Mozart Didn’t Use AI. Machines Are No Threat.

Composers are rattled by these new machines. I don’t blame them. They can crank out symphonies like a candy vending machine.

Why on earth would you spend 10,000 hours perfecting a skill a robot masters in seconds?

There are two reckonings you have to face here:

1. Your chance of scoring a big film is about .005%. This has been the case forever.

It’s the same for writers and painters. The odds are stacked against you. It’s a seriously tough way to make a living.

1. There are gifted humans out there, and you compete with them.

I set out to be a songwriter. It was a sobering moment when I realized I was entering a field that also included an active Stevie Wonder.

At music school, I met players who could sit down at a piano and play anything they wanted to—no practice, no struggle, just pure gifts from the divine.

It’s like standing next to wizards.

Machines can’t touch these guys. And we are seduced by their genius. Humans with gifts are like being in the presence of a mystery we know has no answer. The mystery is the point. We gather and listen. We stand in long lines for the experience. We expect greatness and revelation. It lifts us out of our shoes when we hear it.

This is the limitation machines face. They cannot create the invisible, the gossamer threads from the stars that wrap us in magic.

That’s what you’re chasing when you sit down to create. That’s why you write. Why you place your hand over the keyboard. Why you take a breath to sing.

So these fears about machines replacing human creativity are meaningless. Human creativity is beyond the reach of machines. Machines are no threat to it.

Play, write, sing, dance, share your gifts.