In 2023 I wrote a post describing my belief that we don’t need AGI for an amazing future. I felt that the common discussions between proponents of unregulated AI development and “doomers” who fear the existential risk of an uncontrollable AI were often framed as if the only possibilities were either a full stop of AI development or an unregulated race for AGI. This seemed to be ignoring a middle way: the focus on narrow, specialized AI tools like AlphaFold, which are unlikely to become uncontrollable, but can still help us achieve almost everything we could achieve with AGI. When Anthony Aguirre published his essay “Keep The Future Human” in 2024, I was very happy to see that he made similar arguments.
When I heard about the Keep The Future Human creative contest, I immediately applied but had no specific idea what exactly I should contribute. All I knew was that I wanted to focus not just on the dangers of AGI, but in particular on the opportunities of narrow “tool AI”. Then I stumbled across a comment on LinkedIn by Sarah Tegeler which pointed to a song she had recently recorded with Fabian and his band Baleá. I knew Sarah as the leader of the German chapter of Effective Altruism but hadn’t known she was a singer. When I heard her sing, I immediately had the idea to create a song about a good future with tool AI as a contribution to the contest.
A song may not be ideal to explain a complex topic like AI safety, but I felt that it might be a good add-on to other forms of communication, adding an emotional and entertaining component to the usually very fact-based and dry explanations. Also, it seemed like it could express my optimism about a positive future with AI (if we manage to avoid the pitfalls) better than a forum post.
I have been a long-time hobby composer of electronic music. So as a first step, to illustrate the idea for Sarah and ask her if she would be willing to participate, I wrote the lyrics for the song and created a demo using the Reason software and an artificial voice by Emvoice. Sarah in turn told her friend Fabian about the idea and he wrote his own music, “less Kraftwerk, more Abba”, as Sarah aptly put it. When I heard a first demo of Fabian’s song, I was amazed. It was immediately clear that this was far better than my own composition. When Sarah and Fabian recorded the song during a trip to Spain, the result was even better than I had hoped for. As it turned out, Sarah is not only a great singer, but can even play the trombone!
My son Nik is a professional video producer. So I was very happy when during a stressful phase in his job, Nik could still find the time and energy to create the video. Again, the result is far better than anything I could have done myself.
Finally, I created a website to host the song and give some background information on why we made it and what exactly it means to us.
We are proud to have received a honorable mention at the contest among so many great entries! If you like the song, please share the website or the video on YouTube. The song will also be available soon on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.