This Fender CEO quote on AI and Music broke me a little bit:

Cole’s philosophy is that AI in music is nothing new. “I think AI has existed in music as long as there’s been recorded music,” he says. While the biggest barrier to playing guitar is the time it takes to learn the instrument, it’s the second barrier, writing songs, where he believes AI plays a part.

“I actually believe cover music has been sort of analog AI for a long time,” says Cole. Those that don’t yet have the skills to write their own songs can play the songs written by their favourite artists instead. “I listened a lot to REM, U2, The Smiths and The Cure, and at some point I got sick of just listening to them. I wanted to play it, so I learned to play guitar.”

🎩 Tip to @theverge podcast for surfacing this. I think a fundamental worldview divide between our techno-overlords, their enablers, and the rest of us is sincerely believing that a sufficiently complex computer chip or server running the appropriate protocols is fundamentally no different than an embodied human when it comes to consciousness. As if gestalt cognition is what defines human existence.