Beyond the Talk: Salome Agbaroji and Samora Pinderhughes on the intersection of art and AI

0:07You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Artificial intelligence is many things. Bewildering, exciting, terrifying. But as this technology grows at a rapid pace, a question at the heart of it all remains. How can we make sure we're not forgetting about people? For spoken word artist Salome Agbaruji and musician and composer Samora Pinderhughes, this question is everything. Salome and Samora both performed at this year's TED conference where Salome asked, as we fall deeper and deeper into the black box, is hoping for humanity the most human thing we can do?

0:49And where Samora sang, are you going to let it go? The ego that remakes the world, that destroys the world? Salome, Samora, and I sat down together after their performances for a special conversation about the role and importance of art and human creativity, how they each view technological advancement, and why art, for art's sake and as an advocacy tool, is more important now than ever before.

1:21Well, thank you both so much for sitting down to talk with us. I actually always really enjoy the performances at TED, but we don't get to hear more fully from the performers and the artists. So just to help the audience familiarize themselves with you, how would you describe what you do as an artist? Who wants to go first? You can go. Okay. Okay. Hi, yes, I'm Salome Agbaroji. I'm a spoken word poet. I mean, a more formal title is like the seventh National Youth Poet Laureate of the U.S., but that has many syllables. And in essence, I just find a lot of joy and passion in using words to really hit the heart of an audience.

2:03I describe myself as a creative writer. But another big part of my work is social advocacy. So a lot of the issues I advocate on are like arts, arts education, literacy for all people, and just uplifting marginalized voices. And I tried to do a good job of using my poetry as a voice to push those messages forward. Samara, what about you? Yeah, I am a musician, a composer, filmmaker, multidisciplinary artist. I work across basically every artistic discipline except maybe movement, which hopefully one day we'll get to, but not right now. I also founded and run an organization called The Healing Project.

2:43We are an abolitionist organization that works on creating a world based around healing rather than punishment. So a lot of my artistic work is about deconstructing narratives around criminality, around who has the right to violence, around structural violence and the effects that that has on our society. and also on building opportunities for people who have been traumatized by the prison industrial complex, where they can find spaces to tell their stories, but also to find material and communal support from each other and to devise the worlds that we want to build that are these alternatives to these systems that we know are deeply violent.

3:22Before you brought your performances to TED, knowing it was a TED audience and that you were going to be on the TED stage, How did that inform what you decided to perform? I wanted to perform pieces that would feature my choir. I have a choir called the Healing Project Choir. They're all amazing artists in their own right, songwriters, vocalists, my community that I collaborate on this work with. So I wanted to do songs that feature their amazing voices and also pieces, hopefully, that would speak to the complexity of what it is to be a human being and to find this honest place of being able to engage in some questions, some messiness, some things that I think people are trying to weed out of the human experience but I think are very important.

4:09And to connect that with also speaking to some structural realities that I think we need to confront. Are there lines or a lyric that you really wanted to make sure that you conveyed or you sang out on stage? Sure, yeah. The ones that come to mind most immediately, there's a song that I did called Masculinity, which is, I think, important. Yeah.

5:00Cause you're a man, it's what you do And it don't matter what you've been through Yeah, you're a weapon, yeah, you're a gun Speaking to these questions about, you know, what are these patriarchal structures that are so deep that we have to really investigate both the loud and the quiet violences, which is a phrase I got from the author, Kiese Lehmann. I think the line in that that I would focus on is...

5:54And I also, there's actually a section I added in that's not a part of the original song that I said that's, are you going to let it go?

6:15I have to say that as a poet, I mean, I'm always going to be thinking about the words. There were so many lines from your part that was so potent and evocative. I think one of my favorite lines from yours was, I'm saying a lot of things I don't believe. Is that the exact line? Yeah, pretty much. But that one stuck out to me as much as all the others. And I just wanted to say that I loved the writing there. But to answer the question of what helped me decide what I'd bring to the very unique and valuable TED space. I mean, looking at the list of the other speakers, of course, there's so many brilliant and budding technologists here, people who are at the cutting edge of innovation who do work that is very different from what I do.

