Exploring tools, methods, ideas, and culture at the beginning of the AI boom from the center of San Francisco. generativegazette.substack.com
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June 5, 202620 min
The Great AI Sin
For the past four years, we’ve been told two stories about AI.The first is that people hate it.The second is that everyone keeps using it.Both stories can’t be the whole story.In this episode, we pull apart one of the strangest cultural phenomena of the AI era: how a technology can be denounced as theft, slop, unethical, soulless, and dangerous while simultaneously becoming woven into the daily work of writers, musicians, filmmakers, designers, programmers, students, and businesses at a pace almost unprecedented in technological history.Rather than arguing about whether AI is good or bad, we ask a more interesting question: Why are so many institutions trying so hard to distinguish between “real” creators and creators who use AI, and what happens when that distinction becomes impossible to maintain? Get full access to The Generative Gazette at generativegazette.substack.com/subscribe
May 29, 202613 min
I Gave a Talk at a College About AI—and No One Booed
What if students aren’t booing AI because they hate technology, but because they can smell the difference between a tool that helps them think and a machine that helps someone else avoid thinking?In this episode, I want to poke at that difference with a tuning fork. We’ll visit Oberlin, a conservatory, some AI-generated Bach, a dance performance using Suno, and the strange fact that nobody booed when AI was used to make music-making richer rather than cheaper.The question isn’t whether AI can make more music. Of course it can. The better question is: can it help humans hear more deeply, practice more intelligently, and make something real happen in a room?That’s where things get interesting. Get full access to The Generative Gazette at generativegazette.substack.com/subscribe
This is a paraphrased transcript. Listen to get the full experienceJordan[Orchestral overture]Imagine a new technology drops today, right?And the government immediately moves to ban it.They claim it’s going to fundamentally corrupt the youth and cause the absolute collapse of the state.You’d probably think it was, I don’t know, a biological weapon.Or maybe some kind of unregulated neuroimplant.AlexExactly.But if you rewind to about 380 BCE, Plato was making that exact argument about a new type of flute.It is just a stunning historical reality.We tend to think of the history of music as this upward trajectory of universal celebration.JordanRight, where society just marvels at the next great masterpiece or a cool new instrument.AlexYeah, but if you look at the primary sources, the reaction to new musical expression is almost always sheer, unadulterated terror.JordanWhich is exactly what we are getting into today.Welcome to The Deep Dive.Our mission today is to track the overarching through-lines of this fear.We want to figure out why new music and new music tech always seem to terrify society.And what’s uniquely different about the panics you see in your social feeds today versus what’s exactly the same.And what conclusions we can draw about the future of human expression.Okay, let’s unpack this.AlexThe most striking realization from this research is that while the target of the panic constantly evolves, shifting from ancient lyres to 19th-century ballroom dances to 2026 AI track generators, the underlying rhetoric remains shockingly consistent.It’s basically the same script every time.JordanIt really is.To understand the AI anxiety we’re living through right now, we have to look at how early societies viewed music.They didn’t see it merely as an art form.They saw it as a highly dangerous technology of the physical body.AlexLet’s explore that, because the level of state control over a melody in antiquity is wild.You mentioned Plato warning that musical innovation leads to lawlessness.JordanOh yeah. He thought it was a direct threat to the state.AlexBut it wasn’t just a Western phenomenon.In early Confucian statecraft, there was a massive push to banish the regional music of Zheng.JordanRight, because it was classified as lewd.AlexExactly. It was treated like a political hygiene issue.Imagine the government banning a Spotify playlist because they genuinely believe it’s a threat to national security.JordanIt sounds absurd now, but as history progresses, that fear transitions into a fear of music corrupting the soul.Which brings us to the religious panic.AlexIf you read Augustine of Hippo, he agonizes over his own physical reactions to music.JordanHe felt guilty just for reacting to a song?AlexTotally. He felt like a criminal because he was more moved by the singing than the religious message.JordanThat’s incredible.AlexAnd it escalates.Figures like John Chrysostom and later Puritan clergy framed dancing as a direct portal to evil.JordanThe Puritans did not mess around with dancing.AlexNot at all. Increase Mather literally described it as a devil’s procession.JordanAnd then by 1816, the waltz is causing panic in London.AlexYes, it was called an indecent foreign contagion.JordanBecause people were touching.AlexExactly. That same anxious gaze appears again with the hula in the 1820s.Missionaries framed it as morally disruptive and socially dangerous.JordanIt really does feel like they treated music as a kind of malware.AlexThat’s exactly the pattern.The state or church is the operating system, and new music is treated like a virus that hacks the body.JordanThat brings us to something the sources call “demonology by metaphor.”AlexRight. It’s about externalizing agency.Instead of saying “I like this,” people say “the music is making me do it.”JordanSo the music becomes the villain.AlexExactly. It absolves the listener of