I know you probably haven't ever thought to yourself "I wonder what Scott Cooley thinks about Artificial Intelligence?," but anyway, you might have, and just in case, here's that answer for you:
A quick humorous observation is in order before a deeper dive: Fonts. The first thing that comes to mind for me when I hear about or particularly when I read about AI is fonts. Some of them make that capital "I" look like a lowercase L (l) or even sometimes the number 1, and therein lies the humor, because it makes me question "who is is this guy named Al that they keep talking (writing) about?" I don't care if it's short for Alan, Alfred or Albert, but I'm briefly thrown into confusion as I read on. Then my stream-of-consciousness briefly digresses to another observation that I not only like two-letter names for men, but also recall that it just so happens that most all guys I've met in my life with those kinds of simple names have been really good guys. Every Al or Ed I've met, I've liked. Then I think of how if you're contemplating names for your kids or pets, you immediately rule out names of people you didn't like. I've been randomly fortunate with the name Al for sure. Wouldn't hesitate to name a dog Al, but my wife would likely rule me out. Back to the font though. In the printed word, but more often on the digital screen, any online publication does itself a great favor to avoid this by choosing a font that displays the capitalized letter "I" with whatever those top and bottom horizontal lines are called. We all prefer them for at least that reason, don't we? The modern marketing people who insist on this clean, vertical-line, minimalist sans-serif whatever typography where the numeral 1, lowercase l, and uppercase I all look nearly identical really annoy me. They make the choice on their platform once, are too lazy to change it. I'm guilty of the same and won't be sure this will make sense depending on how your browser displays its fonts. Can you tell I'm a technical writer as well as a songwriter? More rare, pardon the pun, would be "why do they keep talking about A1 steak sauce in the context of technology?" Is it yet another acronym I will blow off looking up as I continue reading? Yes, but even when brought up in conversation, I can't help but remember wondering what all the fuss was about over this controversial guy named AL they keep writing about. Alright, maybe not so funny in retrospect, but I'll return to answering the burning question.
First of all, and thankfully for us all, AI has been trained on my music already. The world is a better place because of it, so that keeps me somewhat hopeful. ;-) I'm half serious and half joking here. Because my music has been public for a long time now, and because I've released quite a lot of it, it's all in there. Right now, you can text prompt Google Flow Music, Suno, or MusicGPT to generate a song in the style of solo artist Scott Cooley, and it will do a decent job of it way faster than I could using my ancient techniques doing it the hard way.
Sometimes just knowing the old fashioned methods were used to create things can make them more appealing and desirable. Think of furniture. Do you like knowing your table was made by an Amish family in Michigan using rudimentary hand tools instead of an AI-controlled robot in a factory? Yes, you might. Therein lies my hope. I know nothing about Amish table-building rules, but I assume that if they once had to make a hammer out of a rock and a stick or to forge the head, maybe they now allow for a store-bought hammer. Point is that the leveraging of things that make our work and lives easier evolves with time.
I hope no one gets the wrong idea from me about the Amish, especially after hearing my song "Puttin' Up A Pole Barn," and even more especially after seeing the music video I "made" for it, because I admire them. There is a lot to be said for their way of life, and it fascinates me.
My grandfather used to run a cotton gin in Missouri, which replaced human jobs, and eventually made his way up here to Michigan where he worked in the automotive industry, had a great union job with great benefits, and raised my Mom with a high standard of living and thriving middle class, and here I am. His was a common story around these parts I generically chronicled in my bluegrassy song "Burtucky Breakdown."
When thinking about AI being used to build cars now outside of Flint, and what such productivity-related decisions made by General Motors did to my once-idyllic hometown, I think extreme caution and planning is necessary to avoid in the future what Michael Moore documented in the film "Roger and Me." GM's productivity gains increased poverty and decreased the standard of living around here, which resulted in bankruptcy for both the corporation and many workers in the community.
The use of AI in music creation cannot and will not be stopped. It is unavoidable that its use will only become more commonplace. AI will continue to diminish the value of human-made music.
