Led Zeppelin versus AI
Hiking by a creek in Sedona
A little radio blared All Of My Love
By Led Zeppelin
And the whole scene was out of a dream from the 70’s
A picnic blanket abandoned for water
Toys and family life
And evidence of young lovers
And Zeppelin
Still Led Zeppelin with no hint of the digital AI prison
Establishing bars made of zeros and ones climbing up around us all
I was walking with a group of alternative media people
As we were all out in Sedona taking part in a creator’s summit
Helping us in someway to not feel so alone in the fight that is calling out the shift towards tyranny in our world.
Led Zeppelin representing the past and reflections of a world that is going or near gone
A time of innocence.
I was walking with Patrick Henningsen and I pointed out that Zeppelin was still dominating all these years later
And it brought up the question
What world is it easier to make a soul contribution in?
The analog world of the past
With limitations
And tape distortion
Where 24 tracks was all you got
And where media could only reach you
If you tried to reach it
Or the current world of AI creation
And limitless inroads of creation
Where every laptop has the function
Or at least simulates the expensive and privileged studios of the past?
Perhaps the biggest difference of now versus then
Is a mindset.
And the belief that a song could change the world
And the pedestal that human creativity and achievement was placed on then versus now
Then it was about the soul and reaching for the complicated truth
Now it’s about the body and reaching for social proof
2
And yes there are exceptions
Many of us out here
(The workers of song)
Are reaching for a depth before unforeseen
The problem comes when we consider will anyone care
Or have the mindset and attention span to even listen ?
And again
The answer is of course some will
And nothing is black and white
Everything goes on all the time
But the questions come in
Will the music we make today ever be played by a creak 50 years from now sounding as relevant as it ever did?
Does the possibility of an artist making a significant cultural impact still exist
Or do artists now solely exist in scattered cults?
We don’t have a unified public discourse
Politically or culturally
Until of course obvious propaganda gets funneled in
Then we suddenly have one message we all get to hear
Though the so called facts around it
Are scattered like
Shrapnel from a hand grenade
It’s like we are being blown apart and corralled at the same time.
3
In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes
In the next future
Everyone will be famous for 15 seconds
But perhaps
We all get to star in our own movies
Now
Become our own Led Zeppelins
Perhaps the era of the artist as hero is dead
And the next era is prompt writer as hero
Has arrived
Perhaps there are no heroes at all
But those who track well against the scattered walls of the propaganda of the day?
The problem is that usually “heroes” aren’t so great for themselves
But they are good for children dreaming of a way to change the world
They are good and a force for the artistic revolutions of tomorrow
I suppose the real danger of AI is that it threatens to replace the importance of human achievement
And like a digital thief made of zombie data
It threatens to rob the imaginations of our young.
We grew up with Led Zeppelin
And Bob Dylan
Prince and Iggy Pop
Lou Reed and Marvin Gaye
Joni Mitchell and Aretha Franklin
Artists as heroes which we then longed for that glory and achievement
We fantasized about changing the world with a song
And so many of us built the skills to do just that and thusly propelled the culture forward
And to do that we had to dive into our souls
And into a communion with God
To reflect the divinity of what it means to be human back on us
Like a giant light from another world
Underneath all of AI
Is the threat of some kind of epic devaluing of human potential
And with that a devaluing of our divine nature
Or connection with God.
4
It’s difficult not to frame everything in terms of a spiritual war
And to see a spiritual war taking place
Even walking by a creek and hearing Led Zeppelin sing All Of My Love
And to consider if all of our love isn’t being drained in the digital jungle we are being born into?
5
The problem is that when one brings up concerns of this nature
They instantly become the old guy afraid of progress
Resisting the inevitability of change
And perhaps this would be paranoid if we didn’t see the draining of the divine across so many spectrums of our existence
There seems to be a push towards making the landscape of the soul of humanity redundant
And even inferior
We see the denial of our divinely and magical ability to heal being cast upon stations of propaganda all day everyday
With the counterpoint to that way of thinking being given very little air time
I suppose the thesis of this
Could be whittled down to this
Is AI an attack on humanity’s divine nature
And ability to reflect God back to us
Through inspired and soulful work
That values this cultural push enough to inspire the young
To keep pushing things forward?
Will AI become so advanced and prevalent that
It will promote the idea that we are in fact nothing more than useless eaters?
Or will this threat to our souls expression and expansion
Result in us diving deeper into the realms of the divine
Where AI can never get its digital fingers around?
Perhaps we will go deeper and further into the soul as a result of all this?
Perhaps we will recognize the real soul of the divine even more?
6
It makes sense that this battle would exist on the level of song
The blending of melody, rhythm and words
Invites a connection to the divine almost automatically
For there to be suddenly a world full of (let’s face it) fun and even personal Xeroxs of all of the music of the past
Scrambled together in new and even interesting combinations
Means that not only do the artists of the future
Have to compete against what every genius made before them
But also endless computers churning out countless new/old songs to fill the airwaves perhaps reaching the so called singularity of creation.
Not to mention the focus the artists of the past had
We may have certain advantages these days artistically
But with our attention spans scattered all over the place
It’s hard to imagine an organism as organic and magical as Led Zeppelin ever forming again
I suppose it’s why it’s hardly surprising hearing them sing to the children of today
By a creek in Sedona
All these years later.