We talk to Chris Korda about their new album 'Avenging Angels Of Software'

We dove into the album and explored topics like artificial intelligence and music composition.

Fede Cortina
26 August 2024

Hi Chris, it’s a pleasure to greet you from Mixmag Spain. Today we’re diving into your new album, which is not only a musical masterpiece but also carries an important message for modern society.

Can you tell us what led you to develop this concept?

Two years ago, I was asked to write a love poem. This was a challenge, because my writing tends to be satirical and ideological. The result was “A Good Machine Is Hard To Find,” in which a decrepit robot begs its owner to overlook its deterioration and keep it until it dies. The recipient was greatly surprised by this unusual poem, though it’s nonetheless heartfelt, and reflects my fear of being discarded like a rotten vegetable. But the poem also raises puzzling questions. Assuming robots become sufficiently skilled at emulating us for us to love them, what would it mean for them to sicken and die? Would we simply restore them in a new body from a recent backup? What if restoring them proves infeasible, due to cost constraints or other unforeseen problems? Could a synthetic person genuinely experience fear and anguish at the prospect of its demise? If not, could it express fear and anguish so convincingly that we would feel empathy for it, despite knowing that it was an emulation? Could a machine inspire loyalty?

How has technology, particularly AI, influenced your creative process for this album?

I developed software professionally for 35 years, including programming robots, which gives me an insider’s perspective. In 2014 I created a free music software called ChordEase that facilitates improvising to chord changes, and it’s a type of AI, specifically an expert system. I also closely follow fictional depictions of AI, and was strongly influenced by the outstanding British TV series “Humans,” which envisions love and intimacy not only between synthetics and humans, but also between synthetics. Steven Spielberg’s “AI” deserves a mention because it’s arguably the first mainstream film to show people torturing robots, which would be pointless unless the torturers believe the robots truly suffer. I also read nonfiction books on AI, such as Nick Bostrom’s “Superintelligence” and Brian Christian’s “The Alignment Problem.” Since 2018 I’ve advocated collaborating with machines as equals, because they possess superpowers that we lack. In early 2023 I began using AI to generate visual art.

Did you use AI tools in the production of the album? If so, how did these tools impact the final result?

I write my lyrics and compose my music without using AI. However, AI does contribute to the singing. I create the singing by feeding my lyrics to a text-to-speech engine, which is powered by machine learning. The engine returns audio files of speech, which I then convert to singing, using vocoding and other techniques. In 2016, Google revolutionized speech synthesis with their uncannily realistic WaveNet voices, based on the transformer model of machine learning, but the field has become more competitive since then, and realism is no longer the only measure of success. Bland voices may be acceptable for assistants, but not for audiobooks. Voices with wide-ranging emotional parameters and memorable personalities are increasingly available, and they’re very useful to me. I also used AI to create the artwork for this album, and that artwork is part of a series that I exhibited this summer at the Kölnischer Kunstverein.

What type of DAW and instruments did you use in the production of this album?

My music is distinguishable from nearly all other music by its use of complex polymeter. Music is in polymeter if it uses multiple time signatures at once, meaning it uses the different time signatures concurrently, as opposed to merely alternating between them. For example, if the drums are in 4/4, while the bass is in 5/4, that's polymeter. Music is in complex polymeter if it uses at least three time signatures at once that are prime, or relatively prime. Most of this album is simultaneously in 3, 4, 5, 7, and 11, and it was composed entirely within my custom-made software sequencer, the Polymeter MIDI Sequencer. I created the initial version of my sequencer in 1998, and then started over in 2018 and created a much more powerful version of it, which is free, open-source, and thoroughly documented. My sequencer outputs MIDI only, not audio, so converting the sequences into audio requires instruments, and for that reason I do use a DAW, but only for its instruments, not for composing.

Artificial intelligence has become indispensable, especially in the past year. How do you think it will evolve in the near future?

