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If nothing else AI is making clear that there are people all around us for whom writing, art, and music are not communion with another mind, but just - wallpaper. Just pleasant things to look at. They think AI is conscious because they have no actual grasp of what it is to encounter another mind.

"With AI you'll never have to listen to music you don't like again!" is basically the musical equivalent of a sex doll. Like bots that only say yes and are never unavailable. It's absolute solipsism.

The world is meant to put up resistance! Other minds are meant to push back! To call you into question just be seeing you! And that's true of music as much as anything else, unless you live in a hotel lobby. (Though a hotel reception desk is where I first heard Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame)

What hotel was playing such a banger?

Little hotel in Bank Place in Melbourne. I was working there (I was a porter, but a small hotel that means you do a little bit of everything). We only had a couple of CDs, including a generic classical mix album. So several times in a shift you'd hear this thing:

Ai will fracture art. There will be two 'arts'. The Kennedy Centre is the example. The right are demanding a seat at the table. 'Art by threat'. These are the early days.

that's being overly generous, I think. there will not be a "fracture", because the people who want to force their vision via AI are not interested in producing art. they just want a megaphone, and people broadly don't want to engage with what they produce.

I remember getting the first Rage Against the Machine album as an import and playing it to all my mates and they had that reaction.

They quickly learned to love it though

Yes! I first heard "Killing in the Name" when I was doing a week's work experience at a little audio-visual training college and had the same 'holy shit, what's that?' moment I had when I first heard "Teen Spirit." Both just had something completely new and epochal about them.