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Meet the Beatles… Again

23 years after their last group recording, The Beatles are about to release a new song!

We’ve done a number of shows about the danger of AI — mostly ‘hard,’ or self-aware AI. However, like fire, Artificial Intelligence, makes a terrible master but a useful servant. Case in point: a recently-discovered, barely-audible song that John Lennon recorded directly into a hand-held cassette player before his death in 1980 has been processed by an artificial intelligence algorithm that was ‘trained’ to replicate Lennon’s voice, turning a barely-audible mess into a studio-quality track. Now, 23 years after their last group recording, The Beatles are about to release a new song!

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29 replies on “Meet the Beatles… Again”

It has now been a longer time since George’s death than the span of time between John’s murder and George’s passing. Crazy.

AI has mimicked a grandson’s voice and was used to extort 1000 dollars from his grandpa. The bad guy’s are using this with just a little fragment of their voice from social media. This is very scary stuff.

My husband and I are both musicians, and he does a lot of work with digital recording. What you can do now with a good laptop used to be multiple tens of thousands of dollars in studio recording equipment. It’s both interesting and more than a little disconcerting what digital tools and now AI are doing to music, IMO.
I guess I’m a Luddite. I’d rather hear live musicians play than digital approximations. I would say to Mr. McCartney “Let it be”.

AI only can surpass a human mind that is conditioned but AI stands no chance against a human mind unfettered by conditioning. The only problem arises from the fact that there are not enough unfettered human minds to combat AI once AI determines that the greatest threat against humanity … is humanity.

I know Paul doesn’t really need the money, even with the past wives. So, I’m hoping that this is just a tribute to his friend John and made with heartfelt remembrance.

I worked in healthcare for 30+ years and during that time I saw some amazing “advances” in medicine. I’m starting to look at AI in the same manner I did healthcare near the end of my career and that is, just because we can do something doesn’t me we should. I see way too often people getting caught up in the ” we can” at the loss of “should we”! Ethics seems to be relatively low on the list of concerns in much of our lives but then I’ve always known that ethics, like morals, are very personal and can not be dictated but they can be learned.

I can’t help but think Scott’s missing the point a bit on what is ‘real’.

Imperfections in obsolete recording media and processes add unreality, not remove it. The ‘real’ would be what you would have experienced if you were there in person.

I.E. if you were sitting in the Oval Office while Coolidge gave his speeches, or standing on the moon watching the Lunar Rover driving around, then you would get the ‘real’ experience.

If AI can come closer to the real experience than the limited technical capabilities of the time … It’s more not less ‘real’.

Steve, your close to the show now has me wanting you guys to use Chat GPT to write an episode just to see how badly it would suck.
Or better still, have it write an episode but if you were Leftists arguing their perspective. It would probably come off like your average sgement on The View or MS-13NBC

When Little Bob was in 3rd Grade, his dog literally did eat his homework. That made for an ackward email from us to his teacher, who thankfully also was also a dog owner

I have that CD. Love it. The story behind its creation is fascinating, but no AI was required. Just some fancy EQing of the original (unusable) Charles recording to isolate the vocal and a fresh recording session with Basie’s ghost band.

Bill: As you spoke of AI destroying human purpose in life, I couldn’t help think about trans male-to-female competing in women’s sports. Same thing, isn’t it?

Both are examples of Frankenstein monsters we’ve created turning on us. Which proves the old saying that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Fun episode and look forward to hearing the song; though John’s mid 70s stuff wasn’t really “Beatles” and the album done right before his murder was at first a critical failure, which changed after he was killed.
So not sure what the theme of the song is, but it will be interesting anyway.

Yoko ruined the Beetles aspect in John so …

I’m not holding my breath over this one. It’s a neat trick and it’s intellectually interesting but John Lennon … meh.

Sounds like they’re like matter and anti-matter. Put them together, and they annihilate each other.

Hopefully not cataclysmically annihilate each other like matter and anti-matter do.

“There are two things I know of that are infinite. The universe, and human stupidity. And I’m not positive about the universe.”
-Albert Einstein

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