Susan Cain

It would be an interesting psychological experiment to get someone.

I want to deputize someone.

Maybe one of our listeners can do this who's a musician.

This is against the grain of what anyone wants, I'm sure.

But if someone produced a test for you between the human-made minor key music that

that has organized all of your intuitions around this paradoxical emotion of bittersweetness and some AI version where we could do the Pepsi challenge here.

It would be interesting because if you wound up not being able to tell which was which or which you like better, what do you think that does to you as a person who cares about all of this, this whole part of culture?

Okay, but here's the thing.

I think I might not be able to tell the difference if it's a blind taste test, but I think part of what makes the reaction that I have, and many people have this same reaction, so ecstatic is because I'm aware that music was produced by a human who has experienced all these things and was...

talented enough, gifted enough, and generous enough to turn it into something that beautiful and that transcendent.

So I start feeling this wash of love for the musician and for the other people who are listening to it.

And so if you told me that the music was created by a machine, the wash of love wouldn't feel the same way, even if my initial response did.

But until these machines arose, it was just the safe assumption.

You could be 100% sure that the music you're listening to was created by a person.

And so you never had to think about it.

Again, I'm not, as is probably already obvious, I'm not a deep student of music, but when I listen to a

You know, the soundtrack to a film, say, and the music is perfectly calculated to produce in me some set of emotions.

Take the bittersweet version.

I guess I'm thinking maybe like the soundtrack for the, is this Ennio Morricone, the soundtrack for The Mission?

That might hit a similar spot, you tell me.