Is understanding AI a bigger question than understanding the origin of the universe? - Highlights, NEIL JOHNSON Music & Dance: Musicians, Composers, Singers, Dancers, Choreographers, Performers Talk Art, Creativity & The Creative Process

"So in our projects, part of the creative process is learning how to interact with other disciplines. It’s not something academia in general does. I happen to be a saxophone player. In something like music, the richness comes from different instruments—their shortcomings and advantages combined together. My hope is that's what we end up doing in the academic field to try and address some of these messy problems.
I was my first generation going to college. There was one that stands out by miles—a teacher I had in elementary school when I was eight. He was from Jamaica and just arrived in England. He was a jazz musician. He would start off the day playing jazz. He taught math as well, but he brought in a technique, which I still use to this day, to multiply numbers together. I've never seen it taught anywhere, it was done in some kind of slanted table. We'd done multiplication the previous year and I couldn't understand it, but he drew these tables and I thought this was just remarkable. That set me off and it showed me there was this interesting thing called jazz, and you don't have to do much to actually change a lot. Passing on some idea that might be unusual, as long as you can back it up, can have a really positive benefit going forward for future generations.
I just wish I was a young scientist going into this because that's the question to answer: Why AI comes out with what it does. That's the burning question. It's like it's bigger than the origin of the universe to me as a scientist, and here's the reason why. The origin of the universe, it happened. That's why we're here. It's almost like a historical question asking why it happened. The AI future is not a historical question. It's a now and future question.”