6:59And I knew inherently I have an audience of very, very capable ears who will go back to their labs or go back to their policy making spaces and actually have the ability to make changes in what I'd be speaking to. So in writing a poem about AI, which is its own unique process, interacting lyrically, artistically with something that we're all still trying to figure out, I wanted to really frame it from a human lens. Remind folks that as we're engaging with the very cool and scary, possibly, you know, disruptive thing that AI is coming to be in our societies, we can't forget people. I fill my empty 3AMs with spineless phone scrolls, text abbreviations, and unihuman conversations.

7:53AI chatbots answer all my aimless interrogations, like, how do I answer an email that does not find me well? Or, oh my gosh, my crush just texted me, what do I say? Or is it true what the headlines say? That the world is crumbling beneath our feet and we do nothing but crumble with it? Our glassened eyes lost in the latent space, calculating our extinction with every pulse of our carbon-based circuitry. and as we fall deeper and deeper into the black box, is hoping for humanity the most human thing we can do? And the AI says back to me, I don't know, more specifically, hmm, I'm not sure how to process your request.

8:49Please try a new prompt. We can't forget the people who create it, the people who are impacted by it. We can't forget that ultimately our goal should be to create with the objective of increasing human prosperity, not necessarily just for profit, not necessarily just to say that I'm the founder of this thing. And knowing the digital online audience that is so widespread, common people who are just trying to understand this new thing, plus the innovators who are creating the new things that we're trying to understand. I wanted to impart that message to both those audiences. I say to AI, don't feel too special.

9:27You aren't the first artificial system we humans carelessly labeled intelligent. Global capitalism was genius until it became negligent, leaving the unfortunate to suffer without the means for life. Biased science elevated one people over the last. But with differentiation came racism and caste, littering our world with non-compostable isms. I say to its texts and images, you're brilliant, but you aren't the first generation to forge something out of seemingly nothing. Haven't you seen my generation, the DIYers and binary defiers? We too extract wisdom from the earth's mouth Like a flower or a landmine Sure, drive our cars, but never our movements Never our blood and boned passions Is there a line in particular that you wanted to get across or that was your favorite?

10:30Yes, for sure. I feel like as a poet, every line hopefully delivers a punch or at least sets one up and in the writing process, you know when you've hit one, when it hits you, you're like, dang, I really ate when I wrote that. Hold on, go back, let me not delete that. And one of the lines that gave me that feeling when writing was, you can't replace the place of the people I say to the people. The displaced children without homes do not cry mechanical tears about a simulated hunger induced by virtual war. When I wrote that one, I really felt like I was able to encompass what I wanted the poem to be in essence of the juxtaposition of the human experience with the mechanical world that we are so fascinated by.

11:29But, you know, we live in the natural. We accessorize the natural with these gadgets and these things, but the human experience is a very real one that we shouldn't neglect. The viruses they suffer from are not the zeros and ones in your devices, cured by simple software reset. If only the world had such a button. We've got our heads so far up in the cloud, we forget that the ground exists. New prompt. Is this modernity? Marveling at machines that can read and write when currently 700 million adults are illiterate? New prompt. Is this innovation? Chipped by click workers in dark, dank rooms without proper compensation?

12:19The future we fear is not the sci-fi, cyborg, AI uprising that sets the world aflame. No, the true dystopia is the today we make. When humans watch the world burn, still with the power to save it. And don't. The work towards a better world is not automated. No computer could take this job of audacious hope, of unfounded optimism. We are the unprompted. In the face of the bleakest calculations, we aspire in a way no algorithm could advise. And that is what will save us from the abyss. Solely, we are our saviors. But just as every hero has their gadgets, technology can be the engine of our altruism.

