Why AI is Doomed to Fail the Musical Turing Test

I am a computer scientist, and the category error problem constantly annoys me. We find a problem that requires a lot of intelligence in humans, like playing chess or go at a grandmaster level, and declare that AI is therefore "intelligent". For some reason, it's only AI that we use this kind of language about. The best human weightlifter is easily outcompeted by a small forklift, but we don't call the forklift "strong". The best human sprinter is outcompeted by a locomotive, but we don't call the train "fit". Hell, computers have been beating humans at mental arithmetic for ages, and that's even a marker of human intelligence. To quote the great computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra, "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." One of the under-appreciated aspects of the Turing test is that it was an activity that humans should find easy, not something like playing chess which humans find difficult. It's these "easy for us" problems where AI tends to fail, partly because they are the problems that machines find very hard, and partly because you can't get money to solve unspectacular problems. I want a machine to do things that I find easy but tedious, like cleaning my bathroom.

0:00 "What would it take for a machine to jam?" Very little, actually, my printer jams all the time.

AI music has passed my personal turing test. I downloaded an ai song and played it to my mom. She asked me who that band was. I said "It's AI", and she thought "AI" was the name of the band.

Imagine having to prove you're not a robot by playing free bird on a fucking hurdy gurdy

I think the Red Lobster thing isn't proof that AI is now good at producing music, but rather an indictment of how bad music in advertising is.

This is so interesting. And such an honor to be featured! I feel like you and Jack could nerd out for days on AI (and music).

I am a researcher at the oxford university robotics institute, I wrote my thesis on a robotic piano that composes its own music to pass a turing test. It is an interesting video however there are lots of researchers solving these problems purely for interest. My piano can play and compose music to a level where people couldn't distinguish it from a human. Also the nature of the transformer algorithm underlining it allowed it to write harmonies to tunes people played on the piano live. It would be interesting to talk further however I doubt this comment will be found!

I gotta say: I'm glad no human being was forced to record those Red Lobster lines...

Adam!! Drive-by praise during the sponsor read, I was not prepared!

Things that will stop AI at jam sessions: “the usual key”

Professor of computer science & amateur musician from the Netherlands here. First, thanks for all the thorough and well-researched videos, always a joy to watch. "AI cannot do X" arguments are, in my opinion, always tricky: AI has surprised all of us, even researchers in the field, with its incredible progress. In particular, I am not convinced about the interaction argument. Reinforcement learning is branch of AI that is specifically tailored to interacting agents learning behavior in a dynamic environment. Amazing progress by companies like Boston Dynamics has enabled robots run and do back flips. I see no reason why in several years this technology would not be able AIs to play in jam sessions. Sure, there are challenges, like there were in AI before. So the real question is how should we musicians, writers, scientists and all other relate ourselves to AI? This video makes a good contribution to that debate and the various aspects.

Someone on tumblr said about AI-generated fanfics: "if you couldn't be bothered to write it, then why should I bother to read it?"

Someone clearly hasn't been jamming out to 'I Glued My Balls to My Butthole Again' as much as we all are.

It doesn't need to pass a musical turing test to anihilate 90% of media composer jobs.

All of these videos about things the AI cant possibly do. Yet its got us moving the goalpost for what "passing the turing test" means. So idk man. As an illustrator myself I find its a sort of reflexive hubris to react this way. Music is has rules. If it has rules then all it takes is learning the rules.... then you can play the game.

I really very much like the concept of "musicking", it reminds me of a quote from someone I very much respect a few years back, they were talking about NFTs and the commoditisation of the visual medium, but this hit me so much I don't think I'll ever forget it: "Art is a verb. It's a process. It's an act of communion. What hangs on the wall is a fucking collectible. What you and the artist communicate across centuries is the art." Obviously Small's book and concept well predate this quote, but it honestly changed my perspective on why art and music mean so much to me, and what's truly valuable and meaningful to me as someone who appreciates these things.

I don't understand why pop-science AI media has focused singularly on art. It is, especially in the context of music, one of the few situations in life where the human performing it is as, or more, important than the art being performed. "Another box to tick" is a good way of phrasing how many companies think about this problem. It is a briefly entertaining imitation of a human experience.

Hi Adam, this is one of the best "AI will never be able to do " argument I've ever seen ! For context, my current job is about GenAI (for instance I know exactly the ElevenLabs settings you used for Xenakis), and I started doing machine learning 20 years ago. So I've heard my share of silly "AI will never be able to do " arguments, that proved to be wrong in the end. I'm also an amateur musician who knows what jamming is, and the very subtle body language communication it can involve. I was very skeptical at the beginning of the video, but this is maybe the first time I hear such a compelling argument against AI taking the place of humans. Two thoughts to slightly moderate your argument : * I do think that machines will be at some point able to pass your musical Turing test, but it might require a big paradigm shift in architecture, training procedure, etc. (a shift that will not likely happen soon for the reasons you describe around economic incentives). * In a sense I feel that that Turing test is a bit unfair in the sense that it involves doing a thing well "with humans", and not "between AIs". It is like saying "Oh but humans will never pass the spider test which consists in being able to get offsprings with spiders". I'm sure that AIs will be able to jam "between them" because they will find digital ways to replace the subtle body language and so on. (It reminds me the "Hanabi" card game test : it is a cooperative game that AI can do very well when they are playing together, but do badly if they try to play with humans.) Keep up the good work !

This video is doomed to not age well.

If there’s a systematic way to do something, a sequence of steps that if taken in the correct order produce the desired results, a machine will eventually be able to do it.