There was also music during Creativity4Better, the global conference organised by IAA Romania in Bucharest. A human & an AI DJ both delighted the audience. Nao Takui is the human DJ, a media artist and founder of Qosmo. He has a PhD in electrical engineering and information systems from Tokyo University and is passionate about the symbiosis between human and artificial intelligence, which he explores in his musical endeavours.
We talked to Nao Takui about whether people should be reluctant to artificial intelligence or happy about its accelerated development in the past decades. Nao Takui believes that, just like anything else, AI depends on how it's used and if it's controlled by the 'good' or the 'bad' guys. The most interesting thing, he says, is that AI has its own logic, different from that of humans; and it;s that logic that managed to surprise him several times as they were playing music together.
Who is most afraid of AI and why?
We don't need to worry about AI itself. But we need to think about how this technology will be used. If terrorists have AI, they might use it against us; however, AI in itself isn't dangerous. When the bad guys get control of AI technology, then we need to be very cautious.
Right now, AI is used in simple problems. Photo apps, self-driving cars. I don't think we're dealing with many of its applications, there are huge opportunities for us to explore. The most interesting thing about AI is that it's more like an alien intelligence. It has its own logic different from ours.
How AI learns & processes
In my projects, AI has always surprised me with songs I couldn't have ever imagined. But once I hear AI's choice, then I understand why AI picked that song. It inspires me.
First of all, I used a lot of DJ playlists as training data sets. But it wasn't so interesting, AI was just mimicking us. So now I only use audio singulars; once I went along that path, something interesting started to happen.
AI doesn't copy my of playing, it has very interesting music choices of its own. As a human DJ, I think I'm constrained by the 'genre' notion. If somebody plays techno, I play techno after that. But AI doesn't care about genre. If I play a techno song, AI picks jazz, and it mixes pretty well.
AI doesn't have any ultimate goals. So setting goals, setting up the space for AI, that will be a task for humans. Somebody who prepares the data set to set the network and the algorithms - in a way, that's how we'll prepare the space for AI to explore.
