Martin Clancy joined No More Workhorse for a two-part interview to discuss himself, AI, and his book Artificial Intelligence and Music Ecosystem.
I don’t think we’re ready to replace artists with AI or anything like that, but at the same time, if you’d asked yourself, 30, 40 years ago, would people go and watch a DJ?
– Killian Laher, No More Workhorse
MC: When I was growing up one of my favourites Kraftwerk had already peaked. There were those electronic two-piece bands, and you had all the rage at Top of the Pops of people saying ‘these aren’t real musicians’. Then you had purists like Queen saying there are no synthesisers on this record. So what’s different about this (AI) then? Kraftwerk had a vision of the future that was about as real as David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. They were just different possibilities. We’re now looking at technologies that, because of the speed of change, you just have to be kind of careful with. When you talk about DJ culture, it was a very long time before scratching was invented in the early seventies. The gramophone was invented, 100 years beforehand and it took 100 years for someone to go and do scratching. For it to become something that was mainstream took that long!