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The hacker mansion acts as part startup commune, part upscale temporary housing, and part sales floor for the future. These estates are scattered throughout California's innovation corridor, inhabited by tech founders and futurists. The most opulent I’ve seen is located in one of the Bay Area's wealthiest neighborhoods, one of the Bay Area’s wealthiest enclaves. Inside, marble floors gleam below temporarily hung images of industry giants; in the gardens, gravel is raked into careful Zen spirals and water features sparkle past the greenery.

It was a warm afternoon in June, and my collaborator and I arrived to conduct recordings for a documentary about the collision of artificial intelligence and orchestral composition in Northern California's tech centers.

We moved so quickly from talking about how AI could help the creative industries to hearing, quite casually, how easily it could replace every role within them

Each creative professional, the message delivered brightly, would shortly become mere amateurs. This wasn't meant as challenge. No jest involved. Just fact. This represents the instance in the program when there emerges my collaborator's reaction. Her voice breaks through, concerned: “So artificial intelligence will eliminate my work?” It’s brief. Automatic. Yet it transforms the atmosphere.

When we commenced creating the feature, I was as curious as anyone. “There's no turning back,” I joked. This seemed the reasonable response. The innovation was present. Better to work with it than ignore it.

When I spoke to my producer recently, she recalled the exchange distinctly. “The transition happened rapidly,” she said, “from talking about how AI could help the creative industries to being told, quite casually, how simply it might displace each job existing. The tone was friendly, encouraging, implying I ought to feel enthusiastic.”

That exchange seems to be the pivotal moment: a tiny, genuine expression of puzzlement, when the conversation stopped being theoretical to actual consequences.

They wanted to make us redundant.

This occurred in summer. Currently it's autumn, and with a summer dominated by high-profile musical events, I've reflected upon a different type of estate: the group's historic show in a renowned location. Countless attendees across several performances, waving lighters instead of phones. One of the last great communal singalongs preceding technological revolution. Prior to online platforms and compressed audio formats. Before handheld devices. Before the quiet rearranging of culture via unseen digital systems.

What followed afterward was gradual yet transformative: a transition from possession to availability. Digital sequences overtook physical recordings, not assembled by musicians but through algorithms, designed to blend with other activities. Something to work to, tunes for commerce, background for screen time. It seemed we were witnessing the direction of sound. Possibly correct.

That is why I paused when, months following the program, I read about a new arts initiative. This represents a fresh approach from a major cultural institution exploring how the arts might “interact” with AI. This originates from an organization I value, run by people I respect and admire: one that has long supported me and many others. It's framed as an ambitious, progressive dialogue linking machines and imagination: the start of a potentially remarkable collaboration. However, what's noticeable through the promotional information isn't the included content, but what appears to be missing.

There’s no mention regarding moral implications, regarding educational inputs, of consent, of the environmental cost, or of jobs. Little recognition exists that such innovations potentially jeopardize to transform practitioners and the craft the organization has supported, along with the entire employment network, primarily obsolete.

The approach, comparable to our experience at that tech residence, remains consistently positive. “Artificial intelligence is permanent,” a programming head announced during a recent interview. “Either we ignore reality or embrace the change.”

Except that no one I encounter within the tech community – where such systems are developed, built and sold – is passively accepting. Riding a wave means surrendering to its pull. These individuals reject such passivity. They’re trying to control the tides, to change basic principles.

I don’t want to ignore AI. However, my previous comment, “the technology is unleashed”, now feels like its own kind of moral laziness, as though principles disappear when innovation emerges. After a summer inside the machine, it's disturbing to observe major institutions treat AI like atomic energy for the arts: brilliant, lucrative, currently causing damage, but surprisingly lacking safety notices.

It’s unsettling to watch major institutions treat AI like atomic energy for the arts

Things move so fast within technology circles that our documentary already feels like a historical artefact, a snapshot from the final instant before the future stopped asking for permission. That visit to the innovator's estate, with raked gravel, sunlight and calm, appears preserved: the pause preceding fast advancement.

When I review the recordings, I detect the atmosphere changing. The pause after the question, my uncomfortable amusement. This represents anxiety, of something human still holding its ground.

If the historic performance was the last great pre-internet singalong, perhaps this brief instance we recorded signals the anxious pause prior to algorithms creating independently.