Don’t You Think This AI Bit’s Done Got Out of Hand?

Random Notes 62 Comments


Please forgive me if this comes across as a little hyperbolic. But it certainly seems alarming that almost every expert analyzing the impending effects of AI immersion conclusively proclaims that it’s not “if” but “when” it will eliminate most all of our jobs, and potentially, become sentient enough to deduce carbon-based life is obsolete, and attempt subjugate, if not annihilate, all of humanity in a dystopian outcome predicted in science fiction.

The amount of resignations by former AI workers and researchers over the last few years who then turn around to warn us of the impending doom of the technology is rather staggering. Just last week, a safety evaluator and product lead for Open AI named Steve Adler announced his resignation publicly by saying in part,

“Honestly I’m pretty terrified by the pace of AI development these days. When I think about where I’ll raise a future family, or how much to save for retirement, I can’t help but wonder: Will humanity even make it to that point? IMO, an AGI race is a very risky gamble, with huge downside. No lab has a solution to AI alignment today. And the faster we race, the less likely that anyone finds one in time.

Today, it seems like we’re stuck in a really bad equilibrium. Even if a lab truly wants to develop AGI responsibly, others can still cut corners to catch up, maybe disastrously. And this pushes all to speed up. I hope labs can be candid about real safety regs needed to stop this.”

We see these kinds of resignation letters on nearly a weekly basis these days. A State Department report last year warned AI could pose an “extinction level threat to humans.” Yet there seems to be no real public appetite to discuss these matters or address them in any meaningful manner, while the potential for this dystopian future seems so daunting and increasingly realistic, it makes almost every other dilemma facing society and mankind seem trivial.

It’s not like we don’t have a recent example of technology running amuck to catastrophic effects. Just a few short years ago, there was this little event called the COVID-19 pandemic that killed an estimated 7 million people, including an estimated 1.1 million Americans, before now becoming an endemic pathogen we’ll have to worry about for the rest of human time, which thanks to AI, might be more finite. By the way, it also killed songwriting legend John Prine, and 90’s country star Joe Diffie.

Many experts now believe COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak as opposed to zoonotic exposure. But again, we’re not really even discussing this type of stuff aside from scientific journals and such. We’re instead obsessed with whether the NFL refs are bias for the Kansas City Chiefs because Taylor Swift is good for ratings, or debating the severity of the January 6th riots over four years ago now. If 7 million people dead won’t stimulate a worldwide discussion and reckoning, what will?

The predictions for AI outcomes make the concerns for AI’s adoption in music seem trivial. But where music could play a role is how it might be instrumental in softly warming society to adopting AI as part of daily life.

On Friday, January 31st, Randy Travis released his second AI-assisted song called “Horses In Heaven.” Similar to Randy’s first AI assisted song, 2024’s “Where That Came From,” it is quite astounding and beautiful to hear. For those who don’t know, Travis lost his voice in a near-fatal stroke in 2013. AI is assisting in recreating his voice from previous recordings. Maybe it’s a little ironic that it’s a neotraditional country artist as opposed to an EDM one who is at the forefront of this AI voice technology.


In an ideal world, giving Randy Travis his voice back is the kind of thing AI would be perfect for. No different than a paraplegic being fitted with an artificial limb, AI could help restore what tragedy took. But then when you regard statements from former AI researchers such as Steve Adler, you wonder if it’s inadvertently part of the slippery slope slide toward dystopia, buttering us up with nostalgic feelings in a way that obfuscates our view from the existential dangers.

At the 2025 Grammy Awards on February 2nd, despite two of the members of The Beatles being deceased for many years now, the Fab Four won a Grammy Award for the AI-assisted song “Now and Then.” Though the song wasn’t AI-generated out of whole cloth, AI was used to extract John Lennon’s voice from a crude cassette tape recording for use in the song.

The Grammys have been one of the few institutions to attempt to put their foot down, and advocate for human creators over AI-generated entertainment.

“Only human creators are eligible to be submitted for consideration for, nominated for, or win a Grammy Award. A work that contains no human authorship is not eligible in any Categories,” The Grammy Awards say. However, CEO Harvey Mason Jr. has clarified, “But we’re not going to disclude or disqualify the creators working with it.”

This is what The Beatles did with “Now and Then,” which was nominated for the all-genre Record of the Year, and won for Best Rock Performance, crossing a Rubicon for AI-assisted music. Was it really the best rock performance of the last year? Of course not. It was the nostalgia factor of The Beatles, as well as the uniqueness of the recording assisted by AI that made it remarkable.

Even some of the people who stress that AI is not actually an existential threat are quick to admit that one of the other pitfalls of the technology is how it could continue to exacerbate the gulf between the have’s and the have not’s in society. As prominent music commentator and producer Rick Beato pointed out about the 2025 Grammy Awards’ rock categories, it’s a bunch of older artists. Best Rock Album nominees included The Rolling Stones (who won), The Black Crowes, Pearl Jam, and Green Day.

If by leveraging AI technology, legacy bands such as The Beatles can produce music indefinitely, and continue to win Grammy Awards for it, when will the next generation of rock musicians be afforded their own opportunities?

But again, all of these concerns and discussions seem so trivial to the impending doom so many AI scientists are warning us about, and that have been predicted in many science fiction movies. At this point, maybe this outcome is inevitable. Or maybe music, and country music specifically, can in some way play a positive role in stemming the tide, or raising awareness of the issue as one of the last organic expressions of human emotion in the popular entertainment diet that comes from human players impressing fingers on wood and wire.

There are no solutions to forward here, let alone easy ones. But it does seem like its the responsibility of all of us to address, or at least acknowledge, the much bigger impending problem.

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