I was "laid off" this week so they could replace me with a zero-experience "generative AI coach" who never checks its correctness and has fallen far behind me in every A/B test we've done. I saw it coming with how they treated me leading up to it but also... How do I keep a job if I'm demonstrably better and get let go anyway? The absolute disregard for quality or truth is the most disturbing part of the AI wave, even beyond the moral, environmental, and human aspects.
This is the general motivation for adopting AI (and past automation in many cases too): it can't do your job better, but it can do your job much cheaper per volume. Everybody loses but the company (that might well lose down the line as people reject poor products).
My friend V who works in Marketing has beyond-stupid and clueless CEOs demanding that she use AI, which makes worse work than she would make on her own, and then expect her to produce six times her usual output because “AI is helping”. Then when she can’t keep up with their INSANE demands (who the hell expects an employee to suddenly up their output by 600%?), then they fire her. It’s happened multiple times. I just wish the CEOs understood that the people they hired are actually doing a specific job with specific experience and knowledge.
I sure resonated with the one that started, "I heard my first AI jazz the other day," and have posted almost the exact same in two different posts:
April 9, 2026
What the hell? I’m in a restaurant last night and they’re playing jazz in the background on the sound system. “Desafinado” starts playing and though it seems to be the original Verve recording I’ve been hearing my whole life, something’s off. It’s the saxophone — it’s all the right notes, but the sound isn’t Stan Getz’ sound.  As the song goes on it changes - the solo is completely different. But when the melody comes back it’s note for note. I Shazam it and this is what I get.
And as I mentioned in a comment, as we were leaving, “Take the A Train” started. But it didn’t repeat the intro enough times, and the swing feel was ever so slightly off - just a fraction of a second, but I felt it in my body.
Februay 10, 2025
In other news...I had a dentist appointment this morning. I settled into the chair and heard faint gentle piano jazz coming from somewhere in the ceiling and thought, oh, that's nice. But soon enough I realized what I was hearing was a lot of right hand noodling punctuated by the occasional left hand chord—the SAME chord over and over and over again—with no melodic logic or harmonic development, no color, nothing unpredictable, and no end: just a whole lot of nothin' on and on and on and on. (And so, I realized, no actual right or left hands.) I asked the hygienist the source of the music and she pointed to a screen on the wall. I said, "That's not real music. It's not made by humans." She said she had thought it was AI and asked me how I knew. I explained what I described above, and added, "And look, how long have I been here, half an hour? Nothing has changed this whole time." When I went out to pay the bill I heard some actual music. The people in the front area had a little radio (or, I guess, a little speaker that looked like a radio) playing music by actual people, and with an actual radio DJ. I said, "I'm so glad to hear real music, unlike the AI shit in the room." They smiled and nodded and seconded my emotion.
I wish they'd leave art alone. Corrupt everything, but don't mess with music, movies, etc., (might be why it's been awful in my lifetime)... I play drums, guitar, piano, bass, other percussion, and if I want a violin, sax, or flute, I hire an actual musician, but with so many using AI, I heard a semi-compelling story of a musician saying "It's either using AI, or not playing music at all".
My daughter was working as a marketing/PR copywriter and was hauled in to her managers office and berated for using AI to write her copy. The truth was that everyone else in her pool was editing and embellishing with AI but my daughter wasn’t. She stood out because she wasn’t using AI and her manager could only spot that something was “off”.
"Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
~Simon and Garfunkle
Shams are nothing new. Record companies used to replace the bands with their studio session players because they wanted hits. The bands were fine for going on tour. Essential in fact.
The Wrecking Crew for rock
The Funk Brothers were Motown
The Nashville A-Team for country
The British band were more unaffected but some cameos were done. Not replacing but pinch hitting maybe. The Beatles created their own label.
They did not want fans to know this and it did not come out for years. Excellent documentaries and books can be seen or read and Joan Osborne's rendition of "What Becomes of the Lonely Hearted" is just nutty great.
Piracy isn't new. Frederic Bastiat wrote that some will always take the easier route until the penalty offsets the desire in 1850. Or they'll buy off the politicians to suit. Then make the plunder legal plunder.
I don't support piracy but I don't condemn an industry. The Feyman videos are marginally okay for a nascent technology but also a little eerie. If it breaks copyright then they can sue for a payday.
Companies change terms and conditions all the time and that's just the way it goes.
This is just the "New skin for the old ceremony" which was released in 1974 by Leonard Cohen and contains the song, "There is a War."
Are you sure you were communicating with the real Brady Purcell? The email sounds uses language that sounds exactly like an AI impersonating Brady Purcell...
