How futuristic technology keeps us living in the past
Or, zombies are real and they are on your TV and radio right now 🧟♂️
Parky's back!
☝️That headline will mean next to nothing to my new international friends so let me elaborate. Parky, short for Michael Parkinson, is like the British Dick Cavett; a beloved interviewer whose eponymous chat show ran from 1971 to 1982 and then from 1990 to 2007. He specialised in deep, longform interviews with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole and his favourite recurring guest, the Scottish comedian Billy Connolly.
Over his storied career Michael Parkinson became heralded as what we British call a 'national treasure' alongside Stephen Fry, Dame Judy Dench and a handful of other quintessentially British characters. Michael Parkinson died in 2023. And now, according to a report in The Guardian, he's back!
An exact vocal replica of Parkinson, who died last year at 88, is to be launched as the AI presenter of a celebrity interview podcast later this year. The eight-part unscripted series, Virtually Parkinson, will allow new guests to be questioned in Parkinson’s famous relaxed style, with the full backing of his family and estate. Made by Deep Fusion Films, the podcast is believed to be the first to be entirely presented by an AI host.
Even more depressingly, the maverick who raised Parky from the dead turns out to be his son who added, “we’re going for a new generation of guest talent, but that doesn’t mean he would not go back again to people he interviewed before.”
Of course, I mean, why give new talent a chance when we can simply keep reviving the hits until no one watching or listening can even remember who the original artist was but has nothing else to turn to!
Pop culture is going backwards
I've written before about the stagnation of culture since our entire childhoods got uploaded to the Internet and allowed us to wallow in the past rather than move on with the future. Although AI feels futuristic its entire business, as far as media and entertainment is concerned, relies on making more of what’s worked in the past at the expense of anything original. Its entire raison d’etre is to mine the archives of existing words and pictures to create something that is novel but not new, that is intriguing but not interesting, that is consumable but not nourishing. And it's happening with music too.
You'd think that with near-universal access to every sound ever created, music would be one of the most innovative areas of creativity right now but not only is AI creating new music that sounds like the old music, it's creating new musicians that look and feel like old musicians too as 'professional music fan' Derrick Gee explains:
Despite huge advances in access to music production and distribution technology, multiple studies have proven that songs are becoming more repetitive and less complex. The Medical University of Vienna published a study in 2014 stating that, “album sales of a given style typically increase with decreasing instrumentational complexity. This can be interpreted as music becoming increasingly formulaic in terms of instrumentation once commercial or mainstream success sets in.”
And this more recent study on Nature.com: “shows decreasing complexity and increasing note density in popular melodies over time, especially since 2000.”
Culture is converging, which is a point perfectly articulated by front man of The1975 Matt Healy in his recent longform interview with fellow Substacker
.
Why is this happening?
To understand why this is happening we must follow the money. The development of AI will be one of the most expensive undertakings in history. Open AI CEO Sam Altman is on record asking, in all seriousness, for $7 trillion (that’s trillion with a TR!) to develop semi-conductors that will enable Artifical General Intelligence (AGI). Do you know what else you could do with just a fraction of that money?
End world hunger for $330bn (4.71% of $7 trillion)
End global poverty for 1.95tn (27.86% of $7 trillion)
But there’s not enough profit in that. So, how will Sam & Co ever generate a return? Investors with a risk appetite will bet on the tech but the tech cannot be so reckless because its job is to churn out hits based only on what has worked before. It’s the same model being employed by hedge funds buying up the rights to artists like Pink Floyd and Bruce Springsteen because why invest $100,000 in new talent when you can invest $100,000,000 to strip the carcass of Bob Dylan’s back-catalogue for commercials or, worse, create new songs in his likeness? I mean what the f*ck is the point of a protest song that nobody cared enough to write?!
What can I do?
If you want culture to move forwards and not backwards you must be curious, don’t just rely on the algorithm, go out of your way to find new artists, musicians, authors and filmmakers. Ask your local librarian or bookseller, ask your local record-store owner, go to a show at your local dive bar or black box theatre. And when you find something you like, tell everyone about it.
For my part, I want to start spotlighting humans who I think are doing something extraordinary on behalf of their fellow man so, as of next month, I will be introducing a new feature called ‘Human of The Month’. If you would like to nominate someone to be featured then please send me a brief summary of who they are what they do. Hopefully we’ll find some new humans to inspire us all before the zombies take over!
Recommendations
If you live in Singapore like me there is an open lecture coming up on 13/11 at NTU entitled ‘ARTificial Intelligence: The Next Update for Creativity with Jeanette Winterson’. Jeanne is the author of ‘12 Bytes’ and will “explore the fascinating intersection of AI and creativity, examining the potential and challenges of this transformative technology, and what it holds for the future of human expression.” Buy your ticket here. (You can also join me on the waitlist for her creative writing masterclass on 16/11 here.)
Randy Feltface is an Australian comedian with a felt face (like a muppet) and his 4-part podcast on how we can hasten the destruction of the earth is finally making its way from BBC Sounds to Spotify so everyone, everywhere can laugh and cry at it as much as I did!
Malay punk band Marmalia’s new album ‘Keadaan Hidup Di Dunia Materialistik’ (‘Living Conditions in the Materialistic World’) is now out on vinyl and it’s fab. How did I find it? I ASKED A RECORD STORE OWNER! Specifically the chaps at Surface Noise Records on the 4th floor of the Textile Centre on Jalan Sultan. Try it.
In 2016 I wrote a story about a man’s misguided attempts to save children by making and distributing hyper-realistic CGI child-pornography. And last month a man got sentenced to 18 years for doing exactly that. I am not smug about it, it’s horrendous, but I do think it’s worth pondering the potential consequences, and not just the benefits, of technological progress. See what you think of my predictions on Kindle:
That’ll do ya! Nx
Neal, although I don't envision a world dominated by Robot Overlords (others, of course, do), it's pretty clear that technology is turning us into a society of numbed-out meat puppets. To paraphrase a bumper sticker I saw recently: Given the choice between artificial intelligence and common sense, I choose the latter.
And I really like your thought (among many: "AI ... relies on making more of what’s worked in the past at the expense of anything original." Indeed...