Like all technological advancements, there's opposition followed by adoption. When I first started writing songs, I'd go through potential rhyming words in my head until I found the right one. Now I use an online rhyming dictionary. It feels wrong, but it saves a lot of time. When I first started recording music, it felt like cheating to use a metronome click track, but now I occasionally listen to one when recording my initial rhythm guitar tracks. Drum machines and synthesizers had their early detractors on their way to becoming ubiquitous. Although I haven't used them, autotune, quantization, and reference-based (machine learning) mastering have been commonplace for a while.
Now AI can create a finished professional-sounding hit song without you needing to know music theory, or how to read or write music, play instruments, sing, or do sound engineering. By speaking or typing to describe what kind of song you want to create, you can prompt AI to create a song with those characteristics, which will leverage already-existing songs it was trained on. It will write the music & lyrics, create the instrumentation & vocal tracks, apply effects, eq & compression, mix & master. Tweak it by telling it how you want it to be different until satisfied. The only requirement is to know a language like English and to have a computer with some software installed on it.
AI will be used to detect whether AI was used to create music, but it won't matter. It will be increasingly difficult for humans to be able to tell if AI was used to create music. It will keep getting better. Sadly, a majority of music consumers won't care if AI was used to create the music they like.
Also sadly, music consumers will think AI-created music is what they should like, so they will, and it will be backed by science, and they won't even feel tricked, because they won't know the difference. After being fed with all of the most popular songs of all time, AI knows how to make you a hit on every level. Whatever parameters you specify, algorithms will crank out something appealing to the masses. All the scientific studies of popular songs ever conducted will paint you a picture far different than the types of songs I write and record.
I'm cool with that because what I do never consciously takes any of that type of information into consideration. My music comes from a totally human place of passion and inspiration and not caring whether anyone will like it or not. Hopefully, some people will still be able to discern that and appreciate it...before AI goes rogue and kills us all. ;-)
On to my non-music-related thoughts about AI.
AI will solve big problems in the world, and AI will create big problems in the world. Then AI will be used to solve those same problems it created. It will do great good and great harm in the world. Things both good and bad that you've seen in science fiction movies will continue to become reality.
Since our country has trouble regulating capitalism, it will also have trouble regulating AI. Both governments and industry will continue to be slow to establish safety guardrails. It will continue to contribute to unemployment. Governments will continue to be slow to put in place social safety nets such as Universal Basic Income. I won't get into politics herein, but suffice it to say that the demand for power will continue to increase as AI demand grows, and we will have more data centers whether you like it or not. The suits will always be selfish and are never going to do enough.
I believe all of the above are inevitable.
I also believe AI will destroy more jobs than it creates, and neither our government nor corporations will do much to redistribute wealth due to productivity gains. Speaking of power, the power-addicted AI tech bros will continue to preach that we'll all have a higher standard of living soon, while AI continues to further diminish the middle class.
Things will get worse before they get better, but they will get better eventually. Just probably not in my lifetime, based on the current state of things. I don't think it will go "general" in my lifetime and I don't think it will go "quantum" ever, despite me not being able to describe what either of those means very well at all. That's my take as of today, Saturday, October 3rd, 2026.
It's not all doom and gloom, depending on how you look at it. The Earth is self-healing and some sort of life will go on. One needs a sense of humor about these existential things. I liked comedian George Carlin's take in his Saving the Planet routine when he said that after humans are gone we'll have "Earth Plus Plastic." Look it up and watch it on YouTube. It was ahead of its time, applies to AI, and is hilarious. The gist is that plastic was created from stuff that was already here. Just like AI music was spawned from music that was already here. It needed us humans to know how to make it, and now that it can, our job is done, and we can be phased out, and AI can keep kicking out hits for whatever living things remain who can appreciate it. Do Tardigrades have ears? Ask AI.
Parting thought: There are still people my age who are happy without having a personal computer or a cellphone in their lives. I admire them. We didn't grow up with those things. I'm sure AI will bring about a lot of things we didn't know we'd need, but can still happily live without. My favorite TV show is called "Alone" and on it you watch people survive with hardly anything in the wilderness while filming themselves. While you watch them slowly starve, you notice that most of them, out of boredom, frustration and loneliness, find ways to incorporate music into their lives. You often see them sing, make up songs, or use natural materials to make instruments like drums and guitars. It's human nature to want music. The real stuff is the best. We're only here for a little while, so try to find things to enjoy, like real music.
