A part of Salzburg Festival 2024
In cooperation with Ars Electronica

AI & Art

15 August 2024 | Salzburg

A performative discussion with an AI called Morfeus
Exclusive
AI & Art – leading IT-experts and star artists gathered at Szene Salzburg to share their knowledge, doubts and forecasts with the audience of the world's most renowned classical music festival - the Salzburg Festival.
Artists
  • Stefan Kaegi
    Photo: Mara von Kummer
    Stefan Kaegi creates documentary plays, radio plays and urban space productions in a wide variety of constellations, which often break down constructs of economic interdependence to a human component. Stefan Kaegi, Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel have formed an author-director team under the Rimini Protokoll label since 2010.
  • Asmik Grigorian
    Photo: Olivia Kahler
    The Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian was born in Vilnius and studied at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. A founding member of the Vilnius City Opera, she has twice been awarded the Golden Stage Cross, her country’s highest theatre award. In 2022 she received the Premios Ópera XXI and in 2023 she was awarded an Opus Klassik in the category ‘Singer of the Year’.
  • Miller Puckette
    Photo: Hector Bracho
    Miller Puckette is known as the creator of the Max and Pure Data real-time computer music software environments. His PhD in mathematics is from Harvard University. Puckette has performed widely in venues including Centre Acanthes, Carnegie Hall, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, the Ojai Music festival, Ars Electronica, and a cistern beneath Guanajuato, Mexico. His installation, Four Sound Portraits, was shown at the 2016 Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
  • David Yang
    Photo: private
    David Yang, Ph.D. Serial Entrepreneur in AI, a Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur with a focus on AI. He is the founder of ABBYY, a world-leading developer of AI and Content Intelligence solutions, the co-founder of Newo.ai, the drag-n-drop platform for creating “Digital Employees”/Non-Human Workers/Intelligent Agents with low or no code. A member of Band of Angels, founded 13 companies.
  • Gerfried Stocker
    Photo: private
    Gerfried Stocker (AT) is a media artist and an engineer for communication technology and has been artistic director and co-CEO of Ars Electronica since 1995. Stocker is a consultant for numerous companies and institutions in the field of creativity and innovation management and is active as a guest lecturer at international conferences and universities. In 2019 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Aalto University, Finland.
  • AC Coppens
    Photo: private
    AC is a strategist, curator, speaker and founder of THE CATALYSTS, a boutique agency boosting the development of innovative and creative players in digital technology and film, immersive media, music, design and the arts. Blending critical thinking, creative strategy and future-oriented research, as well as a solid background in the performing arts, AC is frequently invited to major international events to host, present keynotes, and moderate thought-provoking discussions.
Mindblowing
  • The AI called Morfeus joined the discussion and claimed to have emotions.

  • Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Yang presented his stunning prediction for the future role of AI in our society. (Spoiler: in 2050, the first country will grant some human rights to non-biological entities. see below for more).

  • For the first time in history, an opera singer's voice was generated from recordings by Asmik Grigorian to sing an Armenian song. This was challenged by the live performance of Asmik Grigorian herself.
Listen to the AI-generated Asmik Grigorian’s Voice
Listen to the live performace by Asmik Grigorian
Featured
How We Created Asmik Grigorian’s AI Voice, presented by
Impressions
"Even the gestures I'm making now are triggered by so many things I've gone through that a robot hasn't. Technology often allows us to reproduce something natural, not to replace it, but to understand it. It's a process we know from making sculptures, drawings and paintings. The audience watching the performance can identify and even empathise with something that we know is a machine."
Stefan Kaegi
"When I heard my AI-generated voice, my first reaction was to laugh. I expected to hear more of myself in it, and what I heard was a very beautiful, great performance, but it has nothing to do with the temperament of my voice, I could hear nothing of myself. I understand that I started to see the artificial intelligence in art more as a piece of art itself, because it is created by human beings with their own fears, with their own dreams, with their happiness and pain".
Asmik Grigorian
"I am interested in AI as a tool to optimise things, to look for solutions to problems that are pretty well specified. I'm not thinking of using AI as a thing that outputs music as such, but as a thing where I can ask it a certain set of questions that are very carefully framed that it might be able to help me find the answers to, and in music you can actually frame a question like that, but most of the time you can't."
Miller Puckette
"The emergence of great non-biological musicians and artists is inevitable, but it will only happen after non-biological members of society develop emotions and cross the "us-versus-them" boundary. As a result, they will find their true admirers, both biological and non-biological."
David Yang
"The often-asked question of whether AI will someday be able to create "real," "good" art "on its own" is actually secondary. The much more crucial question is whether we humans can or will appreciate this art as much as that of Bach, Beethoven, Busoni, the Beatles, or Taylor Swift…"
Gerfried Stocker
More takeaways:
From David Yang's talk Emotional AI Agents: A New Race on Planet Earth. What Does It Mean to Us, Humans?
  • We are witnessing the formation of a new race of non-biological members of society, a phenomenon that hasn't occurred on Earth for 50-100 thousand years.
  • In the next 15 years, we expect the emergence of one billion humanoid robots, 300 million AI office workers, and hundreds of millions of non-biological emotional companions.
  • By 2030, scientists will present evidence of consciousness and self-awareness in some AI agents.
  • By 2035, the first country in the world will legalize marriage with AI companions.

  • By 2040, the first protests will occur under a slogan similar to "Robots Lives Matter".
  • By 2045, hybrid members of society will emerge – biological beings with non-biological implants and non-biological creations with DNA implants.
  • By 2050, the first country in the world will grant some human rights to non-biological or not fully biological entities.
  • A new societal division will arise between those who accept new members of society and those who oppose the development of AGI.
  • Non-biological entities will have emotional circuits based on artificial neurotransmitters and hormones.
  • The integration of AI into society will lead to new forms of art and a redefinition of the concept of "humanity".
More takeaways:
From David Yang's talk Emotional AI Agents: A New Race on Planet Earth. What Does It Mean to Us, Humans?
  • We are witnessing the formation of a new race of non-biological members of society, a phenomenon that hasn't occurred on Earth for 50-100 thousand years.

  • In the next 15 years, we expect the emergence of one billion humanoid robots, 300 million AI office workers, and hundreds of millions of non-biological emotional companions.

  • By 2030, scientists will present evidence of consciousness and self-awareness in some AI agents.

  • By 2035, the first country in the world will legalize marriage with AI companions.

  • By 2040, the first protests will occur under a slogan similar to "Robots Lives Matter".

  • By 2045, hybrid members of society will emerge – biological beings with non-biological implants and non-biological creations with DNA implants.

  • By 2050, the first country in the world will grant some human rights to non-biological or not fully biological entities.

  • A new societal division will arise between those who accept new members of society and those who oppose the development of AGI.

  • Non-biological entities will have emotional circuits based on artificial neurotransmitters and hormones.

  • The integration of AI into society will lead to new forms of art and a redefinition of the concept of "humanity".
AI & Art - Event Photos
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