'AI has the ability to radically fix our world'
We at Endel believe that solving fundamental problems like the lack of sleep, lack of self-awareness, and constant stress requires sophisticated engineering, cutting-edge science, and art. When these things combine, we are able to evolve as a species.
For AI Lullaby, Grimes brought her music and voice to Endel, and the result is pure tech-aided magic. Dig deeper into what this collaboration is all about — Grimes shares her vision from a global perspective.
What about Endel inspired you to seek out this unique collaboration?
Grimes: The app is legit. I found Endel to be delivering in terms of listenable, generative content, so we hit them up. I rly wanted to make a baby version of their app since lil X prefers to sleep with ambience. I make music, so I might as well customize his sleep ambience. This project is basically live remixing of ambient music by robots for babies, haha.
Your music has lots of vocals. How does that translate to Endel’s shuffling of elements?
G: I engineer and produce the majority of my music, so even tho it doesn’t sound that way most of my time is spent on non-vocal elements. So it was pretty easy to make stems for them to shuffle about (but I did throw a ton of vocals in there too).
Creating music is a very emotional process, whereas artificial intelligence is rather analytical. How do you keep the emotion of music in an algorithm?
Via social media, streaming, etc., algorithms are currently controlling the political discourse, the art we see and hear, and therefore possibly the fate of our species. Algorithms are clearly able to elicit an incredible amount of human emotion, for better or for worse.
Humans are scared of being replaced, so we try to draw distinctions between ourselves and machines; but we built the machines. The machines are extensions of ourselves.
The beautiful thing about humans is that we have these emotional tools, like paint brushes or whatever else.
Algorithms are new tools, and we use them more than we realize. They are, in fact, very good at appealing to our emotions.
From an artist’s perspective, how is this new way to experience music revolutionizing the music industry?
G: What I initially loved about Endel was that it’s essentially live, it’s always making something new. Sometimes u tap on it and it adds new sounds to its little performance. And I’m like, “aw, hey cute little machine.”
Also, the way I see it, engineers haven’t been getting enough credit. The people who make the tools we use—like DAW’s, for example—are designing a lot of what we hear when we listen to music. I constantly marvel at the tools I have access to, just on my laptop, and I’m so grateful to the ppl who make all these things like auto-tune or whatever.
So, I guess this feels like a direct collaboration with a technology, but in essence it’s also a collaboration with the ppl who made that technology. Not rly sure if that answers the question, but hopefully.
You’re passionate about education regarding AI. What do you feel is important to understand about the technology if we’re going to embrace its possibilities?
I hope that the fields of AI safety, research, philosophy (as well as humane AI and spiritual technology, etc.) can grow a lot in the coming years. We’ll need it!
I hope we can avoid cutting corners with regards to AI safety—so we can maximize happiness and avoid destruction. When I see how social media is developing, it’s so addictive and it rewards hatefulness and division... I can already tell that safety is secondary to profit with a lot of new technologies.
I think, if approached properly, AI has the ability to radically fix our world. It theoretically could solve poverty, global warming and even recreational things like the nature of the universe! But it also has the ability to harm us.
I’m not sure what the answers are, but I do think as a society we aren’t paying enough attention to tech safety and creating humane technology.
We could expand these fields a lot. Technology really is an extension of ourselves and we can do so much more to make sure it’s healthy and safe and a force for good.
Endel collaborated with the favorite artist on a limited edition sleep soundscape. It is based on exclusive new vocals and music by Grimes.
Available on iOS and macOS until December 23, 2020, AI Lullaby is coming to Amazon Alexa and Android later this year.