I feel the futuristic relationship between technology and human in Dan Tepfer, a jazz pianist (3)
In the past articles, I've been writing about the futuristic performance style of Dan Tepfer, a jazz pianist, who is using technology to augment his play, but in this article, I'll start from another topic that I talked with him when I met him in Tokyo the other day (June 4, 2019). That is Shogi, a very popular intelligence game in Japan. You might think, "Why Shogi?", but I'll explain about it later.
I briefly explained to him the following story. He did not know Shogi, but I told him him that it's like a complicated version of chess. In Japan, about ten million Shogi fans exist from small kids to elderly people, and there's a famous and authoritative association of professional Shogi players that only about one hundred and a half genius players belong.
Then, I talked about the point. "Don't you think it is very interesting what happened in this field when technology eroded into the domain that was considered to be possible only by human? For the professional Shogi society, computers were considered to be aliens or enemies, but the technology is now used for human augmentation, and both the professional Shogi players and the public Shogi fans are more excited than before". Naturally, the talk came into the music issue next.
Me: Even if the computer can do the same thing as human beings, there is something that it is important that "humans do", aren't they? I sometimes talk about this question with friends, "If you compare a composer and a player, which is more likely to be replaced by a computer?"
Dan: That's very interesting. In the past, there were times when people thought that "the composer creates the music and the player is just a communicator," but actually, it is regarded to be more important that "the player creates the music very at that moment he or she is playing."
Me: In some sense, it is similar to the question, "Which is the more important role for a doctor, to diagnose a cancer from images or to tell the cancer to a patient?". As for diagnosis, computers will definitely surpass humans in the near future.
Dan: Yes, the communication with a patient is very important. Especially, it is important that the patient can have confidence in the doctor. It might be much more difficult for a doctor to get that trust than diagnosing a cancer. It is similar to the value of the player.
Me: By the way, I recently tried creating this simple program. (Then, I took out my Macbook. What I showed was the following program. When I play a note with a keyboard, the program does not immediately outputs the sound, but calculates each sound and gives from several milliseconds to several tens of milliseconds delay.) In a jazz piano, notes are sometimes slightly ahead of the beat, or slightly behind the beat, and such play style often reflects the pianist personality. Sometimes it may be caused by just a feeling and sometimes it may be based on the calculation, but anyway, the fluctuation affects the musical feeling if it is jazzy or not. For example, if you use this kind of computer program smartly, an amateur player may be able to control the play so that it sounds good. What do you think of this?
Dan: That's interesting, but I am generally against such “can easily do something difficult” type of function. It will impede human improvement efforts, and may prevent further growth.
Me: It might be true for players like you who are eager to grow the skill. However, the feature “easy to do” helps the people who may get stuck in the very first phase of the effort, and the number of “people who play and enjoy music” as a whole may increase.
Dan: That's certainly true. Those two types must be considered separately.
This is the story with him. The comparison between the composer and the player written above remains some more things I want to write, so I will do it in the next article.
At of the end of this article, I'll add the point “Why Shogi?”. The reason that I started to think about what I am writing in this series of blog posts is, various people began saying "AI may get rid of human's jobs" triggered by the Dr. Ray Kurzweil's words "Singularity is near". Singularity in this context means the point that the whole artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. In Japan, Shogi is said to be the area that singularity came earlier than other fields, because the computers have surpassed the human top level players although it was regarded to be impossible in the near future until around a decade ago. In other words, looking back what happened in the field Shogi when technology surpassed human skills is very interesting to consider what will happen and what we should do in the field of music or art in the future. (to be continued)
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I briefly explained to him the following story. He did not know Shogi, but I told him him that it's like a complicated version of chess. In Japan, about ten million Shogi fans exist from small kids to elderly people, and there's a famous and authoritative association of professional Shogi players that only about one hundred and a half genius players belong.
- As for Shogi, human professional players were much stronger than computers until a little more than a decade ago, but computers made progress rapidly and passed humans several years ago. It is important what what happened at that time.
- First of all, when the computer became strong and many people knew that computers would surpass human, the professional Shogi association had a sense of crisis that "If it really happens, nobody would be interested in human professional Shogi".