Yeah, everything about that letter set off alarm bells for me. "This isn't X, it's Y," and a bulleted list with the literal phrase "smoking gun." Ted regularly signal-boosts obviously AI-generated content. It's a really bad look (frankly embarrassing) for someone on an Anti-AI crusade, especially one based on his ostensibly superior taste and discernment for art, and the "romantic spirit." If AI-generated content is good enough for a certified jazz snob like Gioia (as much as he would protest), then maybe it IS good enough for everyone.
Obviously AI use should be judged on more dimensions than the quality of the outputs, but if you are going to make qualitative judgements of the final product, your taste better be unimpeachable.
I don't think Brady is literally AI. Obviously, he is a real person. I think that the email he sent you was written in part using an AI chatbot. While there's no hard proof, there's a set of writing conventions and tropes famously overused by AI chatbots. Brady's message contains at least 3 of them.
I suspect the Richard Feynman and Alan Watts videos were made from old audio in the public domain plus still pictures. These artists and many others made recordings but no video so what you see on YouTube just an attempt to give the viewers what they think they want.
I am late to using AI, but about a week ago, it occurred to me to run my Substack name /avatar "Wolfsdread" through Google's AI assisted search engine--the one that everyone gets automatically on Google Chrome. The search returned a seven page list of many of the titles of the Substack sections in which I've lodged comments since I joined. Not my actual comments themselves, mind you...but the title of the Substack article I was commenting in. But first...and this is the kicker...the AI search result opened with. a summary potrayal of me based upon its review of my actual comments., many of which were lodged behind Substack paywalls This was quite a surprise, especially since there is almost no information about the real me using the same search engine. But it sure knew my alias.
But wait--there's more!: after telling my wife about the search result, I realized I hadn't saved or printed it. So I ran the search again. And got a different summary portrayal. So I ran it yet again--and got a third summary portrayal. Each time, the summary write up has been different. Not entirely different, mind you, but each different enough to seriously undermine my historical faith in the search engine. I found this amusing and not a little unnerving. Run yourself through and see what you get. Your mileage should vary.
My surprise is that 3 years after the introduction of AI production software and NO dirth of youtube channels that don't pretend to be the real thing, people are having their first AI music experience.
The production software is available to anyone for a small fee so anybody who wants a little extra income can program any style of music and post it. Hence, no dirth of AI jazz channels often with AI generated scenic backgrounds. Some of these channels have 3 million or more followers. As much as you might hate to do it, flip thru some of these channels so you can at least familiarize yourself with the deep fakes. The comments are fun too. People invoking the Lord and some real heart breaking tales of how people worked thru the grief of a loved one listening to a specific channel. Seriously, there is no dirth of people writing comments on how the fake music helped them thru hard times. What are you supposed to tell a person in that situation?
The unitiated are in LOVE with fake jazz and the initiated are disgusted. You'll hear lots of Grover Washington Jr. Lots of Chet Baker and Stan Getz. Gerry Mulligan, and Kenny G and actually quite impressive Duke Ellington and Count Basie sound alike. In a period of three months, the red note records channel has produced the entire history of jazz style.
Cash settlements have already been made between Warner Brothers, United Music Group with Suono and Udio (couple outstanding) Sony is still in litigation with both. The Ai platforms trained their models on their catalogs. Not sure how we turn the clock back now that deals have been made.
The average person doesn't have a clue nor do they care. When I was at a dentist 15 years ago, The dentist was playing the same side of Kind of Blue over and over and over again. I asked her if she realized she was playing the same song. She said she had been playing the same CD for months and not one patient said anything. That was pre-AI....
Here is the otherside of the coin, students who are learning the art of arranging and studying books like Don Sebesky – The Contemporary Arranger and Sammy Nestico – The Complete Arranger, we had no way to hear our music performed with an actual band to make corrections until it was completed, the professor gave his ok, and you wrote out parts for the big band.
I just listened to an interview with drummer Lenny White. Besides being a great jazz drummer, he was studying classical orchestration and had no way to hear what he wrote except the conductor of NYU agreed to perform some of his music after listening to Lenny at a master class. So on the flip side of the mechanical jazz stolen from the catalog is an opportunity for composers and orchestrators to really learn their craft without hiring a full orchestra. Hopefully that leads to more great music being written and real musicians playing it.
I was "laid off" this week so they could replace me with a zero-experience "generative AI coach" who never checks its correctness and has fallen far behind me in every A/B test we've done. I saw it coming with how they treated me leading up to it but also... How do I keep a job if I'm demonstrably better and get let go anyway? The absolute disregard for quality or truth is the most disturbing part of the AI wave, even beyond the moral, environmental, and human aspects.
This is the general motivation for adopting AI (and past automation in many cases too): it can't do your job better, but it can do your job much cheaper per volume. Everybody loses but the company (that might well lose down the line as people reject poor products).
