There’s a verse in Ezra Pound’s “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” that should be the motto of Artificial Intelligence: “The pianola ‘replaces’/Sappho’s barbitos.” Not familiar with either instrument? The latter is a lyre, that ancient stringed instrument associated with poets and poetesses like Sappho.* The pianola? Some might call it a “player piano.”** Turn it on, select a song, sit back and listen. And the pianola never makes a mistake. Same song, over and over again. Of course, its more modern versions are electric synthesizers that enable the listener to select different tempos and volumes, and maybe even to add some notes.
You have to guess that the pianola was just another invention on the road to automation in our lives. Player pianos simply needed a scroll of perforated paper to “read.” Listening to a different song meant selecting another roll for the large music-box-like instrument. “I want to hear this one,” you might say. And with a quick switch of scrolls, your wish is fulfilled. Or today, you might say, “Siri, play such-n-such.” Are we headed toward a time when someone else or something else takes control of what we do? And will we acquiesce to choices made by not only others, but also by machines? Think of the player pianos: Those scrolls were produced by someone who said, “This is a nice song and this one, too.” That process gave the owner of the player piano only the choices someone else made.
We’re all musicians in an automated world. And, given that we can send in a photo to have a machine turn it into an oil painting, we’re all artists. Is there no limit to what we can do when we don’t really have to do anything? As we incorporate more artificial intelligence into our daily lives, we will find ourselves increasingly more dependent on someone else’s choice of scrolls.
Time to learn how to play the barbitos.
*https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=A0geK9Z4Z75aSmgAK3YPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMDgyYjJiBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=lyre&fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hspart=Lkry&hsimp=yhs-SF01
To listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elERNFoEf3Y
**https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hsimp=yhs-SF01&hspart=Lkry&p=pianola#id=2&vid=65f8ad4f34f090eb190b1da1290b91ad&action=view
You have to guess that the pianola was just another invention on the road to automation in our lives. Player pianos simply needed a scroll of perforated paper to “read.” Listening to a different song meant selecting another roll for the large music-box-like instrument. “I want to hear this one,” you might say. And with a quick switch of scrolls, your wish is fulfilled. Or today, you might say, “Siri, play such-n-such.” Are we headed toward a time when someone else or something else takes control of what we do? And will we acquiesce to choices made by not only others, but also by machines? Think of the player pianos: Those scrolls were produced by someone who said, “This is a nice song and this one, too.” That process gave the owner of the player piano only the choices someone else made.
We’re all musicians in an automated world. And, given that we can send in a photo to have a machine turn it into an oil painting, we’re all artists. Is there no limit to what we can do when we don’t really have to do anything? As we incorporate more artificial intelligence into our daily lives, we will find ourselves increasingly more dependent on someone else’s choice of scrolls.
Time to learn how to play the barbitos.
*https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=A0geK9Z4Z75aSmgAK3YPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMDgyYjJiBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=lyre&fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hspart=Lkry&hsimp=yhs-SF01
To listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elERNFoEf3Y
**https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hsimp=yhs-SF01&hspart=Lkry&p=pianola#id=2&vid=65f8ad4f34f090eb190b1da1290b91ad&action=view
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