With the 'ten-ager' getting ever closer to secondary school and homework questions coming, I thought it wise recently to go back over some of my maths I learned at secondary school with the use of that well known learning app - Duolingo. I, like millions of others over the recent years, picked up the app during the covid years to learn a little French and have continued ever since partly because I enjoy learning languages, and partly because the app openly tells me off for not practicing in a day!

There are certain advantages now to be found in the app which weren't initially there. For example the recent ability to speak to it in a conversation and it not only speak back, assess your language skills, but make suggestions on how you can improve your vocabulary. There is certainly a lot to be said in favour of AI when used in a constructive manner like this. But AI seems to be yet another big divisive issue causing controversy for its use and misuse.

Of late there are new words appearing in the UK, particularly in the media regarding politics so I thought I might show off one of the them here. It would be a mistruth (apparently the new jargon for 'A lie') for me to say I'd never used AI - I have. I have a couple of programs I use to generate images for my digital artwork and one for helping me write as my skills as a graphic designer and/or a linguist are not what my musical skills are. I would like to be hiring 'a person' to do these things for me but, unfortunately, I don't have the pockets to pull on to do so.

Now, unlike some of my musical brethren, I am not going to bemoan people who are in other work and are needing some form of music for their projects and turn to AI to achieve it. Hiring me after all is not cheap and I think there is a sensible line to be drawn somewhere in the sand here. Change has always been hard and challenging. The skilled labour that had to evolve during the start of the industrial revolution saw just the same upheaval in society. People adapted and where machinery took on the job of many, people migrated to other roles. It never fully replaces people not matter what the fear mongers might preach. However good AI gets it is not going to fully replace the one thing we have as a species... a soul.

If you missed the chatter this week, the creative backlash from people over the new seasonal Coca Cola advert has been a tidal wave of anger whilst in stark contrast the praise for apple's new 10 second streaming ident which is all filmed by hand, still amply shows that computers no matter how many times you've watch 'The Terminator' are still not able to do what we as humans can. It's also hard to be impartial with that line when the dystopian propaganda machine of the ever-woke BBC keeps trying to tell us what we should like and how to behave. Rightly, there has been a huge push back against the 'BBC Introduces' programme this week that spent a good proportion of their show interviewing Papi Lamour who was hailed as 'Pitch Perfect' and 'Amazing'. If you want to read more about that specifically, there is a fabulous piece in Rolling Stone magazine and you can read that here.

So keep the faith, keep listening to music and above all, keep being creative!

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