If you aren't convinced that artificial intelligence will soon turn a sentient robot against humanity, then maybe you will be now. Doctoral candidate at Georgia Tech's Center for Music Technology, Mason Bretan, has released a new video in which he jams jazz with some new friends--er--I mean robots.
Robotic musicianship is the latest study from Bretan, where he analyzes the ways in which robots produce their own kind of artistry or expression. Thus, an artificial being having the ability to create expands the field of artificial intelligence to incorporate new concepts.
The mechanic musicians that are accompanying Bretan are called Shimon (on the marimba) and Shimi (the three smaller machines).
According to Boing Boing, Bretan said of his companions: "The Shimi robots figure out how to move based on an analysis of the music and Shimon generates an improvisation given a precomposed chord progression using a generative algorithm that jointly optimizes for higher level musical parameters and its physical constraints."
He continued: "And through the power of artificial intelligence, signal processing, and engineering I firmly believe it is possible for machines to be artistic, creative, and inspirational."
His work, thus, examines improvisation and different form of cognition. The composition, also, is called "What You Say."
So without further ado, check out the sessions below.
