Our final PUB 101 lecture covered topics of AI, a quiz to test our knowledge on the purpose of AI and AI-related topics, as well as an activity to discuss certain impacts of AI on life and pose a relevant question to the class.
My group’s activity topic was AI and creativity – is AI truly creative or does it simply mimic human creativity, and what does this mean for creative workers, like artists and musicians. To me, this was quite an obvious topic. AI uses the information that humans have established as ideas, projects, and facts over time to curate the work and ideas that we want it to. It also lacks the emotional depth, intuition, situational context, and unpredictability of humans as a whole. That said, we posed the question, “do you think you would be able to distinguish an AI-generated breakup song from an authentic one?”
Although many agreed with our statement of AI’s lack of intuition and emotional depth, many had interesting, and anticipated, counterpoints. The responses we got said this: there are tons of songs where artists sing and rap songs that are written by other artists and songwriters. With this, sometimes we would only realize the difference through further research and news coverage. Overall, many believe AI has become advanced enough to where it can mimic human emotion and feeling so well that it may impact the music industry – contrary to the beliefs of the “top industries unaffected by AI”.
And that’s a wrap! Thank you to the amazing students, TA, and professor that have helped me throughout this course and my first term of university. I wish everyone all the best moving forward 🙂