I read about DJs worried that AI will take their jobs. One of them cited experimental AI DJs as sounding dull and lifeless. Another said that AI companies should be taxed and the taxes used to retrain people who lose their jobs. Another said that music has gone through many disruptions over the years and we just need to adapt to the new technology.
What do I think? I think these people are underestimating the rate of progress. In a few years or ten years or twenty years, I predict that a few elite DJs will have licensed their image and style and will be reproduced at multiple locations simultaneously. AI will analyse the demographics of ticket sales at each location, tailor the set to today’s audience, perfectly emulating the style of that particular elite DJ and will consistently give a performance equal to or probably better than that DJ on their top form and on their best day, in their style, continuously monitoring the audience and adapting the set based on audience reaction, developing and improving on the DJ’s style over time, projecting multiple oversize holograms of the famous elite DJ around the room, each of which interact independently with the audience, making eye contact, winking back to people, dancing along with people, copying audience dance moves and all that for less than the price a lousy small-town DJ used to charge. People will have a better time and will prefer the AI DJs to fallible, tired, ageing real people.
Imagine what AI will be able to do fifty years from now …