American rock singer Lou Reed has a song called “Doin’ the things that we want to.” It was written in 1984, and the contents of the song are as the title suggests, but I’ve been listening to it many times recently because I feel it shows how people should live in the age of AI.

We are already in the age of AI, and AI is progressing at an accelerating rate, becoming a very useful tool. Because it is so useful, it will spread explosively. I personally believe that the heyday of AI will arrive around 2030.

There will be an increasing number of jobs where it is faster and more accurate to leave it to AI than for humans to do it. AI should also penetrate creative fields such as music and novels. Even if you ask a human composer to write a song, you don’t know when it will be completed, and it may end up finishing a song that is different from your image. On the other hand, with AI, you just need to tell them the image of the song, and they will finish the song you want in a few minutes. In fact, this kind of movement is starting to emerge in the music industry. In the age of AI, the number of jobs that only humans can do will be limited. Realistically, unemployment will likely become an issue, and many people will fall into a state of intense nihilism and not know what to do.
When I thought about how people will live in the age of AI, the first song that came to my mind was Lou Reed’s “Do What You Want to Do.”
People in the age of AI have no choice but to do what they want to do. Doing what you want to do may seem hedonistic at first glance, but in reality, a very strong sense of purpose is essential, and you will need considerable conviction to continue doing what you want to do. In other words, you cannot get through the age of AI without purpose and conviction.
Music and novels can be easily created with AI. But you play music because you want to play music, and you write novels because you want to write novels. I honestly don’t know how much value those purposes and convictions have, but still, people in the age of AI have no choice but to do what they want to do. (Kei Kitajima)

※Translating Japanese articles into English with AI