"AI: The Great Disruptor (But Not As We Expected)"

When it comes to music, arts and the humanities, we're losing our grip. Not in that hand-wringing, "kids these days" sort of way—I mean in the existential, Camus-staring-into-the-void sense. Presumably, things will come to a new equilibrium, but as it stands, art means nothing. And simultaneously, it means everything.

What I'm trying to say is that the value of art and music has plummeted significantly. It is almost too easy to make art and music today; and then of course there's the advent of artificial intelligence. Back in the 1980s and earlier, there was a significant barrier of entry for music. Creating an album required thousands of dollars worth of equipment and studio time. Today, anyone with a laptop and a $150 interface can produce an entire electronic music album from their bedroom. Hell, I've done it myself, and I promise you don't want to hear it.

The Paradox of Artistic Abundance

So we're seeing a demonstrably saturated market with seemingly nowhere to go. It's like we've all been given paintbrushes but the gallery walls were filled decades ago. Artists cannot distinguish themselves and separate from the pack like it was possible in the past. The path to recognition has become a labyrinth where most wander forever, posting into the void, wondering why their brilliance goes unnoticed.

The artists that blew up when I was graduating high school, over a decade ago, are still topping the charts. It's almost as if we hit pause in 2012 and nothing truly new has taken shape since. The most prolific artists to emerge are…Travis Scott, Post Malone, Billie Eilish, Kid Laroi and Sabrina Carpenter. That's 5 artists in more than a decade! The heavy hitters of 2012—Drake, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and others—are still the heavy hitters of 2025.

For anyone who creates, I honestly think it can be demoralizing to consider just how commonplace whatever it is you're doing. I've spent countless hours hunched over Ableton crafting what I thought were unique compositions, only to realize thousands of others were doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. So maybe the answer is just…shed the big ego?

Meh.

Easier said than done when you've been raised on a steady diet of American individualism and delusions of grandeur. There's something perversely comforting about imagining yourself as the misunderstood genius—it's certainly more palatable than accepting you might just be average in a world drowning in content.

The Collective Consciousness: Finding Meaning in Groups

Interestingly, this may be what finally brings people together. Why? We're exhausting our individualistic artistic ingenuity and the only way out is together. I foresee artistic collectives like Odd Future and A$AP Gang becoming more prevalent. Groups of artists melding together music, art and videography without the oversight of the industry.

It's apparent that what we're creating at an individual-level is not stimulating nor significant enough to leave an impression on the audience that inspires them to share the piece with others or come back for more. I've tried and failed to make meaningful art alone, and I've seen the way collaboration immediately elevates the work—not just technically, but emotionally. There's something alchemical about creative minds bouncing off each other that no AI can yet replicate.

Groups can accomplish so much more—and the polish applied to the product is just as apparent. A group may also end up creating something much more relatable than that of one individual. After all, how many perspectives can one mind hold? When was the last time a single vision captured the fragmented reality we all navigate daily?

AI: The Great Disruptor (But Not As We Expected)

So that's a look into music and art within the next 5 years. Let's look at another angle of looming doom and gloom upon the arts & music, AI. I'm more interested in speeding ahead to the illustrious technological singularity—that point where the machines surpass us and we either transcend or become obsolete. Like that weird kid in high school who was way too into the Terminator movies, I've been obsessing over this since before it was trendy.

People theorize over where society is going, and I'm going to give you my own 2¢. I think it has become apparent that AI is not coming for the low-skill jobs first. In fact, I'd be surprised if cashiers and the like are ever phased out completely. We like our human interactions—it's just that sometimes we'd like the option to sidestep this on a whim. The number of times I've chosen self-checkout just to avoid small talk about my questionable grocery choices is... concerning.

Instead, it seems that menial white-collar jobs are most at-risk from AI. In my opinion, we will see redundancies slashed and rather than a dozen entry-level positions or interns, there'll be 1 or 2 aided by AI, with the expectation of proficiency in AI prompting in their field of expertise. This doesn't sound so radical, but when you consider slashing workforces by ⅙th or 1/12th their size, that'd be momentous.

I don't think work will just disappear, though, I don't know where that notion comes from. The void will be filled by meeting the perpetually growing entertainment and comfort-type needs of society. Even if you think people will accept AI-generated art/entertainment, it will still need to be prompted for creation, at the moment. Autonomous creation of content (worth watching/listening to) would be a whole nother level of sentient.

