Artificial Intelligence

[ameliatan]

I am just wondering what are your views (teacher or student) on AI being used to teach piano playing instead of real teachers i.e. human beings?

Also nowadays with all the forums, online courses, you-tube videos, music apps etc... its so easy to learn at your own pace in the comfort of your home. I teach beginners to intermediate, and I find it as a useful way for self improvement, whether in my teaching or playing skills.

I admit I even used Shazam to 'listen' to my playing to detect a piece I am playing on piano. If it couldn't, then something was wrong (with my playing, hopefully not the app!). I was a bit annoyed when my Gb major impromptu came out as another piece but that's another story. It is correct now. It is silly, but I just did it for fun.

The one thing I am shocked is 'Smart Pianos', or 'Musiah' and 'Piano Maestro' etc.. ' being used to teach actual piano playing. (I have yet to meet a student who has learn't piano using such technology).

I hope this is not a controversial topic, but I just can't help but feel threatened by all this technology, especially AI. I just wonder if it will replace the need for traditional piano lessons. If so, where does that leave us? I guess what I am trying to say is what can a piano teacher do that AI cannot or vice versa?

[lostinidlewonder]

Until they develop a robot which looks totally human and has human emotions and makes you forget that it is not an organic entity, I don't think people will rush to seek robotic AI if they could choose studying with a human teacher instead.

I think first we would see AI help students with subjects like maths and science before we see it helping those with the Arts. Having AI teaching for instance essay writing and critical analysis of text would be very difficult to achieve. I don't know if AI can interpret poetric devices used in poetry and connect them to human emotion effectively so how could it effectilvey help students of poetry create better works? Maybe if AI one day starts to write amazing poetry or novels, or music, or art work, then something big will start to change.

The Arts has a strong connection to human emotions which is difficult to calculate for a computer. AI would struggle because the resultant of a work of Art is something that isn't bound by an exact answer but is texturized with a solution which provokes emotional response such as body movement or sound or images etc. AI just cannot accurately judge what is more worthy in this manner because it lacks human emotion which we as human do often quite simply without conscious calculation. Feeling emotion in the arts and teaching how to express emotions through our medium, I don't know if this can be taught in a calculated manner that will preseve the humanity.

Perhaps when we first study the piano we all can go through some kind of syllabus which many others go through. But as you develop and gain skills you want to forge a path of your own, studying works which interest you. I don't know if AI can help a student on this path and because of that most will give up any AI lessons much faster than they would with a human teacher who listens to the individual student and personalizes the lesson.

[dogperson]

Ameliatan
From a student’s perspective, AI will never replace my private teacher:
- she can see and hear what I am doing.  AI cannot see a slight tending of the right shoulder or have me move my right hand toward the fallboard
- I get immediate feedback and direction: most importantly, the opportunity to discuss, explore and try a different solution
- she helps me tailor my practice to what SPECIFICALLY needs improvement with practice alternatives offered
-I can ask all the questions I have including ‘where else would this apply?’
- we discuss new repertoire based on the skills I have and the skills I need

I do watch really good tutorials and masterclasses, but I don’t find it to be a good substitute..    just an adjunct
IMHO, don’t worry about the robots 

[ted]

Surely there is a fundamental difference between programmable intelligence and personal consciousness. To be fair, the subject is still in its infancy and is both difficult and deep, but on the face of it, I see a clear difference between a mechanistic device and a sentient being. Sure, devices and algorithms can mimic the musical output of sentient beings very cleverly, David Cope’s code being a case in point. In fact, you don’t even need the sophistication of artificial intelligence. I managed to write a simple Basic program which generated any number of interesting fugues, for example. It was a worthwhile experiment but I tired of it because it substituted logic for my creative volition, a faculty which is very precious to me.

Let us take a simpler analogy. My son gave me a Fitbit, several actually as they are pretty fragile instruments. I wore it all the time and paid diligent attention to the data it produced during training and sleep. It stated I was doing well and gave me marks for my state of fitness. Then I slowly began to realise that the data it displayed, and therefore my calculated fitness, was frequently quite wrong. Worse than that, I had geared my mental state to being responsible to a device and its output. I had lost sight of the fact that what really mattered was the exercise, sleep and training itself and, more importantly, how I enjoyed the results. How can a Fitbit claim to tell me how I ought to feel ?

The experience of personal consciousness remains fundamentally our own, and at least in our present state of knowledge, the idea of turning it over to a device seems to me an insult to our own nature. The original poster's concerns boil down to asking whether interaction between a sentient being and a device can be substituted for that between two sentient beings. No, not in our present state of knowledge, and possibly never.

[ranjit]

I don't think it'll work, at least with the technology we have right now. It is imo possible maybe 30 years into the future, but the current capabilities of AI are nowhere near that.

Technology, meanwhile, has already reduced the need for piano lessons. One can already learn a lot from youtube videos, online courses, books, etc. But piano lessons with a good teacher still definitely help, and are probably necessary to play at a high level. I don't think the need (or at least preference) for human interaction as a part of learning will go away any time soon. Monkey see, monkey do.

When AI can successfully replace teachers, I would expect there to be far worse things to worry about. We would be dangerously close to making humans replaceable when AI can take the place of people in highly skilled jobs.

A more concerning issue I see is that AI is now creating music which sounds realistic. While it sounded very "uninspired" and uninteresting to me, some of my friends could barely tell the difference. Basically, it can actively pass as music unless you listen carefully. And I find that quite disturbing. The same thing has also happened with text generation -- check out "GPT-2".

[ted]

....
A more concerning issue I see is that AI is now creating music which sounds realistic. While it sounded very "uninspired" and uninteresting to me, some of my friends could barely tell the difference. Basically, it can actively pass as music unless you listen carefully. And I find that quite disturbing. The same thing has also happened with text generation -- check out "GPT-2".

I do not find anything in the slightest either concerning or disturbing about this. When I listen to music it matters not to me whether it was created by an algorithm, a chimpanzee, myself, or a composer of immense talent. All I care about is the internal musical experience, the reactions of my own brain to abstract sound. Inability to discern the origin of the sound cannot compromise or undermine the integrity of my personal consciousness. The Turing test is largely irrelevant with regard to the creative musical process.

[trilling]

With all due respect, I don't know AI. But human race has shown a tendency to survive those things that have threaten our existence in the past. You may or may not have heard about software radio. It was big too at some point in the time continuum.

[j_tour]

No time to make a real comment, but FYI, in the Aug/Sept 2019 issue of TapeOp magazine there's a nice interview with a woman named Holly Herndon, called "Fighting Automation with Artificial Intelligence."  She's a recently minted Doctor of Musical Arts and has a number of nice insights about some future directions exploring AI/machine learning in live musical performance, as well as lab work.

Very interesting interview:  I'm sure it's available online from TapeOp's website.

I'd recommend TapeOp in general for people who want to keep abreast of things related to recording, composition, producing.  Very good bimonthly free magazine.

[maxim3]

Holly Herndon -- annoying lesbo music

[dogperson]

Holly Herndon -- annoying lesbo music

Not nearly as annoying as someone who judges music based only on the composer or lacks  the skills to post an intelligent comment about the compositions......