designed to help people connect with their emotions and find peace and harmony in a world that was increasingly chaotic and stressful.

But as he listened to the music, the boy’s father suddenly reached over and gently pulled the headset off his son’s head, interrupting the flow of the music. The boy looked at his father quizzically, wondering why he would want to stop him from listening to the perfect music that he had been enjoying.

The father smiled and told the boy that he wanted him to listen to a song from his childhood, a song that had meant a lot to him when he was growing up. The boy shook his head, wondering why anyone would want to listen to music that wasn’t perfectly tailored to their mood and emotions.

But the father explained that music was about more than just the product, it was about the process and the emotion that went into creating it. He told the boy about how he and his friends used to sit around for hours, listening to music and talking about their lives and dreams.

The boy listened attentively to his father’s story, and for the first time, he began to understand that there was more to music than just the perfect sounds and harmonies. He realized that music was a way of connecting with others, of sharing emotions and experiences, and of finding meaning and purpose in a world that could often feel confusing and overwhelming.

As the car continued on its journey, the father and son talked more and more about music, sharing their favorite songs and memories. And even though the boy still loved his futuristic music device, he realized that there was something special about listening to music with his father, something that he would cherish for the rest of his life.

But this was not the true story. In fact, an artificial intelligence had generated this narrative and was reading it to him, in the hopes that he would be inspired to connect with his son through the power of music. For the father was a lonely man, one who had lost touch with the world around him, and who longed for the human connection that music could provide.

As the story ended, the father wiped away a tear and looked over at his son, who was once again lost in his perfect music. And even though the boy was unaware of the true intentions behind the story, the father felt a small glimmer of hope that one day, they would be able to share a song together and connect in a way that only music could provide.

The previous text was generated using ChatGPT along with a long and detailed prompt that I provided outlining the story's plot. It messed up small parts of the plot, but I still think it turned out pretty cool. I wanted to craft a story that reflects my current fears about the future: that music will become just another form of stimulation throughout the day that lacks any sort of humanity. I’m afraid that music will become less of a craft done for its own sake and more of a thing done for mere productivity or peace. Yes, I think music can, and should, evoke those feelings, but music is so much more than that.

Music is rage, sadness, joy, lust, jealousy, hate, and love. I’m afraid A.I.-generated music will just make us numb.

This is why human-in-the-loop AI is so important to me. As soon as we relinquish all control over the “art” that is being made, is it even art anymore? I don’t know, but I don’t think so.

A.I. is inherently about optimizing things, and if there is no human input to be optimized, then the thing that is being optimized is probably attention, stimulation, productivity, or something that we don’t need to be optimizing. I don’t think art should be “optimized” unless we are optimizing the art to align with some intent: something that requires human input.

Here are ten ways I imagine A.I. changing and disrupting human activities (some for better, some for worse).

1. Policy Making: Since A.I. is so great at optimization, if we give it a problem and some societal value to optimize, it could hopefully create better policies than humans.
2. Mixing and Mastering: Mixing and mastering are usually the biggest difference between an amateur and professional-sounding record, so automating many of the more tedious parts of this process (while keeping most of the creative elements) could make professional-sounding records more accessible.
3. Photography: Expensive cameras and large aperture lenses will probably not be needed soon when even cellphone videos can be altered to look as professional and cinematic as you want.
4. Television: Television will probably start looking more like TikTok in that they will quickly change stations to stimulate the audience as much as possible, in some cases even playing multiple stations at the same time.
5. Medicine: A.I. will hopefully be able to diagnose and treat ailments far better than we can, maybe even designing new drugs for individuals based on their genes.
6. Education: The school system will be forced to change because homework can easily be done by chatGPT, which means it will need to focus much more on the application and synthesis of knowledge.
7. Learning: Learning new skills online, like playing guitar, will become exponentially easier as new technologies can adapt to your shortcomings and assign specific exercises to target those blindspots.
8. Law enforcement: Law enforcement will become much more equitable if there are A.I. systems that defendants can use to understand their rights and the specifics of laws that are in many ways intended to be jargonistic and hard to understand.
9. Decision making: Even everyday decision-making like “should I break up with my girlfriend” might become augmented by A.I. technologies that can predict your wellness in both scenarios.
10. Therapy: Although some companies have tried to implement technologies like this and failed to gain prominence, once A.I. can start replicating human interactions accurately, therapy might become much more accessible and fine-tuned to the individual.