Happy New Year everyone! I thought my first post of the year would focus on the popular topic of our times – generative AI. My experience during this holiday season was the inspiration for the post. To do the story justice, I need to go back to my youth. One of my strong passions through the years has been music. As a young boy in the 1970s, I loved classic rock, however, sports became my dominant passion and all my focus remained there. As a result, I was limited to singing along to my favorite songs. When I entered the world of work, it replaced sports as my dominant focus – and once again I was resigned to singing along – but this time, in my car during commutes.

I never learned to play an instrument or study music theory. Then, in 2001, I left my current job seeking greener pastures – but I found myself unemployed and with time on my hands. So, I decided to pursue this lifelong passion. My desire was to compose (music) alongside my brother Armando (lyrics). Fortunately, I spent years doing research and applied that skill to finding all I could on the Internet. I studied theory, composition, arrangement, and sound engineering. The amount of time it took to search and find relevant sources consumed my days. Which leads me back to generative AI.

Work returned to being my primary focus (outside of family). But my desire to continue my music journey never waned. Each year around the holidays, I take time to focus on a song. As I did so this year, I was stuck on a chord progression that was not evoking the right emotional response. I turned first to Bard and asked for a chord progression recommendation. At first blush, the response was brilliant – and fast. Doing that in 2001 would have taken hours, if not days. The question-and-answer session that ensued just continued to build the conversation in rapid fashion. Then I realized Bard had hallucinated. It presented the D-Chord as the dominant chord in the A key. Since the dominant chord is E, every recommendation was flawed. So, I turned to ChatGPT and Bing. Each handled the question with the same speed, but this time, the correct recommendations.

That is not a value judgement of Bard, since I have used it with great results. It reflects our times. This new question-and-answer paradigm ultimately changes everything. It is the same process I now use to support the research required of a Futurist. However, as the story describes, human review and judgement are required – at least for now.