13:18Every invention is just an extension of your hand. So in the same way that a hammer can both build and destroy, you tell me, how will you wield your tools? Again, I say to people, remember people. Be unprompted, but with a promise. To let my most pressing 3 a.m. question not be whether or not I'll have a world to wake up to. but how these new things can finally find us well. We'll be right back after a short break.

14:04It seems like for the past few years, the conversation at TED, the discourse, the sessions have brought up AI again and again and again, and for good reason, because these technology tools are changing humanity and changing the way we live in our societies as we know them. What do you feel, especially as artists, is the AI conversation writ large missing? What aren't we talking about and what should we be talking about more? I mean, I think a lot of people ask me specifically as a writer, how do you feel about a chat GPT? How do you feel about these AI programs that are generative specifically with text, which is what I deal with in my practice.

14:45And I've never been anti-AI. I'm, in fact, very fascinated by technology. That's why I was ecstatic to write poems about it. But I do think that there is somewhat of a disconnect of, you know, we're having these conversations about AI and art, but why? When AI has the capacity to do so many other great things, you know, people make a joke, Like, why is AI painting and not doing my taxes? Like, what is the engine that's forcing, you know, maybe developers or, you know, people who are marketing these products towards the very unique human things that we engage in? So I think it's valuable to understand what AI can do.

15:27But I'd hope that we can anchor them more in the what is the productive thing for humanity? What is both good and right towards the path of innovation and newness, you know, not just creating for the mere sake of doing so in a reckless way? Yeah. Or for profit. Yeah. That's a big part. Which is one of the drivers. The biggest. That's pretty much what I was going to say. I mean, I am anti-AI, so I'm probably like one of the few people here that's like not into it. I think one of the reasons for me is that there's been a history in, you know, not just technological movements, but like in a lot of industries in general where people will sublimate the motives around profit in favor of like how they see it benefiting the world.

16:17And it's not to say that they don't necessarily believe in those things as well, but often the primary motive is profit. And certainly even if the primary motive for the inventor is not profit, many of the ways in which it becomes applied are profit related. And certainly we're going to see that and we're already seeing that in the space of music. There are a lot of more life and death examples than music, but even music, you know, we're already suffering from a context in which the creators of music already do not benefit from their own work. And now we are being actively replaced and there's no safeguards around that.

16:51While we're on this topic, why have the Spotify playlist gotten so bad? Like not playlists, but like the Spotify backend or the technology. Yeah, I can't speak to that as an independent artist because like I have really no relationship with it. But this is what I will say. I think part of it is that there's been a long lead up in the past set of years where audiences have been trained to basically not really curate. It's deeper than that. They don't really understand the value of things that don't sound like what AI can make. And so it's very easy to transition an audience over into AI made work because they actually have started to shift the ways that they engage with music.

17:35So if you're using music as a background thing, you're not really going to notice the difference, you know, versus music being an active participatory process in your life that has emotional value in different ways. And that process has happened over time to where now it's become very easy for musicians to be replaced. Just wanted to jump in on that. I think art is really special when it is active and collaborative, especially for performance artists like ourselves. I think that's one of the things that we luck out on a bit because AI can generate music. There hasn't yet been a believable way for AI to perform music.

18:16We're not at that technology yet to create an Android that looks human and dances well enough or plays the piano well enough to perform it live. And that's one of the very special things about like performance poetry specifically. I've seen AI write horrible poems and I've seen AI a few months later write decent poems. And I can only assume as time progresses that AI will be able to write beautiful pieces of lyric that similarly evoke, you know, emotion and sincerity from an audience. Okay, whatever. but the performance element the human engagement element of it that isn't just background noise is the thing that ai hasn't touched yet and i think that's a special thing there's also no context in which that set of technologies could have the relationship and the the memories that i have with my choir the things that we've moved through that inform what's inside of the music the things that you can't name and i think that when you cease to place value on that stuff that is unnameable and in that space, which I think is what art is supposed to be about, which is it does things to you that you can't really understand why it's happening, like how it's moving you.

