The headline said, \u201cHuawei used AI technology to complete Schubert\u2019s unfinished symphony.\u201d It sounded impressive in the way headlines often do, crisp and proud of themselves. What it didn\u2019t say was that this is a trick, or something near enough to one. To believe the claim, you\u2019d have to believe the machine has access not only to Schubert\u2019s notes but to his longing, his cough, his hunger, his handwriting shaking toward death. You\u2019d have to imagine him agreeing to it, nodding from beyond, saying yes, that\u2019s how I\u2019d have done it. Unless someone has figured out how to reanimate Schubert, this is not completion. It\u2019s ventriloquism.<\/p>\n
Still, it fits the moment. We are in the age of correction of pitch, of timing, of faces, of stories. We smooth over the flaws and call it innovation. We imitate rhythm and call it authenticity. We let the machine hum back our reflection and call it music. So of course we\u2019re proud of the claim that technology can now \u201cfinish\u201d the work of the dead. It\u2019s a kind of wish fulfillment, the fantasy that art doesn\u2019t need to die when we do.<\/p>\n
When player pianos arrived, people must have wondered if that was the end of pianists. Machines that could perform without perspiring, that didn\u2019t ask for applause. But the truth is simpler and more uncomfortable. Art\u2019s origin isn\u2019t in the performance, or even in the perfection of it. It\u2019s in the human impulse to make something that didn\u2019t exist before, even if it fails.<\/p>\n
Kafka, Emily Dickinson, Henry Darger none of them would pass a usability test. What makes their work endure isn\u2019t the polish of their technique or the efficiency of their tools. It\u2019s that they were once alive, sweating in their small rooms, feeding on solitude and stubbornness, compelled by the same ungovernable urge that no algorithm can mimic without first learning how to want.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The headline said, \u201cHuawei used AI technology to complete Schubert\u2019s unfinished symphony.\u201d It sounded impressive in the way headlines often do, crisp and proud of themselves. What it didn\u2019t say […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-rockbob","post-5287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}