Have you ever found yourself reading about the “innovations” coming out of the AI space and wondering if the supposed geniuses behind the entire movement aren’t actually just a bunch of lazy, deeply uncreative losers who don’t want to put an ounce of effort into learning how to be good at something, so they created a technology that allows them to synthesize a talent so others can perceive them as talented? Well, Mikey Shulman, the CEO of AI music program Suno AI, basically just admitted to that during a podcast interview.
Speaking to the 20VC podcast, Shulman gave some awfully revealing answers that provide us all some valuable insight into the philosophies, insecurities, and personal failings fueling the people spearheading the AI cash grab.
His boldest admission was nestled within a conversation about democratizing the ability to create music, which on the surface sounds like a worthwhile endeavor. But the more he talks, the more he gives the game away, as you’ll see in this part:
“It’s not really enjoyable to make music now […] It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.”
Ah, so the true purpose of the tech world’s obsession with AI has revealed itself: people who themselves are not inherently talented want to be considered on par with people who have put in the countless hours of work and effort required to become genuinely good at something. It’s a position that reeks of entitlement and laziness. It’s a technology created by people who don’t want to make things easier, they don’t want to work at all — they don’t want to practice, they don’t want to pay their dues by putting in the time and effort, but they do want all the accolades that come with being talented.
The irony here, of course, is that Suno AI runs on generative AI tools trained on copyrighted music created by people who actually are talented, people who did not provide consent for their work to be used to train AI models and are now suing Suno because of it. The AI world is all about stealing from people who put in the time required to become genuinely good at something and offering it up as a shortcut for everybody else. Robbing from the talented to make the untalented look cool. It’s like if Robin Hood were an asshole.
Besides coming off as deeply out of touch with the spirit of creating music, Shulman comes off as a guy doing a piss-poor job of selling his product. He invented a problem that no one has and is trying to position his product as the solution.
“It’s not really enjoyable to make music now,” says the guy who leads a software company that lets you make music by typing a sentence into a text field, an act that could not be further removed from the inherent human joy of making music.
Gee, I wonder why music isn’t really enjoyable to make now? Because it seemed like it had always been a joy until now. I wonder what changed?
The post AI Music Boss Says Musicians Don’t Actually Like Making Music appeared first on VICE.
