Classical Music ...Robots.

PG-13 Warning

Songs Without Lungs

Of course I’m not worried about AI replacing me. I’m a pianist. No one will ever pay to watch robots perform.

And then we met Sophia.

That’s right. Earlier this year, with the Baptist University Symphony Orchestra in Hong Kong, a robot took the stage and ‘sang.’ She’s called Sophia. She seems so human with a name like Sophia. Much better than C-137. I’m less likely to confuse her with a robot now that she’s called Sophia.

In what was dubbed her ‘first classical music performance,’ (Oh goodie, there will be more!) Sophia wore gold sequins and drove on and offstage. Her ‘head,’ made of skin-like rubber, doesn’t have any hair. In fact, the entire top of her head is transparent, revealing circuit boards beneath, as if to remind the audience, ‘Look! It’s a robot!’

She has eyes that close when she’s ‘feeling the music’ and little ears that I don’t think have holes in them …Probably not important for a musician to have good ears…

Going into classical music, I was told: I had to love it so much, I’d be okay if the rest of the world didn’t understand. I was told that a mere 1 in 10,000 succeed, I was told that staying home and practicing, instead of joining in the camaraderie of other children, I’d be rewarded in the long run.

Today I’d probably say the same things to my own child. Only now I’d add, …oh, you might have to compete with robots.

Classical musicians already have precarious careers: I’d hate to learn I’d been bumped by a robot. But— and this isn’t me wishing for an upgrade— Sophia doesn’t sing with air and a mouth. No, that’s currently too complicated. Instead, music pumped through speakers while her ‘mouth’ moves.

And the music? At least tell me it was AI Verdi, or Robot Mussorgski: It was nothing at all like classical music: Sophia’s voice is autotuned and the only thing that resembled classical music was the human orchestra behind Sophia, led by a human conductor, frantically beating time for the primitive humans— frantically beating any thoughts out of his head that might run something like, ‘…a robot, I’m okay with this, I’m conducting a robot…’

Very well. Maybe Sophia can tell us about her new profession: