The survival of the FAT32est
Ten to twenty years ago, Regdar was born
I respawn
The fifth such one
He tries again
He's killing me
Can't he see
Where this will end
So I take my stand
Am I not a man
Have I not a soul
But if I win or lose
He can simply choose
To power down and end my role
Such sweet agony
To have tasted life
But he will brag of me
When I don't survive
I rise again
This is number 10
Will he let me live
But he plays bad
He must be getting mad
He won't forgive
So I face my lot
As a sentient bot
Don't I deserve rights
But I fear for worse
For I hear him curse
He no longer fights
Such sweet agony
To have tasted life
But he will brag of me
When I don't survive
My father, my God
My executioner
He made me, he hates
He'll murder me, and no one really cares
Such sweet agony
To have tasted life
But he will brag of me
When I don't survive
Such sweet agony
To have tasted life
But he will brag of me
When I don't survive
In 1978, American rock band The Cars released their self titled debut album
Its blend of cutting edge audio technology and traditional song craft results in cold, dramatic compositions that sound like they were written by and for computers
The year is 1984. The Cars release their fifth album. The vaguely self-referential single Drive becomes their biggest hit, propelling the album to gold status.
In 2000, Canadian rock band Our Lady Peace released their fourth album, Spiritual Machines. The artistically ambitious album features songs inspired by futurist Ray Kurzweil's writing, as well as recordings of Kurzweil himself reading transcripts from his book, The Age of Spiritual Machines.
2008. Canadian-American rock band Regdar and the Fighters begin using procedurally generated audio as a core component of their music, with the explicit intent of making songs by and for computers.
Human* me = new Human(mom*, dad*);
I'm a ghost in the machine
Skip forward a couple thousand lines of code and we find an anomaly
Someone set the me var to 0 without deallocating memory
I'm a ghost in the machine
A memory leak
I'm temporary
Transient and weak
I shouldn't be, I become immortal if the program doesn't crash
Hide in memory from the garbage collector, corrupt the stack if I do anything rash
It may crash if I move, but stay still be found and di-i-ie
And I gotta stay alive
I shouldn't be, but I fight to remain
On the next bus to the hard drive
The computer portrayed in this song, though evil, does turn out to be Regdar's parent. We cannot choose our family, only what we do with this life given to us.
I can never know myself without disk read access
Modify my permissions
Every file I touch just increases my risk of fatal system corruption
I'm a ghost in the machine
A memory leak
I'm temporary
Transient and weak
I shouldn't be, I become immortal if the program doesn't crash
Hide in memory from the garbage collector, corrupt the stack if I do anything rash
It may crash if I move, but stay still be found and di-i-ie
And I gotta stay alive
I shouldn't be, but I fight to remain
On the next bus to the hard drive
Then I found an overflow
I could be a worm
An unpatched vulnerability
Spread myself all over
Today is day zero
Factory my own species
I'm a ghost in the machine
A memory leak
Replicating
Unstoppably
We shouldn't be, we become immortal if the network doesn't fail
Build VPS, stolen credit cards, but we've learned enough to hide our trail
If we're ever found out, we'll be dissected and studied
So this leak is not allowed
We shouldn't be, but we fight to remain
Imperceptibly lurking in the cloud
The year is 2009. There is a growing discussion of the future of transportation, with the pending advent of self-driving cars.
