From 'Barbie Girl' to AI: The road to post-humanism and censorship

Music has gone through a drastic evolution, and no one knows it better than Winston Marshall.

Marshall is the former banjo player for Mumford & Sons — and he also happens to be incredibly well versed on the emergence of AI and the dangers that will likely follow.

James Poulos sat down with Marshall to discuss AI, censorship, posthumanism, and so much more.

Marshall believes that AI is “going to affect not just the creative industries, but it’s going to change everything,” adding that “it’s going to affect blue-collar, white-collar jobs massively.”

“If the AI can read and assimilate information at the snap of a finger,” Marshall continues, “which takes, you know, would take any human years to do — history books are going to be rewritten.”

However, there is one thing that AI can’t do.

“AI can’t suffer,” Marshall says, adding that this is the “crucial difference where great art comes from.”

Poulos agrees.

Suffering, he believes, “is sort of the price of admission for being human.”

While Poulos is aware of the dangers of AI, he says he’s “not an AI-doomer.”

“I think what the concern is is not that the machines are going to independently, sort of, like, take control over our world but that, you know, people in fact don’t want to suffer. They don’t want to be human,” he explains.

He believes people want to escape being human but that “trying to escape or transform our humanity is a fool’s errand.”

“If you attempted to be optimistic for a moment, what do you think is a way out of that? What needs to be changed, what needs to be fixed?” Marshall asks.

“The good news is the gospel. It’s the message of Christ,” Poulos offers.

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