Interview with ChatGPT - Part 2: The Analysis
If you haven't already heard of the phenomenon that is ChatGPT, it is the new AI chatbot developed by Open AI. This tool is quickly becoming infamous for its ability to write more convincingly than any such program to date in a variety of styles, including poetry, song, satire, essay, fiction, etc. But rather than just producing 1,000-word essays in a matter of seconds, ChatGPT is being used most effectively among professionals as more of a reference book/idea generator. Ask it for a company name idea, alternate phrases, a great first sentence for a story, or any number of more specific requests and you will more than likely find some genuinely great suggestions. This is because ChatGPT can filter through millions of websites on a topic in a moment, and translate that data into usable, relatively simple concepts. So in effect when you ask ChatGPT a question, the answer you receive is a summation of what the internet has to say about it. That, in concept, is fascinating to me, which is why I decided to ask ChatGPT, and theretofore the internet, a bunch of questions about classical music and its place in modern society. If you want to read that interview, check it out here.
The result was surprisingly on par with a lot of orchestral mission statements and general conversation around how these kinds of organizations should be run. If you were to base an orchestra's season on the suggestions of ChatGPT, the emphasis would be on four basic principles:
Education and community programs
Inclusivity (both demographically and sonically) while retaining ties to the history of the art form
Collaboration with other art forms
Accessibility via digital and financial means.
These bullet points are shockingly familiar if you have ever heard various statements made by orchestra CEOs and marketing teams everywhere — and that is not to disparage those goals as they are indeed all essential. More what I take away from this over-simplification that ChatGPT has provided is how much of a static box we are in as an industry. Most "new" ideas can be traced back to one of those four basic principles, so it's not surprising that after analyzing millions of internet results having to do with classical music, these are the pillars AI leans upon.
What I see here is a way of using this AI tool to see what already is, and therefore what is not. When arts organizations look into the answers to questions like, "How do we find relevance for our art form in modern society?", AI can give us the baseline — the bare minimum. With a starting point established, we look forward from there. After all, if we know where the box is, we can have an easier time thinking outside of it.
-P