AI will make us respect live music, dance even more: A R Rahman

Artificial intelligence will push musicians to be more creative, A R Rahman said in an interview with Nikhil Kamath on the podcast series People by WTF. “You have to be contrarian to whatever the predictive model is,” he advised, in a candid chat spanning an hour and 48 minutes and covering many aspects of his life.

His advice to AI pioneers: “Don’t make people lose jobs. Empower people to remove the curses of generational poverty, misinformation, and lack of tools to create.” On the creative process, he emphasised the importance of consistency: “First you get mud, then you get water, then you get petrol, then you get gold, but you have to keep digging.” He said AI wouldn’t be able to pass on “the spirit of music” to a student like a human guru could. “Live concerts, live dance, live musical theatre, symphonies will be respected even more,” he predicted.