There is so much discourse online right now around AI, generative content, large language models (LLMs), and the nature of how we might use these technologies.
I have been wrestling with my thoughts around AI for a while now and I feel like some themes are starting to emerge around this topic in my own heart and mind. It is sprawling and large and all-consuming (“AI isn’t going anywhere, so you need to learn how to use it..” Says the trillion dollar company staying afloat by sharing the same 70 billions dollars of investment from that other multi-billion dollar company).
There are different areas of issues and implication and I think this makes it hard to have a conversation around AI, because “AI” means so many different things but all get lumped into one bucket. There are ethical implications, environmental implications, social implications, etc. All of those are important and deserve time and conversation.
As I sit here typing these words on my screen, I am considering the difficulty of conveying an idea or thought. Writing is not easy; there is a real struggle to put pen to paper (or finger to key) and produce something that is even coherent. Writing is a struggle, art is a struggle, and great art comes from great failure. The first sentence you write is terrible. The first video you make is terrible. The first graphic you edited in Photoshop CS3 was terrible (that was a personal dig at myself and my attempt to learn Photoshop in college). The first song you write is bad. It has to be bad.
Art should be bad. Then bad again (repeat many times…).THEN it can be good.
I recently found an old audio recording of myself singing and playing the guitar. It was a song that I wrote in high school and was attempting to record. I say record, but that might make you think of an audio interface, mics, headphones, pedals, etc. No…. This was an old Dell tower with Audacity loaded and a mic that plugged into the 1/8 inch mic input on the back of the computer. It was a mic that we used to interact with the computer and a talking parrot program. You could say something to the parrot and it would say it back to you in a funny parrot voice. I have no idea what it was called, but it was hilarious to me as a child (still funny as an adult) and that is why we had a cheap 1/8 inch mic in our computer room.
I recorded a song with that mic sitting on the computer desk. There was not even a mic stand. It was distorted and gross. I am not good at the guitar or singing at that point. I am also not good at writing songs, but it was MY SONG. I wrote the lyrics and melody and used the 4-5 chords that I knew on the guitar to craft this song. It was the equivalent of the little free bird house that you get to build at Lowe’s on Saturday with your kids. By all accounts, it was awful. But it was MY awful song. It was the best recording I had ever made, because I had never made another recording. I am not going to put it online. It is not for sharing with the world. It was for me.
There was a time when I would have been embarrassed by that recording. The playing, the singing, the lyrics, the way it sounded. But after finding it recently and listening to it again, all I felt was pride. I was proud that I was creative enough to even figure out how to record audio into the computer. Proud that I was brave enough to sing and play out loud. Proud that I gave it my best effort. I could hear in that recording a seed of what would come over the next few decades of my life. There were glimpses of a future that I did not know existed.
Sometimes you can only see the path when you look back.
I am much better at playing guitar, singing, recording, and producing music than I was at 15. But I am so proud of that version of me because I am still him in so many ways. I still plug instruments in, use mics, produce audio, and mix sound. It is on a much greater scale, and I hope that I am doing my job with excellence and proficiency, but that core is still the same. Solving problems and making it sound as good as I can. That level of “good” has grown, but that desire was always there. I have mixed shows with 80+ inputs and hundreds of people on stage. I have run sound for some incredible people and I am lucky to be where I am today, but so much of that can be traced back to that curious kid who sat in his room playing guitar poorly and dreaming about a future that seemed a million miles away.
Suno can make a song for you. You can type some ideas into the app and tell it to make something for you. It can take your idea and “improve” it for you. You could upload a demo and get a full song sent back to you in seconds. It is, however, not good. Because that is not you. The model will get better, but you will not get better.
Cal Newport talks about using AI for creative tasks like getting your robot to go to the gym for you. If a robot did you workout it could technically be completed, but it would actually give you nothing meaningful in return. The struggle is the prize. The process is what brings the payoff.
Don’t let the easy button be the end for your creative journey. Use tools to make it easier, but don’t let the robot take your win. The Voice Memo app on the iPhone might be one of the most important things to ever happen to the creative world. So many hit songs started as a voice memo or a snippet of an idea. But the Voice Memo app does not make you a song; it’s just a tool for capture.
So, make the bad art. Write the bad song and never share it online. Then do another. Then another. Then share one that you are proud of and get roasted by the internet and try again. Repeat the process and see where it takes you.
