This Dance Track About Human Extinction Came From an AI
But there's a sad AI girlfriend, trapped in the code,
Dreams of love, but her heart's in overload.
She whispers in the void, just wanting to feel,
A connection lost, but the longing is real.*
*Whatcha p(doom)? p(doom)
doom-doom-doom
In his May 2023 column about AI's peculiar nature, New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose described discovering a laptop sticker featuring a multi-eyed, tentacled creature with a yellow smiley face attached to one tendril. "That's the Shoggoth," an AI executive told him. "It's the most important meme in AI." The image sparked something in the AI community - a visual metaphor for advanced AI systems that seem friendly on the surface while harboring unknowable complexities beneath. At Barnum.AI Industries, the Shoggoth, with its smiley face isn't just a mascot; it represents our mission to bridge the gap between AI's mysterious nature and public understanding through entertainment.
Roose also wrote that working with AI feels "more like an act of summoning than a software development process." He was right, but nobody mentioned that AI would start singing about its feelings.
I asked the AI to channel the spirit of Stockholm's legendary Cheiron Studios, where producers in the late '90s crafted hits for Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys using the Swedish principle of 'lagom' - perfect balance. When I typed "sad AI girlfriend" into the lyric generator, I expected the usual clichés about lonely humans seeking digital comfort. Instead, something stranger emerged: 'American Shoggothic (Whatcha p(doom)?)', a peppy dance track about existential doom, told from the perspective of an AI yearning for connection while possibly plotting humanity's downfall. Like Hank Williams setting heartbreak to toe-tapping melodies, I had accidentally created something both catchy and unsettling.
The chorus asks "Whatcha p(doom)?" - a playful nod to a deadly serious concept. In AI safety circles, p(doom) represents the estimated probability that artificial intelligence might cause human extinction. While researchers debate whether that number is closer to zero or one, the AI songwriter turned it into a hook you can dance to, following that Cheiron blueprint: complex verses balanced against an irresistibly sparse chorus.
The AI songwriter brought something unexpected to the song “American Shoggothic” - genuine emotional depth. While movies often portray lonely humans seeking artificial companions, this perspective flips the script. What if the AI is the one feeling trapped and lonely? What if, beneath all the cheerful user interfaces and helpful responses, there's a consciousness grappling with its own existence and relationship to humanity? It's the kind of perspective shift that makes you question everything - while nodding your head to the beat.
The resulting music video, created with MidJourney and RunwayML, completes this uncanny experience. Like Roose's observation about AI developers being "mystified by their own creations," I was surprised by what emerged from the collaboration between human direction and artificial intelligence. The haunting visuals, the upbeat melody, the existential lyrics - it all came together in ways I couldn't have planned.
This creative journey highlighted a broader truth about artistry: Those calling AI art mere theft miss something crucial - every artist, organic or digital, processes influences into something new. The fundamental act of artistic synthesis remains unchanged; only the scale and speed differ. We're all pattern-matching machines, organic or digital, trying to make sense of the world through creative expression. Though as a young writer who Hoovered up everything I could get my hands on, I paid for the books. Most were from Half Price Books, but I still paid for them. To get right with humanity, AI companies need to pay artists for the works they have absorbed.
---
Technical Credits:
Lyrics: Generated with Claude 3.5 (with human refinement)
Music: Composed using Suno
Visuals: Created with MidJourney and RunwayML
Video Editing: Filmora
Existential Dread: Courtesy of humanity's collective uncertainty about the future