My friend V who works in Marketing has beyond-stupid and clueless CEOs demanding that she use AI, which makes worse work than she would make on her own, and then expect her to produce six times her usual output because “AI is helping”. Then when she can’t keep up with their INSANE demands (who the hell expects an employee to suddenly up their output by 600%?), then they fire her. It’s happened multiple times. I just wish the CEOs understood that the people they hired are actually doing a specific job with specific experience and knowledge.
This sucks! An AI coach? Sounds like the movie "Her" turning from a comedy to a nightmare!
I sure resonated with the one that started, "I heard my first AI jazz the other day," and have posted almost the exact same in two different posts:
April 9, 2026
What the hell? I’m in a restaurant last night and they’re playing jazz in the background on the sound system. “Desafinado” starts playing and though it seems to be the original Verve recording I’ve been hearing my whole life, something’s off. It’s the saxophone — it’s all the right notes, but the sound isn’t Stan Getz’ sound.  As the song goes on it changes - the solo is completely different. But when the melody comes back it’s note for note. I Shazam it and this is what I get.
And as I mentioned in a comment, as we were leaving, “Take the A Train” started. But it didn’t repeat the intro enough times, and the swing feel was ever so slightly off - just a fraction of a second, but I felt it in my body.
Februay 10, 2025
In other news...I had a dentist appointment this morning. I settled into the chair and heard faint gentle piano jazz coming from somewhere in the ceiling and thought, oh, that's nice. But soon enough I realized what I was hearing was a lot of right hand noodling punctuated by the occasional left hand chord—the SAME chord over and over and over again—with no melodic logic or harmonic development, no color, nothing unpredictable, and no end: just a whole lot of nothin' on and on and on and on. (And so, I realized, no actual right or left hands.) I asked the hygienist the source of the music and she pointed to a screen on the wall. I said, "That's not real music. It's not made by humans." She said she had thought it was AI and asked me how I knew. I explained what I described above, and added, "And look, how long have I been here, half an hour? Nothing has changed this whole time." When I went out to pay the bill I heard some actual music. The people in the front area had a little radio (or, I guess, a little speaker that looked like a radio) playing music by actual people, and with an actual radio DJ. I said, "I'm so glad to hear real music, unlike the AI shit in the room." They smiled and nodded and seconded my emotion.
I wish they'd leave art alone. Corrupt everything, but don't mess with music, movies, etc., (might be why it's been awful in my lifetime)... I play drums, guitar, piano, bass, other percussion, and if I want a violin, sax, or flute, I hire an actual musician, but with so many using AI, I heard a semi-compelling story of a musician saying "It's either using AI, or not playing music at all".
ted, it seems to me that your basic requirements for AI uses are unassailable.
I absolutely abhor that A I is being forced on us. This is BAD, really bad.
And most of the slobbering masses won't care if they are duped by this horrendous technology.
No it’s really me.
My daughter was working as a marketing/PR copywriter and was hauled in to her managers office and berated for using AI to write her copy. The truth was that everyone else in her pool was editing and embellishing with AI but my daughter wasn’t. She stood out because she wasn’t using AI and her manager could only spot that something was “off”.
Are we doomed?
Thanks for the shout-out to my wild AI story!
"Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
~Simon and Garfunkle
Shams are nothing new. Record companies used to replace the bands with their studio session players because they wanted hits. The bands were fine for going on tour. Essential in fact.
The Wrecking Crew for rock
The Funk Brothers were Motown
The Nashville A-Team for country
The British band were more unaffected but some cameos were done. Not replacing but pinch hitting maybe. The Beatles created their own label.
They did not want fans to know this and it did not come out for years. Excellent documentaries and books can be seen or read and Joan Osborne's rendition of "What Becomes of the Lonely Hearted" is just nutty great.
Piracy isn't new. Frederic Bastiat wrote that some will always take the easier route until the penalty offsets the desire in 1850. Or they'll buy off the politicians to suit. Then make the plunder legal plunder.
I don't support piracy but I don't condemn an industry. The Feyman videos are marginally okay for a nascent technology but also a little eerie. If it breaks copyright then they can sue for a payday.
Companies change terms and conditions all the time and that's just the way it goes.
This is just the "New skin for the old ceremony" which was released in 1974 by Leonard Cohen and contains the song, "There is a War."
Fitting.
Fuck it! AI is falsity in every aspect. It is dangerous and a publicly expressed and facilitated form of insanity.
Your brilliant readers!
The Elvis stuff is a nightmare. Upon the nightmare of all the lies that were told about him. Good Lord.
Are you sure you were communicating with the real Brady Purcell? The email sounds uses language that sounds exactly like an AI impersonating Brady Purcell...