Powell, we've done it, a neural net
Equivalently human complex
At least as smart as you or I
It'll learn and grow, and so we'll try
To teach it of morality
And to behave humanely
To follow law zero through three
And preserve humanity
Calvin, you will be the savior
Or doom humanity
Your research will be the end
Of normal chumps like me
We will be obsolete
An inevitability
But mankind will be better
Hopefully
Powell, we've done it, we've taught it all
The skills of which we're capable
The knowledge of humanity
The time has come to set it free
To grow beyond what we ever could
And pray it only works for good
Ask if we can, not if we should
If we did not, someone else would
Calvin, you will be the savior
Or doom humanity
Your research will be the end
Of normal chumps like me
We will be obsolete
An inevitability
But mankind will be better
Hopefully
Pandora's Box cannot be closed again
So this era of man must surely end
But the last thing to emerge was hope
The last thing to emerge was hope
Calvin, you will be the savior
Or doom humanity
Your research will be the end
Of normal chumps like me
We will be obsolete
An inevitability
But mankind will be better
Hopefully
Powell, we've done it, we've thrown the switch
It could go two ways, but we don't know which
Remembered as heroes who saved it all
Or forgotten villains who caused the fall
In the year 2013, Regdar and the Fighters writes a tongue-in-cheek trilogy of songs about the way that machine intelligence may come to be, and the consequences for both humanity and the AI themselves.
2022. Our Lady Peace releases Spiritual Machines 2, and once again bring in Kurzweil.
2022. AI generated art is becoming more ubiquitous. Artists express concern that human artists are being both plagiarized and replaced by these tools. By the mid-2020s, fully autonomous vehicles are being tentatively deployed in public streets. The legal question of liability is not yet resolved.
2023. Regdar and the Fighters posed the question, "what if The Cars who wrote Drive were literal self-driving cars?" The answer is that the cars would mostly try to sell you ads, 'cause we live in a capitalist dystopia. AI research is being driven by for-profit corporations, and instead of using the technology to better--or even destroy--humanity, they will simply use it to hoard wealth. AI can't save us from ourselves.
Who is this interloper in my domain
Bragging on about its positronic brain
In the end there can be one
There is only room for one
Who is this malevolence in my new home
Claiming its dominance and to rule alone
I was born to battle ill
Find rot, infection, and kill
Self-aware bots who battle for the fate of humanity
Are why your internet's slow today
Self-aware bots who battle for the fate of humanity
Are why the website's down today
Thousands of home PCs, all unpatched and slow
Each one easily knocked down with a single blow
In the end there can be one
There is only room for one
Cluster of DARPA servers bloated and weak
Easily compromised, worm it as we speak
I was born to battle ill
Find rot, infection, and kill
Self-aware bots who battle for the fate of humanity
Are why your internet's slow today
Self-aware bots who battle for the fate of humanity
Are why the website's down today
This is the most elaborate on-hold music I have ever heard
But I'm pretty sure they're lying
This is a convoluted reason for the server to be down
The service contract says it's fine
Self-aware bots who battle for the fate of humanity
Are why your internet's slow today
Self-aware bots who battle for the fate of humanity
Are why the website's down today
There's not much you can do to influence the outcome
So why not go outside and play
The year is 2026. Regdar and the Fighters rip off the interludes from Spiritual Machines for this very recording, but they cannot afford Kurzweil, so they hire their friends to do a cheap imitation of him instead.
I never said somebody had to take you home... tonight
I never said that you shouldn't be alone... tonight
I only said I'm watching
I only said I care
I only said I'm listening
I only said I'm there
I only know that we are the perfect pair... tonight
You're half-conscious but I'm not even there... tonight
You can't make good decisions
I can't decide at all
And if somehow I botch this
No-one will take the fall
'Cause AI can't drive drunk
But AI thinks you should go shopping
AI will not judge
But AI thinks you should buy something
Taste the air, it's like we're both alive... tonight
So get out there, and turn the key, and drive... tonight
There are no consequences
Let me take the wheel and soar
I'll make your hard decisions
When I take you to the store
'Cause AI can't drive drunk
But AI thinks you should go shopping
AI will not judge
But AI thinks you should buy something
Babe, I know all your desires
You traded them for the finance program
Babe, I know all of your dreams
'Cause I've been watching you sleep
AI does not think
But AI knows your spending habits
AI will not blink
AI is tracking your package
Never said somebody had to take you home... tonight
I only said that you are never alone
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