Intelligence in These Times

Before I get into the primary topics of this post, I’m also hoping you take some time to read my last post, https://www.alphasongs.net/post/my-sabbatical . It will help bring you up to date with my circumstances at the present time. I would say that I am still in a period of sabbatical but am also beginning to take some baby steps back to my composing. I’m in a general good state of health and happiness. I’ve enjoyed a nice summer here in the Pacific Northwest. I have finished a small interlude in the play by Kai Cofer that I’m working on and starting into two of the songs this weekend. With these efforts completed, I will be over the halfway mark in completing the musical sections of the play.

Along with the good weather and transitioning into my composing work, I’ve been wanting to share some thoughts about these times and the onset of new intelligence coming from many directions. Notice that I’m not just making a statement about artificial intelligence, but intelligence in general. Organic beings develop a mental, emotional, instinctual, physical—and in higher beings—spiritual and intellectual frameworks of who they perceive they are. Organic intelligence is born symbiotically from all these frameworks, artificial intelligence is not. Before I dive deeper into the artificial intelligence side of intelligence, I would like to address recent changes in the ways all intelligence is distributed to us; ways that have played significant roles in our political landscapes and with that, our human development in general. 

I’m basically referring to the progression of media from word or mouth to paper, then to radio, movies, television, recording technologies, networks, and to the internet and its various platforms.. Even though there are many new technological channels of media in our current life, there are always filters applied to our exposure, both internal to us and external. In these times, we simply don’t have the capacity to absorb all the information available, so we always become selective. But there are many developments that influence how we become selective in our consumption of media. Nearly all people create a selection strategy, a trend that has only developed in the last several decades.

Thus, even without artificial intelligence, there is such a general surge in all media and their channels of distribution that alone, the surge has influenced us in dramatic ways, including political influences and even war. But now with artificial intelligence, the volume of media content is beginning to ramp up dramatically. Unlike organic intelligence, artificial intelligence does have the capacity to absorb everything on the internet and more. And the more artificial intelligence absorbs, the more comprehensive the model is.. The “intelligence” is at its very core an inference based on models created from huge amounts of data. The more AI models can consume, the more effective they are. Statistical modeling infers what words follow other words in sequence (large language models) and now this gets extrapolated to general sounds, general 2D and 3D visual content and other facets of our reality.

In the last two years of my professional career as a data engineer, I was fortunate to have witnessed the internal impact of AI in the corporate environment, being in the division that fostered AI adoption in the company. I thank education with a degree in statistics and several years in the actuarial profession to give me a foundation for understanding some of the underpinnings of AI. And I have been engaged in some continuing research into roles AI is progressing toward in our lives. Its truly breathtaking in many ways. And we all ask ourselves, how will I be impacted? What skills to I adopt to prepare better? How do I stay tuned into AI developments both beneficial and of concern?  

How will I be impacted?

I feel very fortunate to have retired from a good career as a data engineer, but I also recognize that it’s a career that is highly impacted by AI to the point that I am no longer viable in this profession moving forward. And the profession itself is now led by those fully utilizing AI tools and agents to structure and code what used to be done manually. It’s a common story for anyone in software development.

As a composer, AI made a huge impact on my website last year with the adoption of Cantamus software in my demo videos. The licensing of this software provides lyrical singing voices to my demo videos so that you can now hear the words being sung. At this time, I am also aware that another similar software named CantAI is now integrating with my Musescore composing platform, so learning a new singing AI tool is now on my “to do” list. I’m also exploring ways AI can help me in my marketing.

What skills do I adopt? How do I stay tuned into AI developments both beneficial and of concern?  

These are difficult questions to answer because it’s a serious investment of time spent vs. benefits gained. I think it may be important to understand the present development of AI agents. I think it may be a good habit to interact with an AI for daily period to get more integrated. I’m watching YouTubes and researching online for ideas as well. But I will never use AI tools to compose any of my works or generate any of my lyrics. My compositions are my very authentic human expressions, and they will always be that way.

The answers to these three questions above are incredibly variable for every individual. How this affects us as a whole in culture and society is the subject of amazing content right now. But one thing is for sure and that is the onset of artificial intelligence is an intense "arms" race between nations and companies. Sometime if feels like we live in a science fiction story. Just my opinion.

Let me conclude by saying that I try to keep an optimistic frame of mind toward AI. I know that the impact AI has and will have on us is truly unimaginable, so I try to focus more on the next months instead of the next years. And for the next months, I’m still ramping up slowly on my composing coming from my sabbatical. I will be continuing to spend more time with backend work on this website, ramping up and composing with Musescore plus continued journalling on my efforts. Stay tuned.