Yeah, everything about that letter set off alarm bells for me. "This isn't X, it's Y," and a bulleted list with the literal phrase "smoking gun." Ted regularly signal-boosts obviously AI-generated content. It's a really bad look (frankly embarrassing) for someone on an Anti-AI crusade, especially one based on his ostensibly superior taste and discernment for art, and the "romantic spirit." If AI-generated content is good enough for a certified jazz snob like Gioia (as much as he would protest), then maybe it IS good enough for everyone.
Obviously AI use should be judged on more dimensions than the quality of the outputs, but if you are going to make qualitative judgements of the final product, your taste better be unimpeachable.
If you accuse Brady of being AI, you need proof. He’s commenting on this thread. Why don’t you reach out to him?
I don't think Brady is literally AI. Obviously, he is a real person. I think that the email he sent you was written in part using an AI chatbot. While there's no hard proof, there's a set of writing conventions and tropes famously overused by AI chatbots. Brady's message contains at least 3 of them.
There’s a post from him (apparently) about the same issue on the Steve Hoffman forum a couple of weeks ago. No replies. Here’s the link, but what exactly is the fraud that is being perpetrated? https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/1989-pcm-1630-bit-transparent-clone-of-1953-elvis-sessions.1247253/
The smoking gun lol
I suspect the Richard Feynman and Alan Watts videos were made from old audio in the public domain plus still pictures. These artists and many others made recordings but no video so what you see on YouTube just an attempt to give the viewers what they think they want.
I am late to using AI, but about a week ago, it occurred to me to run my Substack name /avatar "Wolfsdread" through Google's AI assisted search engine--the one that everyone gets automatically on Google Chrome. The search returned a seven page list of many of the titles of the Substack sections in which I've lodged comments since I joined. Not my actual comments themselves, mind you...but the title of the Substack article I was commenting in. But first...and this is the kicker...the AI search result opened with. a summary potrayal of me based upon its review of my actual comments., many of which were lodged behind Substack paywalls This was quite a surprise, especially since there is almost no information about the real me using the same search engine. But it sure knew my alias.
But wait--there's more!: after telling my wife about the search result, I realized I hadn't saved or printed it. So I ran the search again. And got a different summary portrayal. So I ran it yet again--and got a third summary portrayal. Each time, the summary write up has been different. Not entirely different, mind you, but each different enough to seriously undermine my historical faith in the search engine. I found this amusing and not a little unnerving. Run yourself through and see what you get. Your mileage should vary.
My surprise is that 3 years after the introduction of AI production software and NO dirth of youtube channels that don't pretend to be the real thing, people are having their first AI music experience.
I had to tell my wife to turn off her smooth jazz station on her IPHONE three years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnSHmEnQdm8&t=1764shttps://youtu.be/6HvayAZzuVI?si=1IZjCZNw-aZJ4ObF They are basically people searching for words like smooth jazz, relaxing jazz, classic jazz that have little or no experience listening to jazz.
The production software is available to anyone for a small fee so anybody who wants a little extra income can program any style of music and post it. Hence, no dirth of AI jazz channels often with AI generated scenic backgrounds. Some of these channels have 3 million or more followers. As much as you might hate to do it, flip thru some of these channels so you can at least familiarize yourself with the deep fakes. The comments are fun too. People invoking the Lord and some real heart breaking tales of how people worked thru the grief of a loved one listening to a specific channel. Seriously, there is no dirth of people writing comments on how the fake music helped them thru hard times. What are you supposed to tell a person in that situation?
The unitiated are in LOVE with fake jazz and the initiated are disgusted. You'll hear lots of Grover Washington Jr. Lots of Chet Baker and Stan Getz. Gerry Mulligan, and Kenny G and actually quite impressive Duke Ellington and Count Basie sound alike. In a period of three months, the red note records channel has produced the entire history of jazz style.
Cash settlements have already been made between Warner Brothers, United Music Group with Suono and Udio (couple outstanding) Sony is still in litigation with both. The Ai platforms trained their models on their catalogs. Not sure how we turn the clock back now that deals have been made.
The average person doesn't have a clue nor do they care. When I was at a dentist 15 years ago, The dentist was playing the same side of Kind of Blue over and over and over again. I asked her if she realized she was playing the same song. She said she had been playing the same CD for months and not one patient said anything. That was pre-AI....
Here is the otherside of the coin, students who are learning the art of arranging and studying books like Don Sebesky – The Contemporary Arranger and Sammy Nestico – The Complete Arranger, we had no way to hear our music performed with an actual band to make corrections until it was completed, the professor gave his ok, and you wrote out parts for the big band.
I just listened to an interview with drummer Lenny White. Besides being a great jazz drummer, he was studying classical orchestration and had no way to hear what he wrote except the conductor of NYU agreed to perform some of his music after listening to Lenny at a master class. So on the flip side of the mechanical jazz stolen from the catalog is an opportunity for composers and orchestrators to really learn their craft without hiring a full orchestra. Hopefully that leads to more great music being written and real musicians playing it.