19:26And that's the stuff that I think people don't want to deal with. Sometimes I kind of feel a little bit crazy in terms of why are we spending so much money to try out all these other things when we could just pay artists, when we could just feed people, when we could just like solve the issues we have in the here and now, you know? And that's the part that I really don't understand personally. Is it that it's just too expensive to reach audiences in real life, like with this live experience at scale? I don't think it's too expensive. I just think it's harder to exploit people. It's harder to make more money on the top end.

20:04But I don't think it's too expensive to bring it to the audience. I just don't think that maybe people that are owning things in a certain way will make as much money as they might make if they were able to build other models where they didn't have to operate in that way. There's less overhead, certainly. I think it requires different models, but those models are certainly there and have been there before. I would say definitely not too expensive. I tell people all the time poetry is one of the funnest and best art forms because it costs zero money. Poetry is the one where I can have zero budget and it's super accessible.

20:39So in like spoken word culture, people make it their practice to gather. And that's what art is in essence. You know, sometimes technologies can complicate that. So any narrative that kind of convolutes that, I definitely agree that there must be another motive there. There's a question that came up on stage, this notion of like turning everything off and then turning it back on. When it comes to society, like everything feels so broken and stuff isn't working and we're stuck. Like, what if we just turned it off and turned it back on? Do you feel like we need a reset in society? And what role might artists have to play to help us through and navigate through what feels like a lot of intractable problems right now?

21:24I don't know if I can think of it as a reset. Mostly just because the language of that I don't know how to engage with on a practical level. I think the language I would use, which is language that I carry around with me from this writer, A'shaun Crowley, who I love, he uses the term otherwise possibilities. That's a framework that guides me a lot. And I certainly think that I think we need a society that is ready and willing to engage in and build otherwise possibilities that are centered around the structural, emotional and material health of people in their daily lives. So that's kind of how I think about it.

22:10And the reason I really like that framework is that I also think that people do have the solutions that we are seeking and are actually voicing those and practicing those things. It's just very often that those are not the loudest things or the things that are the most funded. I mean, oftentimes, actually, they're the things that are attacked the most, you know, and that are threatened the most. certainly when I think about alternatives to the carceral system like those alternatives are already there and people say over and over again they're not there but they are there the reality is not that we don't know what they are it's that we don't want to practice or experiment or engage or fund those spaces where we would no longer need the prison you know what I mean and we also don't want to confront the parts of ourselves that we would need to confront to deal with what the prison does for us psychologically, how it allows us to actually feel that this set of material realities allows us to demarcate whether or not we could be the type of person that would do something or not do something when often people have done many things that they just haven't been incarcerated for, you know, that are very bad.

23:19So that's around power. White-collar crime. You know what I mean? So for me, that's why I really engage in this idea of otherwise possibilities. Indigenous Religionist practices and structures have a lot to teach us about this. And I think oftentimes also that if and when we engage with those practices, it feels like people are not listening or wanting to really learn from those practices. They kind of just want to provide lip service to them so that we can say we did it. Again, those ways of operating are already there. If we were to move towards that space, and I guess that is where the reset comes in.

23:54And it certainly would be a profound revolutionary altering shift. It wouldn't be a reforming process. It would be a revolutionary process. When you said the word reset, I was a bit hesitant because I'm not, again, I'm pro AI in the ways that don't compromise human creativity in that process. I think people have found interesting ways to integrate technology into process in a way that does not at all mitigate human creativity. But as I was listening to Samara's response, I remembered everything that is currently going on in the U.S. about art and museums and censorship. And we find ourselves in the beautiful Vancouver, Canada right now.

