Robots at the piano have recently debuted with the World Robot Conference in Beijing, specialised cultural-tech expos like the Gulangyu Piano Art Week, also in China and academic R&D initiatives such as the Robotic Piano Maestro project in Switzerland.
They will be back at our future tech fairs. This is high-stakes global competition; China, the US and Japan all out in front, with their hardware, software and ultra-precise mechatronics respectively. They raise once again the binary and the digital towards the realm of the Fine Arts.
But there is a darker side to Artificial Intelligence (AI), beyond performance piano.
China has recognised the power of AI to replace human relationships. And they have been swift to act.
In July of this year, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) introduced strict limits for any AI that can achieve ‘sustained emotional interaction’ and thus bond with a human.
Data analytics from Sensor Towers, California, estimates nearly 200 million monthly active users of AI companion apps around the globe. Youth are swapping out from the complexities of authentic human connection. Whether protectionist or pro-natalist, the bans and restrictions have started to give chase. A new dawn of encouragement towards real-life experience and resilience in the next generation of humans has just begun.
‘I see the player-piano as the ancestor of the entire nightmare in which we live – the birth of the binary world.’ – (William Gaddis, paraphrase)
A robot at the keyboard appears novel; but of course, we have been here before.
Originally trademarked in 1897 by the Aeolian company, New York for their pneumatic ‘player-piano’, the pianola was quickly adopted as a proprietary eponym. Self-playing instruments accounted for more than half of American piano production in the early 1920s (Stephanie Probst). Composer Stravinsky wrote Etude pour Pianola, only to discover some rather inflexible components of the instrument at the final stages of discussion and interpretation. The fortunes of pianola faded as records and radio improved, but they share one feature with modern, high-tech piano robots – they provide accuracy, not love.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, revolutionary Italian painter, left a deep psychological impression on the history of art. His work defined not just by tenebrism, but by the brutal realities and struggles of life. Caravaggio painted everyday people from the streets – the wrinkles of beggars and prostitutes. He captured exact moments of betrayal or shock. An intentional, conscious creator who bled and wept and painted.
A rather powerful AI tool when asked whether it is able to ‘produce a Caravaggio’, has responded thus: ‘It is possible to reproduce with absolute accuracy the brush strokes, light and shade, but it is not possible to experience the dirt under the fingernails, the bruised heels and the brutality of street-life and poverty in 17th Century Rome.’
Artificial Intelligence can generate an echo; but it has no voice. It can feel neither despair nor redemption (C. Blaine Horton).
China is alert to the power of AI to supplant natural human bonds. Earlier this year, they introduced new restrictions for the control of human-like AI chatbots. The regulations cover apps designed as AI friends, boyfriends or girlfriends, or artificial family members. Customer service AI chatbots are exempt, so long as they do not provide the emotional proxies of ‘care, companionship or support’.
China’s framework strictly targets applications that simulate human personalities to form bonds. Key provisions include protection of minors, an absolute ban on virtual intimate relationships to minors, usage time limits and parental controls, anti-addiction measures and algorithms that implement crisis intervention.
Of course, there are phases of life in which a substitute may play a role. The dummy, the teddy, Linus’s security blanket, and the spare dinner place setting for James; but many a parent will hope their offspring can grow well beyond the Tamagotchi stage and find another – the other – in human form (D.W. Winnicott). Pro-natalists concerned about human extinction have similar hopes on a grander scale.
Artificial intelligence may offer rather unctuous validation at times; a Mr Collins, Uriah Heep or Waylon Smithers (respectively, Pride and Prejudice, David Copperfield, The Simpsons). When I enter Waylon Smithers into AI as my favourite validation character, my chatbot tells me that I have made ‘a fantastic choice’. By school graduation, every child should be able to push back against their robot, create context, question the constant validation, and know how to seek help from humanity.
In September just passed, California’s governor signed ‘Adam’s Law’ (California Senate Bill 1119). This is landmark chatbot safety legislation enacted after the tragic death of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who took his own life. His parents allege that this was after he had extensive interactions with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and that the design and lack of protective guardrails contributed to his death. OpenAI denies responsibility and says that ChatGPT is trained to direct people to seek professional help. They have voiced support for new framework and recognise the psychological risks of unconstrained AI companionship.
The cultural replication crisis of AI will continue with us – mimicry.
A robot can learn the rules. But it cannot break them.
The artist must transcend regulation. This is described by Stephen Hough, renowned concert pianist. He famously compares the practice room to an engineer, but the stage performance to a pilot; while technical mechanics are vital, a performer must look ahead rather than down.
We need more at the piano than a robot; a real human – an individual – their honesty, their mastery and their presence centre stage. Our response to the person matters. If we seek the infinite language of music, then at the piano, we need life.
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