Lucas Cantor: "I Don't Think Anybody Knows What AI Is"

Lucas Cantor has an unusual claim on the AI conversation. In 2019, Huawei asked him to finish Schubert's Unfinished Symphony using artificial intelligence, and he did it. He's an Emmy-winning composer who has worked on every Olympics since 2002, produced a cover of Everybody Wants to Rule the World with Lorde, and now invests in music technology. His new book is Unfinished: The Role of the Artist in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.In this episode Georgie Healy gets Lucas to take apart the story we're all being told about AI. Why he thinks nobody actually knows what the term even means. Why every single person he asks assumes AI can do the job they're not an expert in, and can't do the job they are. Why the claim that AI democratizes creativity is a fallacy sold by AI companies, and what it actually democratizes instead. Why B2B SaaS isn't dead, and who benefits from you believing it is. And why the music industry, supposedly murdered by Napster, is bigger now than it was before.If you build, market, or operate anything, this is a useful hour of pressure testing. Lucas isn't a doomer and he isn't an evangelist. He's someone who has been inside the technology long enough to tell the difference between what it does and what it's sold as.Recorded ahead of his first trip to Australia for BIGSOUND - which is September 1st - 4th in Brisbane!Chapters:00:00 Cold open00:54 Welcome, and who Lucas Cantor is02:49 The AI hack: stem separation04:14 Taylor Swift's wedding04:55 BIGSOUND, and the fear around AI in music06:23 Why the purist argument falls apart07:25 Tuning has drifted since the Renaissance10:02 Composer, producer, author, investor11:16 What Suno is, and the ethics problem12:20 Why all music sounds better now15:33 What it actually means to have your music stolen16:56 Covering Everybody Wants to Rule the World with Lorde19:19 Source Connect, Audio Movers, and remote studios20:22 The fallacy that AI democratizes creativity22:38 Black Swan, conductors, and the war on expertise24:26 The doctor who said AI could write a pop song27:38 Why he called himself a Luddite30:18 Hans Zimmer's studio, and saying yes to Huawei32:34 Finishing Schubert's Unfinished Symphony37:00 "I don't think anybody knows what AI is"38:49 Every AI agent ad shows something nobody needs42:14 Hot take: is B2B SaaS dead?45:13 AI is a story, and that's the problem46:25 What actually wins in music tech49:28 Amusing, but not amazing50:20 Ben Affleck, Scorsese, and AI in the creative process53:30 Two Emmys and a coach of the year award55:36 The one takeaway from Unfinished57:33 Georgie's Substack, Attention Is All I Need