24:43But I will get on a flight in two days and go back to the U.S. in a space that, you know, seems to punish our artistic voices. So the reset, maybe not so much, but I definitely think that there needs to be a recalibration of understanding the dire, dire importance of art in our societies. Like I look back to ninth grade Salome, who didn't know much of anything that she wanted to do, just wanted to do something meaningful. A daughter of immigrants from Nigeria who only really had ourselves. And it was nonprofit art programs that allowed me to blossom and grow into this person who articulates herself and somehow makes her way onto a TED stage, you know.

25:30And poetry, and specifically poetry programs that were funded for that specific purpose, made a transformative change in my trajectory. I don't know where I would be right now if it wasn't for my art, yet I see an administration that totally neglects that. So I think that's where a reset or a recalibration comes in. acknowledging the fact that you don't just go to school to learn basic arithmetic and you go back home and that's the end of it art helps us art programs in schools art programs and communities helps form a sense of community identity a sense of self helps us articulate opinions about societal or political happenings and i think if we start adding back the ethos into art we wouldn't see as many attempts to suppress it with whether it be AI or policy.

26:26And now a short break.

26:32There's no delineation really between artists and non-artists in that like we all were created. We were all born creative, right? We all have inner artists. And so I'd love to know what your advice is for our listeners to re-engage in their own creativity and with the artists inside them. I would say, you know, being an artist is a way to take your power back in a space where you feel like you're voiceless, in a space where you may not be allowed to say something in the fear that funding from your very important project will get pulled. Art is the way that you reckon with that, Either in a private meditative space or in a very public social way that galvanizes others to join with you, to meditate on or organize against anything that's going on in your community, your society that you disapprove of.

27:26I've been able to use poetry to change policymakers' minds on homelessness policy. I've been able to use poetry to remind people that quality education is a right of all people. And I've seen art really transform in a way that gives me power back. And I really encourage people to pick up the pen and paper and write. Don't let that creative spirit in you die, even though there are so many forces against its flourishment. Yeah, I think whatever framework you can find to be as honest as possible, you should find it. Ideally, you would be able to find ways to do that in, you know, individual, private, vulnerable context where you can feel safe to engage in the complexity of what it means to be alive.

28:17And ideally, you can also find communal ways in which you can engage in that practice, because I also think that creative practices is really beautifully done in community. And that's one context of the modern world where we have, you know, given over to this idea of a solitary genius or a performer on stage, you know. So, yeah, it limits the exchange, it limits the possibility, and it also already reframes the creative practice into an element that is already, you know, engaging with the ego, engaging with comparison, all these things when it really is supposed to be a really sacred communal practice.

28:58And so I think if there are ways in which people have the opportunity to be a part of something like that, I think it is incredibly valuable. I think also just anything that will allow you to be present inside of your emotional landscape. I think that's really valuable for all of us and something that we all deserve to be able to do. And I certainly agree with your point that it is incredibly important for young people in particular to have opportunities and spaces where they can engage in those practices. and that those spaces can be made available regardless of your class, regardless of whether you can pay for it or not.

29:38We do certainly have a system right now where the ability of people to even engage in an artistic practice itself is priced out, and that's something we really have to deal with. But, yeah, I would just say, like you said, it really can be a way of living. You can find creativity inside of anything and everything you do. But for me personally, the difference, I guess, between entertainment and art is the intention and the vulnerability. And I would say even just like what you risk, what you put on the line for it. And so I would also hope and encourage people to give each other courage to like step up to what that feels like and to protect each other in that process.

