Your Music Is Being Used To Train Artificial Intelligence

Whether you are a songwriter or a listener, the music that you have created or connected with is being hijacked by big tech companies to train their various AI models. The Atlantic’s AI Watchdog allows you to type in your name or your favorite artist in a search engine and see which songs are being used in a dataset by AI companies to develop and improve their software.

As a songwriter and someone who works in music, it was quite upsetting to see music projects I’m involved with having their songs pillaged by these Silicon Valley nitwits. But moreover, as a human being and lover of art, I am appalled. What could possibly be the purpose of training AI to compose songs and screenplays other than for corporations to replace these pesky, expensive artists and writers with their own sellable flavor of artificial intelligence? This is all an obvious way to circumvent paying for talent, or am I missing some other grand purpose?

These corporations, which clearly have been in bed with our government for years and years, want nothing more than build more and more data centers to pollute our water, soil, eyes, and ears to fuel their AI models that will not only replace humanity’s logistical work, but now they want to replace our creative output as well.

It’s not a good sign that they’re already encroaching on creative spaces, given the fact that AI is still quite new in the grand scheme of things. Artificial intelligence has yet to solve any significant problems humanity faces, yet now it’s a good time to divert money and energy to replacing artists?

I think I figured out their endgame. And of course, the answer is the same as it was in 1890. It is the very nature of a corporation to strive for monopolization, if it is allowed to. We are living in an era of Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt 2.0, folks. Except now the names are Bezos, Musk, and Altman. The only difference is we don’t have a Teddy Roosevelt in office to fight them. Quite the opposite, in fact.

If corporations own all the means of production and creation, where does that leave humanity? What jobs are left for us 50 years from now other than being janitors and maintenance crew for data centers? I’ve seen plenty of people ask this question, but still not enough of us are demanding answers: WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING?

There is no such thing as a benevolent corporation. There is no billionaire coming to help us. There is no government coming to put a stop to it. Unfortunately, like everything else, it all falls on the common man. As soon as we stop speaking up and unifying together against this bullshit, they win.