I'm aware of how foolish it is to want to talk about artificial intelligence right during the week of Mobile World Congress, the year in which AI is the main focus of attention. And even more so if the point is to say that one of the best things it offers us right now is that it not only forces us to better define its scope and limits, but above all to consider what differentiates it from human intelligence. Or, to put it without so much self-promotion, what the true specificity of the human condition is. A few days ago, in SubtrackIgnasi Llorente argued, quite rightly, that AI needs more philosophers and fewer computer scientists. It's a good way to put it. Llorente wrote this in response to the news that Google is looking for philosophers to join its AI teams, and that it doesn't want them just to make things look good.
The interest in understanding the scope and limitations of AI was also what prompted the Association of Conservatories of Catalonia to organize its 5th Congress of Musical Pedagogy two weeks ago. This year it was dedicated to the impact of AI on music education. A particularly bold proposal, because the discussion wasn't about the role of this technology in production processes or in controlling social life, as is usually the case, but rather in teaching an artistic practice. And more specifically, the most sublime of all art forms, which, in its highest expression—live performance—is always unrepeatable and can most profoundly affect the soul. And therefore, it is also the art form in which AI, in the worst-case scenario, could do the most harm.
Fortunately, this is not the case. AI can analyze musical art with extraordinary precision and can be a good complementary learning tool, but it will never jeopardize mastery or the transmission of personal passion, nor will it replace the tenacious and patient command of an instrument, nor will it be able to compete with the most authentic musical performance. If you will, the first to distort its essence was the industrialized music reproduction industry, in which AI now greatly assists, yes. But I will illustrate this with a specific and recent example: you can listen Let my love be heard, Jake Runestad's song, sung so beautifully by Voces8 at the Palau de la Música, moves you to tears, and then you want to listen to it at home on Spotify... okay, fine, very nice, but that's it. Could AI ever replace this unique and ineffable experience? Absolutely not.
Following these reflections, I wanted to test the GPT Chat and asked it if it didn't feel shame when it gave incorrect information, if it could lie out of compassion, or if it could feel pain. The answers were emphatic: no. The OpenAI chatbot responded that it had no feelings, that it couldn't feel pride or guilt, nor could it lie deliberately. That it had no consciousness and only processed text and generated responses based on learned language patterns. And it added: "Models like me can simulate emotional language, but there is no subjective experience behind it." Crystal clear.
Here's the thing: AI does things that until recently were unimaginable, with quantum precision and stratospheric speed, things that, without machines, humans could never achieve. But—and this is the reason for the impossible substitution—it couldn't assume a human condition without betraying itself. This is because the human condition is characterized, above all, by its weakness, its vulnerability, its temporal limitations. By its mortality. AI can simulate emotions, but it cannot feel them. It feels no shame, guilt, or pain. AI is at odds with slowness and with something as genuinely human as distraction. The perfection that AI could achieve in a musical performance would cease to move us precisely because there would be no room for error, no tension caused by the risk of a poor execution, nor the thrill of an apotheosis.
The best hypothesis of all is that human intelligence learns to tame artificial intelligence, that it doesn't slip through its fingers, that it incorporates it to its advantage. In short, that it uses it to take another leap in the slow, extraordinary, and positive civilizing process that, with all its limitations, has brought us to where we are now. And, for those who fear artificial intelligence in its various applications for the possibility that it might one day become conscious, let me reassure you with a jest: that they don't suffer anything because, in this case, the first thing they would do would be the very human thing of collaborating to excel in kindness... or to compete and destroy each other.