30:19Because going back to your earlier question, too, I mean, just like many other people, many artists are afraid in this moment because the things that they want to say about the moment, they feel like there's a lot of consequences to saying that. So I think we have to lift each other up, and my hope is that other people will also create the context in which artists are able to stand on their courage and stand inside of what they have to say, stand inside of who we want to protect in this moment when so much is under attack. it's a great honor to be able to be an artist in this moment but I also think that we need a lot of support and I also think we have to step up to this moment and be able to really move through and with and against that fear you know so that's I guess my hope for it okay before I let y 'all go you've both performed on many stages in many different places lots of different contexts how did the TED stage compare and how did you feel about it it's very interesting poets are really really used to verbal acknowledgement or affirmation whether it be a hmm or a snap something that says you know we love this or that line hit me it struck me in the right ways or at least like we're in community exactly we're here but then with the lights dimmed and then I'm like on stage and it's like pure silence and it's also interesting because it's maybe like a 270 degree stage it gave a really fun opportunity to play with space and I had to even psych myself up to say like hey crouch if you want to or look up there you know there's a lot of possibilities so as a performer it was very fun to you know try to own that red circle yeah the red circle and then it was like the most warm beautiful like standing oh at the end I was like yes it was good I would do it again and of course you had your choir with you yeah I had some support yeah that's nice very comforting yeah you know I also give a lot of thanks to all the people behind the scenes that make it happen like snaps for them it's so it's a lot of work yeah and very grateful for the not just the excellent job that they do in making it sound and look so beautiful but also you know their kindness and just being really lovely people through the process and then in terms of just how it felt I think I was happy to go a couple days in because I was able to see some of the talks and stuff and I think that really made me understand or at least how I felt about it was that it felt like an arena for ideas and often competing ideas.

33:01I mean, ways of seeing the world and conceptions about what is happening and what's to come. And so I definitely felt the weight of that and wanted to step up to that and to, I think, hopefully make the case in a certain way for, you know, things that I feel are valuable. this conception of like humanity reimagined I'm like uh I don't know that I want to reimagine humanity I want to protect people I want people to have what they need so that they can be okay like I don't know it's again and maybe sometimes it feels simple but I felt like okay like what through the channel of music can we contribute to that space and then also just even the idea of okay this space is for me to get up and make the claim for something there's already something in that that I I wanted to try and trouble because even inside of that although I definitely feel that it's important and I understand it there's also like an idea behind it I think that you are an expert which many people you know have spent a lot of time engaging in what they are and what they've brought to bear.

34:12I don't know, there's something psychologically and energetically inside of that that I wanted to trouble. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but hopefully the music can do what I'm talking about. So that's what I was thinking about a lot. Sometimes I pray that we stop building digital worlds, bombing people, little girls. Start

34:49Well, thank you both so much for sitting down and expanding on your ideas with me. We appreciate you.

35:06a haunting in that and that we wouldn't turn away that we wouldn't turn away but what do I know I'm just a human with the song to sing with something to say with something to say there's some things that I don't want so I try not to think about.

35:35There's a lot of ugly things in my heart. I just hope to the Lord I don't slip. You feel me? There's some things that I don't want. So I try not to think about.

35:58There's a lot of ugly things in my heart I just hope to the Lord I don't I wonder what it's like to let it out That part of me that I'm so afraid It holds on me and tosses me about Doesn't seem to be something I get away from Tell me, hide your names, well-kept secrets That you never say out loud Why does the body see these demons Keep me from calling out I guess I'll just say it's a process One day at a time Every week's fun, I already go I came back every time

36:56When you ask me what's wrong You might think I don't hear you That's not the case I just might not respond I don't want to be near you Cause I'm so ashamed I just keep the TV on And just let it wash over All of these many fears And hope I wake up less weary Tomorrow morning, tomorrow morning And hope I wake up less weary Tomorrow morning, tomorrow morning Please God, hope I wake up less weary Tomorrow morning

37:26I guess I'll just say it's a process One day at a time There have been weeks when I already lost And lost it But I came back every time

37:48Don't save yourself

38:00Learn to live with yourself Learn to live with yourself

38:09Don't hurt yourself Or anybody else

38:21Thank you.

38:50This episode was produced by Lucy Little and edited by Alejandra Salazar. This episode was recorded by Rich Amies and Dave Pulmer of Field Trip, production support from Daniela Ballarezzo and Shu Han Hu. The TED Talks Daily team includes Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, and Tansika Sangmarnivang. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

39:21Thank you.