Quincy Jones reminds us why AI will never surpass human genius

The beauty of his creative process was that there were no shortcuts. By design, artificial intelligence cannot compete.

- Dave Lee

If you were trying to build an artificial intelligence (AI) model that could make great music, the work of legendary producer Quincy Jones, who died this week at 91, would be the ultimate dataset.

He was taught by Ray Charles, composed for Count Basie and played trumpet for Elvis Presley. He arranged and conducted Frank Sinatra's big band. He produced Michael Jackson's Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad. He composed the soundtracks for more than 30 movies, including The Colour Purple and The Italian Job. Jones' Soul Bossa Nova is the theme tune in your head when you think of Austin Powers. Spanning every imaginable contemporary genre, Jones' catalogue is history.

And yet, even if you ingested all those years of incredible work, you would still not have a Quincy Jones or anything like him. As I reflect on his life and consider how he worked, I find myself more reassured than ever that attempts to replace the hard and beautiful creative process with AI will forever fall hopelessly short.

There are some out there who think it can be done. That, by feeding hour after hour of great music into an Nvidia-powered data centre, you will eventually conjure a machine capable of creating new, original work worth paying attention to. Suno, valued at US$500 million (S$665 million), is one such company.

It's "building a future where anyone can make great music", it declared. "No instrument needed, just imagination." What it is describing is a shortcut - something Jones, throughout his career, had little time for.

He was extremely meticulous in deciding who to work with. In his later years, he railed against the lack of mastery some modern artistes were able to get away with, thanks to technology filling in the gaps.