responsibility.JordanBut in the 20th century, the language changes.AlexYes. The panic becomes scientific.Ragtime was described as a public health issue.Jazz was said to “demoralize the brain.”JordanAnd those claims were often wrapped in racialized pseudoscience.AlexExactly.And that continues into rock and roll, where the focus shifts to physical behavior and neurological harm.JordanWhich leads us to the PMRC era.AlexYes. The rhetoric becomes statistical moralism.Explicit lyrics were linked to social epidemics like violence and suicide.JordanSo taste becomes framed as measurable harm.AlexExactly. It transforms opinion into urgency.JordanThen we get the machine panic.AlexJohn Philip Sousa warned in 1906 that mechanical music would destroy the human soul.JordanWhich sounds exactly like modern AI critiques.AlexIt’s the same argument.Later, unions protested synthesizers, fearing job loss.JordanWhich gets reframed as protecting culture.AlexExactly. Economic anxiety becomes moral concern.JordanThen we enter the digital era.AlexYes. The panic moves into the legal system.Home taping was “killing music.”Sampling cases invoked biblical language.Jordan“Thou shalt not steal” in a court ruling is wild.AlexAnd then Napster and file sharing escalate everything.JordanThe industry calls users pirates.AlexYes, turning consumers into criminals.JordanBut none of it stops the technology.AlexNo. It just delays adaptation.JordanWhich brings us to today.AlexThe authenticity crisis.AI is framed not as corrupting us, but as replacing us.JordanThat’s the shift.AlexThe fear is now an ontological insult.JordanMeaning?AlexThe fear that human creativity isn’t unique.That it can be replicated.JordanThat’s a very different kind of panic.AlexYes, but the pattern remains the same.Panic, litigation, normalization.JordanAnd eventually, integration.AlexExactly.JordanSo what’s the takeaway?AlexMoral panics over music are rarely about the music itself.They’re about power.Economics.Control.And who gets to define authenticity.JordanEvery terrifying new technology eventually becomes just another tool.AlexWhich leads to two questions you should always ask.JordanWho is losing money?AlexAnd who is losing control?JordanAnd maybe one more.If machines can imitate everything…AlexWhat happens when there’s nothing left to imitate?JordanMaybe the future of rebellion is just humans being gloriously imperfect.AlexMessy, offbeat, unmistakably human.JordanLet’s hope so.Thanks for joining us on The Deep Dive.Until next time. Get full access to The Generative Gazette at generativegazette.substack.com/subscribe
March 18, 20267 min
You’ve Vibe Coded an Amblongus Pie! Now What?
What to do when you create an Amblongus pie while using an AI coding assistant, or vibe coding. Get full access to The Generative Gazette at generativegazette.substack.com/subscribe
March 15, 202620 min
The Missing Layer in the AI Stack
Over the past few years the AI ecosystem has been assembling itself into layers.First came the models. Then came the tools that allow those models to interact with the world. Now we’re beginning to see protocols that let AI agents communicate with each other and frameworks that help orchestrate their work.But when you zoom out and look at the emerging architecture, a small question starts to nag.What is the unit of work in AI systems?Not a prompt.Not a tool call.Not a message between agents.Something more like what humans already understand: a mission.In this episode we explore a simple but surprisingly deep idea: that AI systems may eventually need a shared way to describe purposeful work — goals, constraints, policies, and budgets — independent of the particular agents or tools involved.Along the way we talk about:Why the AI stack may be missing a coordination layerThe difference between agents, tools, and missionsWhy reasoning and authority should probably be separatedHow runaway agent systems could create congestionWhy TCP solved packet congestion — but not “work congestion”What might stop agents from spawning missions all the way downWhether this is just reinventing workflow systemsAnd why the hardest problem in large systems is often coordination, not intelligenceThe conversation is exploratory rather than prescriptive. The point isn’t to propose a standard — at least not yet — but to ask whether the ecosystem might be approaching the kind of scale where coordination layers historically appear.Because once AI systems start generating work for each other, the central question changes.Not what can these systems do?But how many of them can operate together without overwhelming the environment they share? Get full access to The Generative Gazette at generativegazette.substack.com/subscribe
March 13, 202622 min
Inhuman Music?
What if the “inhuman” side of music has always been there—quietly shaping the songs you love? This episode pulls back the curtain, and the view is stranger, funnier, and more hopeful than you might expect. Get full access to The Generative Gazette at generativegazette.substack.com/subscribe
We rely on systems every day without thinking about them—until the moment arrives when a decision can’t be undone. In those moments, something subtle but essential comes into play: not proof, not compliance, but the quiet confidence that allows action at all. This episode lingers in that space, where time is short, information is incomplete, and hesitation carries its own cost.What does it actually mean to rely on an intelligent system before anything goes wrong? How does confidence form when explanations come later, if at all? And as AI moves from tools we use to collaborators we act with, where does that leave the humans who must decide, right now, whether to listen? Get full access to The Generative Gazette at generativegazette.substack.com/subscribe
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