Truthfully, I don't think the work ever stops entirely. I don't foresee us foregoing our autonomy, instead, we will enter an era of cyborg implantation. Rather than allow computers to supersede us, we will opt to integrate ourselves with neural networks. At which point…work is no longer even work, it's chores or hobbies. I can only imagine what it would be like to have such an implant, but I picture launching a rocket becoming akin to solving a sophomoric apples & oranges algebra question.

(In other words, Mom and Dad, I’m volunteering you to be first-in-line for your new Neuralink chips, hello Mars, goodbye persistent tech. questions! <3)

The Present Tense: Problems Behind the Curtain

It's easy to get carried away with the hypotheticals and fantasies of tomorrow. Here's what you don't know about the problems in the present. I'm referring to the problems behind the scenes, the nuts and bolts of it all. While we're sulking about how our career, our purpose, may be snatched from us in the near future, there are much more pressing problems to discuss.

There's the issues surrounding the training of AI that are especially pertinent to the arts and then there's the data centers. Who is the most protected class in America today? It's not the billionaire class, it's the corporate class. Nothing makes that more apparent than the sad story of Aaron Schwartz who illegally downloaded 60TB of academic articles from JSTOR in 2011 and faced unimaginable consequences.

Unlike Brock Turner or Casey Anthony who received no more than a slap on the wrist for their mortal sins, Schwartz faced up to $1 million dollars in fines and FIFTY years in prison! With this seemingly inevitable, untenable situation that Aaron faced, he tragically took his own life.

Now for the grand irony which I take no pleasure in. No more than 5 years later, Meta would illegally download over 80TB of books from LibGen, Anna's Archive and Z-Library to train its AI models without facing any consequences. Of course, it's not just Meta, this is the standard operating practice for OpenAI and more-or-less all AI ventures. The one that has faced the greatest backlash was/is OpenAI for its practices with art/photography but little change has come from this, the genie has left the bottle.

The Environmental and Human Cost of Progress

Personally, I have no qualms with B2B data acquisition (so the caveat here is…don't steal art from an individual), the real concern are these data centers—much like other corporate playground projects à la Amazon Warehouses encroaching upon rural and suburban developments with reckless disregard for its neighbors/existing living spaces.

Heck, even Seattle is almost unrecognizable due to all the Amazon Office Space that has popped up and taken over the cityscape. Now, the problem isn't with their existence, it is with the blatant disregard for existing structures/communities. These megalith projects do not intend on coexisting with their environment, instead, they envelope and swallow whole entire communities; and in the case of the Seattle Amazon offices, only to become vacant (advent of remote work).

There are stories coming out of the Data Center capital of the country at the time, Georgia, that will leave you disgusted. As it would turn out, just a quarter-mile down the road from a newly built data center, lives a couple who are now living in destitute due to the data center. Their water is filled to the brim with sediment from the haphazard construction. They barely have running water. They must run the slowest tap in the world to fill up gallon jugs of water which they use to ensure the toilet runs…and presumably they must resort to baths with the jugs.

How can they drink the water? I imagine they do not. They've needed to replace their washer and other appliances twice over the course of 18 months. The water issue will hopefully run its course with the completion of the data center construction. Yet, adding insult to injury, their electricity bill went up from $250/month to $450/month and it appears it will remain that way.

For many Americans who do not have a savings account, living check-to-check, this is the type of change that could/would force you out of your home. Why should we the taxpayer pick up the tab for the corporate welfare queens? When will the proletariat rise up? I don't know. It's amazing what we have put up with since the rise of the corporate class circa 1902.

Caring About the Right Things

I've spent too much time caring about my place in a saturated creative market, about whether AI will render my skills obsolete, about whether I'm "keeping up" with the pace of technological change. These concerns, while understandable, are ultimately distractions from what truly matters: creating meaningful connections, fighting for the untouchables and the vulnerable or just finding purpose in a world that seems increasingly absurd.

Maybe the question isn't "Where in the world are we going?" but rather "What world are we creating through our choices?" The future isn't something that happens to us—it's something we build, thought by thought, action by action, fuck by carefully allocated fuck.

And as I look around at the landscape of art devalued, jobs transformed, and communities disrupted, I'm left with the unsettling realization that we're all complicit in creating this reality. The tech we embrace, the content we consume, the battles we choose to fight or ignore—all of these shape the trajectory we're on.

So where are we going? I don't know. But I do know that without conscious intervention, without collective action, without redirecting our fucks toward what truly matters, we're heading toward a world where art is abundant but meaning is scarce, where technology advances but humanity recedes, where profits soar but communities crumble.

I sure as shit hope we aren’t on a collision course with this sordid destination I have in mind. Well, even if that is the case, there’s an allure to a futile fight – it’s something I just find oh so irresistible. Cheers.

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