Earlier this week I attended an informal workshop, led by my good friend Susan Erwin Prowse, on AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Chat GPT – with use cases demonstrated for those of us working in the music industry.
I’m primarily a classical musician. Technology, as far as my musicianship has been concerned, has generally not been necessary.
That being said, I am a huge productivity nerd. If there is something out there that will save me time/make something I do more efficient, sign me up. It is for productivity and also media/communications reasons that I might know a few things about technology.
Chat GPT – the “GPT” standing for Generative Pre-trained Transformer – is essentially a scary smart virtual assistant that can do almost anything you ask it to, based on open source web results. It will filter out the “incorrect” results, giving you thorough answers in very quick time. Susan asked Chat GPT to write an original song in the style of Dolly Parton and it did… Immediately. (Did it get tested for musicality? Not at that time. No audio functions… yet.)
It’s that Pre-trained word, the “P” of the GPT, that has me slightly skeptical, though. Who is training this platform? (The world.) Are there flaws? (Yes.) Will it get stronger, better, faster? (Most likely. There is also potential for the opposite.)
I’m grateful to Susan and others who show us tools such as this. She’s using it for administrative purposes, primarily, as she has a lot happening with her music business and festival, down south in Arkansas. I’m personally of the mindset that I’ll let others test the waters first, and jump on the bandwagon after a bit more proof of concept has been worked out. There is potential for this skeptic to be turned around.
What will they think of, next? (And, who will that “they” be?)