A.I. is probably the hottest topic in philosophy at the moment. So this week, a brand new activity specially developed for yesterday’s Year 10 Philosophy day at Harris Academy Morden.
Stimulus: Suno
I warmed groups up with a few questions about AI writing stories and making pictures, taken from previous resources we’ve made on the topic, but you could dive straight in and ask for:
A topic for a song
A story about that topic that the song could tell
A genre of music
I ran this six times at Harris Academy Morden, and we had songs about dragons, school lunches, and transatlantic romances between world leaders, but my favourite was:
Topic: Cereal
Story: A bowl of cereal that sprouts legs and goes walking before the owner can eat it
Genre: Rap
I put these instructions into Suno (think ChatGPT for music – you just need a free account – Google ones work – to create 10 songs a day) and “Lost Breakfast” was born. Listen here.
Get your students to suggest a topic, story and a genre (it worked well to get three for each respective stage, and vote each time), and put the basic instructions in.
Question: Who wrote “Lost Breakfast”?
For whatever song has been created live in your classroom, lay out four pieces of paper, one in each corner of the room/space.
1. Us
2. The AI programme
3. The AI developers
4. All the musicians in history that the AI has learnt from
Ask them to vote with their feet, getting them to stand next to the one they think played the “smallest role” in creating the song, and let them share reasons with each other and then to the class (does anyone change their mind?).
Then, ask for who played the “biggest role” or who deserves the most credit, and follow the same process.
Most will think it’s a combination of some or all, so you could get them to order the four from most contribution to least.
A further question I posed was “If the song is sold, who should get the royalties?”
Other AI questions
There are so many avenues of enquiry you could also go down, looking at creativity, fairness and aesthetics, (mostly covered in our other resources). If you want to raise them here, though:
- Many musicians are requesting a law to stop AI entering the traditional music industry. Should creative jobs like theirs jobs be given special protection?
- Can an AI-generated song convey emotion?
- Is it art?
- Could you enjoy a song knowing it was generated by AI? What if you enjoyed it, and then found out afterwards? Would it change anything?
- Will AI make musicians even more creative? Might it be a positive thing?
Thanks to Lex Lang, who I met at Caterham Prep School on Monday, for showing me Suno!
It’s been a great start to the week working at Caterham Prep and Harris Morden, with more visits lined up next week to Golborne St. Thomas in Warrington and Sarum Hall in North London. If you have even a germ of an idea for getting us in – whether that’s for training, workshops, whole-year group events or something else, just get in touch by replying directly to this email.
Best wishes,
Tom