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The innovator's estate serves as part innovation collective, part upscale temporary housing, and part demonstration space for coming innovations. These estates are scattered throughout California's innovation corridor, home to startup pioneers and futurists. The most luxurious I’ve seen stands in this affluent community, one of the Bay Area’s wealthiest enclaves. Interior, polished marble shines beneath taped-up portraits of industry giants; in the landscaped areas, pebbles form meticulous meditative designs and pools shimmer beyond the hedges.

It was a warm afternoon in June, and I visited alongside my production partner to record interviews for an audio program about the meeting of machine learning and traditional music in Northern California's tech centers.

We moved so quickly from talking about how AI could help the creative industries to hearing, quite casually, how easily it could replace every role within them

All professional creatives, it was stated optimistically, would soon exist only as hobbyists. This was not provocation. No jest involved. Just fact. There's a particular point in the program when there emerges my collaborator's reaction. She abruptly interrupts, unsettled: “So machine learning will remove my profession?” It’s brief. Natural. However, it shifts the mood completely.

When we started producing the documentary, my curiosity matched others'. “There's no turning back,” I remarked humorously. It appeared the pragmatic comment. The technology was here. More productive to collaborate than reject.

When I connected with my collaborator afterward, she recalled the exchange distinctly. “We moved so quickly,” she observed, “from discussing potential benefits artistic fields to learning, somewhat offhandedly, how simply it might displace all positions involved. The tone was friendly, supportive, as if I should be excited.”

That interaction seems to be the pivotal moment: a brief, personal instance of confusion, as discussion shifted from abstract toward tangible impact.

The goal involved rendering us obsolete.

That was June. Currently it's autumn, and following a season focused on significant performance series, my mind has turned to another kind of mansion: the band’s legendary performance at a famous venue. Countless attendees over two nights, waving lighters instead of phones. A concluding era of collective musical experience before everything changed. Before file sharing and electronic files. Prior to smartphones. Before the quiet rearranging of culture through hidden computational processes.

What ensued subsequently was gradual yet transformative: a transition from possession to availability. Curated selections supplanted collections, not organized by creators but by software, created to accompany daily tasks. Music for employment, sound for shopping, accompaniment for browsing. It seemed we were witnessing the direction of sound. Perhaps we were.

That is why I paused when, well after completing the program, I read about a new arts initiative. It’s an exciting new initiative from a major cultural institution investigating creative collaboration with machine learning. It comes from an institution I care deeply about, managed by individuals I esteem: one that has long supported me alongside numerous artists. It's described as a courageous, future-oriented discussion connecting innovation and artistry: the beginning of what could be a fascinating partnership. But what's striking through the promotional information isn't the present elements, but what appears to be missing.

Absent is discussion regarding moral implications, regarding educational inputs, of consent, about sustainability consequences, or professional considerations. No awareness appears that these tools currently endanger to make the artists and the craft the establishment has nurtured, plus the complete professional environment, mostly unnecessary.

The tone, comparable to our experience within that innovator's estate, is unfailingly upbeat. “Artificial intelligence is permanent,” a programming head announced in recent comments. “We can either put our heads in the sand or adapt to developments.”

Except that nobody I meet among innovation circles – where such systems are developed, built and sold – is simply going along. Going with the flow suggests relinquishing control. These individuals reject such passivity. They're working to master the forces, to alter fundamental realities.

I'm not suggesting we dismiss artificial intelligence. Yet my initial statement, “there's no reversing progress”, currently seems like ethical avoidance, as though principles disappear when innovation emerges. Having spent time within innovation circles, it's disturbing to observe prominent establishments handle machine learning as radioactive material for creativity: dazzling, lucrative, currently causing damage, but surprisingly lacking safety notices.

It’s unsettling to watch major institutions treat AI like atomic energy for the arts

Progress happens quickly among innovation communities that our work appears dated, a postcard from the last moment prior to innovation bypassing consent. That afternoon in the hacker mansion, with raked gravel, brightness and tranquility, seems suspended currently: the pause preceding fast advancement.

When I review the recordings, I detect the atmosphere changing. The pause after the question, my nervous chuckling. This represents anxiety, of humanity maintaining position.

If the historic performance represented the final massive analog musical experience, perhaps this brief instance we recorded signals the anxious pause before systems generate autonomously.