Walking La Cité with AI on My Mind

A Walk Through Paris, a Thought on AI, and a Nod to Human Ingenuity

I am learning French with the help of a few podcasts. I usually will cue up an episode or two and walk la Cité for an hour or two replaying, repeating so as to not butcher this beautiful language. One of today’s episodes was about Artificial Intelligence of all things.

This is the part that stopped me learning French and having a conversation with myself like a madman:

“You drew an analogy between AI and DJ. It remixes pieces of music that have already been written. That was...”

“Elle remix des morceaux de musique qui ont déjà été écrits. Le DJ, lui, ne crée pas de nouvelles musiques. l'IA n'ajoute donc rien au corpus de connaissances encore existant."

Translated it means: “It remixes pieces of music that have already been written. The DJ, on the other hand, doesn't create new music, so AI adds nothing to the body of knowledge that already exists.”

I had to sit down on a bench and absorb what I was hearing. I knew it was accurate, but I also knew that if you drill down enough you could m…