UNDERGRADUATE
MUSI2088 Music, AI, and the Future of Creativity
Course Type: disciplinary elective for music majors/minors, free elective for others
Prerequisite: NIL
Instructors: Professor Rujing Stacy HUANG
Semester: Second Semester 2024/25
Time: 12:30pm–2:20pm, Wednesday
Venue: CRT-11.01 Seminar Room
Generating a song in a split second is now a reality with advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), and in extreme cases it requires no prior musical training and is therefore accessible to most. Has this technology “democratized” music-making? Are we living in the best era to be a creative, or is this technology threatening the essence of creative expression and work? Can non-human agents be considered “artists”? Is AI the end of art or the future of creativity? And what is creativity anyway? This course explores such questions at the intersection of music, AI, and creativity, drawing from the rapidly expanding critical scholarship on AI. While the class prioritizes musicological, sociocultural, and philosophical approaches to critiquing AI, we will also engage with other genres of writings from media studies, music information retrieval (MIR), computational creativity, and from within the music industry. There will be options to take on collaborative creative projects.
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
  • demonstrate knowledge of the latest developments, debates, and controversies at the convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and the creative and cultural industries (with a focus on music)
  • critically reflect on and ask interesting questions about the philosophical (from ethics to aesthetics),sociocultural, and musicological dimensions of such technology
  • develop a multifaceted, interdisciplinary understanding of “creativity” as informed by both scholarship and practice, within and beyond music
  • gain a basic understanding of the emerging humanistic scholarship on AI (e.g., critical AI studies)
  • critically assess the impact of AI on the creative process, and articulate their own visions for the future of (both human or machine) creativity
Attendance and Participation 15%
Short Assignment(s) 30%
Creative Group Project 25%
Individual Research Project 30%

  • The Status Quo: Latest Developments in “Creative AI”
  • Musical Machines: A Historical Perspective
  • Questioning AI: When Music Meets Critical AI Studies
  • The Winning Tune: Music Contests in the AI era
  • Whither the Artist?: Skill, Deskilling, and theFuture of Creative Work
  • AI and the “Democratization” of Music
    Readings and listening/viewing materials for the course will be made available on Moodle or on reserve in the Main Library.