- When it finally became almost true, the professional Shogi association avoided the situation that Shogi champion and a computer played a match. In addition, even a scandal occurred that a professional player was doubted that he might be cheating on a computer during the game (the match continues more than several hours and they have the rest time). The professional Shogi world dropped into very dark atmosphere.
- On the other hand, among the general public, there was a rapid increase in the number of "only viewing" Shogi fans who were not good at playing it very much. That's because computer software analyzes and scores the play, for example, while the TV program is broadcasting a match, and it made for amateurs to enjoy top-level matches easily.
- Just at the moment, a top-level very young star appeared from the human professional players, and the number of Shogi fans further exploded. Coming to this stage, no one was interested in the question such as "Which is stronger, a computer or a human top player?". In the Shogi world, both types of matches of "human vs. human" and "computer vs. computer" are held, and much more people than before watch them, and Shogi is in the midst of unprecedented popularity.
- Even more interestingly, in one of the most popular Shogi app on a smartphone, while a human and a human are playing against each other, each one can get "a computer's move" by paying some fee, and this app is very popular. With this function, people with different skill levels can fight with each other. Surprisingly, it is not only the weak player who buys this "one computer's move". I hear that strong players often pay the fee to confirm if his idea matches the computer's move.
Then, I talked about the point. "Don't you think it is very interesting what happened in this field when technology eroded into the domain that was considered to be possible only by human? For the professional Shogi society, computers were considered to be aliens or enemies, but the technology is now used for human augmentation, and both the professional Shogi players and the public Shogi fans are more excited than before". Naturally, the talk came into the music issue next.
Me: Even if the computer can do the same thing as human beings, there is something that it is important that "humans do", aren't they? I sometimes talk about this question with friends, "If you compare a composer and a player, which is more likely to be replaced by a computer?"
Dan: That's very interesting. In the past, there were times when people thought that "the composer creates the music and the player is just a communicator," but actually, it is regarded to be more important that "the player creates the music very at that moment he or she is playing."
Me: In some sense, it is similar to the question, "Which is the more important role for a doctor, to diagnose a cancer from images or to tell the cancer to a patient?". As for diagnosis, computers will definitely surpass humans in the near future.
Dan: Yes, the communication with a patient is very important. Especially, it is important that the patient can have confidence in the doctor. It might be much more difficult for a doctor to get that trust than diagnosing a cancer. It is similar to the value of the player.
Me: By the way, I recently tried creating this simple program. (Then, I took out my Macbook. What I showed was the following program. When I play a note with a keyboard, the program does not immediately outputs the sound, but calculates each sound and gives from several milliseconds to several tens of milliseconds delay.) In a jazz piano, notes are sometimes slightly ahead of the beat, or slightly behind the beat, and such play style often reflects the pianist personality. Sometimes it may be caused by just a feeling and sometimes it may be based on the calculation, but anyway, the fluctuation affects the musical feeling if it is jazzy or not. For example, if you use this kind of computer program smartly, an amateur player may be able to control the play so that it sounds good. What do you think of this?
Dan: That's interesting, but I am generally against such “can easily do something difficult” type of function. It will impede human improvement efforts, and may prevent further growth.
Me: It might be true for players like you who are eager to grow the skill. However, the feature “easy to do” helps the people who may get stuck in the very first phase of the effort, and the number of “people who play and enjoy music” as a whole may increase.
Dan: That's certainly true. Those two types must be considered separately.
This is the story with him. The comparison between the composer and the player written above remains some more things I want to write, so I will do it in the next article.
At of the end of this article, I'll add the point “Why Shogi?”. The reason that I started to think about what I am writing in this series of blog posts is, various people began saying "AI may get rid of human's jobs" triggered by the Dr. Ray Kurzweil's words "Singularity is near". Singularity in this context means the point that the whole artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. In Japan, Shogi is said to be the area that singularity came earlier than other fields, because the computers have surpassed the human top level players although it was regarded to be impossible in the near future until around a decade ago. In other words, looking back what happened in the field Shogi when technology surpassed human skills is very interesting to consider what will happen and what we should do in the field of music or art in the future. (to be continued)
<- go to the first article -> go to the next article
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