I’m in Galway, at a coffee shop that also sells nice minimalist, School of Life type stuff that appeals to me. Last time I was here, years ago, before the thing, there was a record player upstairs and I had an interesting conversation with a masters student about the book I was reading at the time, Ian McEwan’s ‘Machines Like Me’.
The ideas played with in McEwan’s wonderful book are now very much in the ether. I just saw on Twitter that a Snapchat influencer has made an AI of herself using 2000 hours of her content. Users can chat with her avatar for $1/min.
What might a piano teacher AI look like? Imagine it having access to all of the pedagogical writings, all the blogs, all the articles in journals and magazines, all the YouTube videos, all the TikToks…
I could ask it to recommend ways to practise a particular piece and it could put together a 10 minute overview drawing from all the available sources.
I don’t know if a child would have the patience to deal with it in isolation. I do think I’d consider subscribing to something that could help me navigate a learning pathway with individual students. “They’ve played these pieces, they liked this one best, they found this aspect difficult…give me five options for the next piece they should learn.”
It’s going to be really interesting to see what will happen in the arena of education over the next two years.
jay wilson :: music 