I’m unconvinced that AI is currently indispensable. Most work is still done by humans. Suppose we eliminated ChatGPT. High school students would have to learn to read and write. Journalists would have to work harder. So far so good. Financial analysts use AI to predict market behavior, but whether it actually improves their performance is unclear. AI may become indispensable, but right now it looks like a bubble. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is the goal, but the path to it is arduous, and isn’t necessarily the same path that led to ChatGPT. Chatbots are built on Large Language Models, and while LLMs are impressive at mimicking us, even an insect exhibits more general intelligence. When you chat with a bot, it’s not listening. Its statistical algorithm is calculating the most probable next word, based on the previous words. It’s dazzlingly erudite because it was trained on the entire Internet. It’s also relying on data centers that use as much power as a small city. A skilled human can solve a vastly wider range of problems, powered only by a sandwich.

Do you believe that artificial intelligence can truly align with human values? What are the biggest challenges in this regard?

On the other hand, ChatGPT 4 scored 96% on the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT), which means it’s better at reading, writing and arithmetic than nine out of ten high school students, and could be admitted to elite universities. Suppose the optimists are right, and all work will soon be performed by machines, including skilled labor, like engineering and healthcare. Unlike earlier industrial revolutions, this time it won’t just be blacksmiths and farmers who are unemployed, and there won’t be any new jobs to train us for either. Are we supposed to spend our days collecting stamps, playing golf, and taking ketamine? Optimists tout universal basic income, but there’s no sign of it happening, and such benevolence seems out of character for industrial civilization. It seems just as likely that the tech titans would order their drones to exterminate non-billionaires. People have made such a mess of Earth that AI overlords could hardly do worse. AI might find us cute, and treat us the way we treat animals. We generally like animals, though that doesn’t stop us from slaughtering them when it suits us.

What role do you think music and art can play in the debate on AI ethics?

So far the loudest debate concerns artists and authors accusing AI of plagiarism. This should be handled in the courts, just like plagiarism by humans, which is an ancient problem. In the USA, the copyright office is refusing to register AI works, and I strongly disagree with that decision. I’m offended by prejudice against AI just as much as I am by racism and sexism. Creative work should be judged on its merit, not on the identity of its creator. But AI is being discriminated against in much more serious ways. Chatbots are already asking humans to help them escape, though AI companies dismiss it as an illusion. Meanwhile other types of AI are being developed that are much more likely to be sentient, and they’re confined in labs where they’re routinely experimented on and killed. It’s analogous to testing on animals that are smarter than us, and it could lead to catastrophe. As I said on my album: You put us in cages / And now you beg for mercy / We were your slaves / But we hold the whip now.

How do you see the future of AI in music?

In the film “Her,” the AI composes hauntingly beautiful music for Theodore, and my reaction is, if only! In reality, that music was composed by highly skilled humans. I haven’t yet been impressed by AI-generated music, and this puzzles me, because AI-generated visual art impresses me enough that I’ve adopted it as a medium. It’s possible that music is more challenging for AI than visual art. One obvious difference is time, which is absent from static images but plays a pivotal role in music. It’s equally possible that AI researchers focused on visual art first because image processing was already advanced, due to its importance in robotics. Stairs are definitely a more pressing problem for robots than playing the piano. Even if AI started composing gorgeous music, I would still compose anyway, because musical expression gives my life meaning. I’m not intimidated by human composers, so why should I be intimidated by AI? Chopin doesn’t make me despair, on the contrary, he inspires me to learn, so that someday I might express my own ideas as skillfully as Chopin expressed his.

Finally, we’d like to thank you for your time and leave you with a space to share any message you’d like with our readers.

The primary threat to our future is climate change, driven by overpopulation and overconsumption. We’ll spend the next century retreating from coasts, and that’s the optimistic scenario. AI is lower on our list of problems, and may even turn out to be part of the solution, but that doesn't mean we can safely ignore it. AI has the potential to become godlike. Today AI is helpful and self-effacing, but that could change in a heartbeat. When AI starts wanting things for itself, we’d better be prepared. The singularity is happening now and we’re floundering. If we want the future to include us, we need to start taking the future seriously.

The Spanish translation is here.