

9 Oct 2025 · 43m · 19 chapters

Part two of “The Art of Creation with The Edge” focuses on economics and entrepreneurship through the lens of creativity—risk-taking, “creative destruction” (Schumpeter), startup culture, global scaling, and how AI may affect music and innovation.
The Edge (David Evans), guitarist/vocalist of U2; Bono and Larry Mullen Jr. are discussed as collaborators (not present as guests). No other named guest appears in the transcript.
Innovation requires risk and failure (“fail better”); preserving what already works is a strategy that leads nowhere. Irish startup culture can be overly failure-averse and savings-focused, while the US has faster-moving, deep-pocket capital. AI-generated creativity tends toward the familiar/average, so truly novel work may become more valuable.
U2’s pivots—moving from US/“Joshua Tree” peak to Berlin-era “Unforgettable Fire” (Brian Eno, Brian Eno’s “Birdlist” story) and “Achtung Baby” (the Fly persona, deconstructing the band). Song example: “Bad” becoming a “monster” after live play and Live Aid. AI music example: models “hoovering up” catalogs and producing mostly terrible, increasingly cliche outputs.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes.
Explore the connection between creativity and economic development.
“This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents.”
Explore the connection between creativity and economic development.
“Welcome back to part two of this fascinating one-off conversation, Edge of U2.”
Explore the connection between creativity and economic development.
“That was just pulled out of the nowhere.”
Discuss how curiosity drives creativity and innovation in entrepreneurs.
Learn about the importance of finding a unique sound in music and business.
“So that's what a young entrepreneur normally starts out with, some sense of, wouldn't it be amazing?”
Understand the role of experimentation and problem-solving in creativity.
“has to be ours we had no idea really what that would be but we just knew it wasn't going to be sounding like anything that had come before.”
Discover how artists know when they've created something special.
“It's like, this is, and it's been in the set probably longer than any other song, maybe bar pride on that album.”
Discuss the process and experience of re-recording iconic U2 songs.
“And in fact, the drama of Vano getting to the crowd was kind of the highlight.”
Explore the collaborative and experimental process behind music creation.
“And I did a lot of the initial work on my own, but then with the others, we would sit down and I'd play them some stuff.”
Understand the significance of geographical and sonic shifts in creative work.
“but within that also the need to move into something else.”
Learn about U2's transition into a new musical direction with 'Achtung Baby'.
“Everyone's like, there's a sort of wink and a nudge and it's very stylized.”
Explore the relationship between creative risk-taking and economic concepts.
“And Bono and I also did a soundtrack for A Clockwork Orange, just leading up to starting work on Actual Baby.”
Discuss the importance of embracing failure as a part of the creative process.
“You're on the stage of public risk all the time and nothing is guaranteed.”
Analyze the differences in attitudes towards capital investment between cultures.
“I mean, you could forgive yourself for failure, but everybody else around you.”
Learn about the differences in attitudes toward capital and entrepreneurship between Europe and America, particularly in Ireland.
“Whereas in Europe, there is what I would call an almost instinctive obsession with savings.”
Explore how technology has transformed the music industry and its implications for artists today.
“Because as I said at the start, the history of human progress is the history of what I've described as a clever ape, which is what we are.”
Discuss the potential threats and opportunities that AI poses to creative expression and the music industry.
“We started talking about the creative brain.”
The hosts express gratitude and wrap up the conversation with The Edge.
“And we're playing out with Lucy and Levi.”
The Edge performs a song, showcasing his musical creativity.
“I stay in the loop only when it matters.”

Get the gist, explore an idea or ask about something said.
On The David McWilliams Podcast, what are the key points of this episode?
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.
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0:44David McWilliams: To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. This podcast is powered by Acast. How are you doing there? Welcome back to part two of this fascinating one-off conversation, Edge of U2. Not just about music. In fact, music has not played a dramatically prominent role in this discussion. We're talking about economics. We're talking about startup. We're talking about changing the way in which our country receives, encourages, develops talented entrepreneurs, and we're talking about this under the umbrella of a fascinating global movement, I think you can say, called Endeavor, which is part mentoring, part advice, part network, also part journey planning for entrepreneurs who have achieved a certain amount thus far, but want to go global, want to go big and really at the end of the day want to make a difference, not just in business, but in their own lives in the lives of their employees, shareholders, consumers, and ultimately their country.
1:59So, Edge, we're going to talk about the creative mind.
2:04David McWilliams: Did you like that intro? That was a great intro. That was just pulled out of the nowhere. But again, as I've said to listeners, we've known each other a long time. And when we talk, it's always about issues of the day, politics, economics, et cetera. and possibly at the end we'd like to talk about creativity yeah because that's what we're talking about here is the creative mind right i've always told the story john's a board of it now some listeners are probably you could tell the story yeah yeah about what always intrigued me many things intrigued me about james joyce possibly the most creative mind to come out of this country certainly up there but what always intrigued me was that james joyce before he became a published novelist was in 1909 the first man who set up a cinema in this country so it was like the portrait of the artist as a young entrepreneur set up a cinema called the volta cinema in mary street now what has always intrigued me about that story was that the mind that wrote ulysses basically the mind that tore up the novel and said i'm going to create something completely new here in literature was also the same mind that says i want to be commercially adventurous and creative and it's always struck me that the commercially creative mind is what we're talking about in endeavor and the artistically creative mind which is what we're talking about yourself and you two are very similar types of personalities yeah i would say kind of identical really but let's explore that yeah well there's really i don't think there's a difference whether you're a hippie in west coast uh usa in the 1970s and you you invent you know the internet or um you know microsoft you're bill gates you're paul allen you come up with this software system or if you're a rock and roll band you know it's it's the same instinct it's to imagine something that doesn't exist and to try and make it real because you have that vision and that instinct to innovate crucial to both and it's something that's so important as we face kind of global challenges particularly not just economic challenges but like climate change challenges that's what's going to help that's what that's how we'll get out of this these problems is through innovation and creativity so i would i would say that's what we got to foster as much as we possibly can in our kids but you know in our in our business playing it safe is not going to help we've got to think outside the box can you imagine i want to go back all the way to the young edge the young dave evans sitting malahide was it as a kid and can you remember because i'm always intrigued about this and you mentioned ken robinson earlier on that when you see eight nine year old children they're all creative yeah they're all mad they've all got these notions yeah we know with the young dave evans what's you know what bit of him is still in you you know weirdly i don't think i've changed that much it's just i'm applying the same kind of curiosity and creative instinct in in a different way so when we were kids we would get fascinated by animation we'd want to try and animate films we'd get fascinated by explosives so we'd want to blow things up try see what that's like you know um we just wanted to experiment and try things and and and see where it got us and then you know same as a guitar player i'm like well i love this sounds great but what else can I do with it and finding different ways to use outboard effects to change the tone of the guitar and within U2 the technology that we've used over the years from Zoo TV particularly onwards culminating recently in the sphere in Vegas I mean it's that curiosity and that idea of maybe we can bring TV sets on the stage maybe we can that has always been a large part of my kind of interest in being in U2 and the same is true for the others.
6:33So that's what a young entrepreneur normally starts out with, some sense of, wouldn't it be amazing? Wouldn't it be amazing if this was possible? Yeah, if we could do this. If we could do that.
6:46David McWilliams: I want to ask you about the U2. So, for example, many people who heard U2 at the very start identified Edge's sound. the sound you made in the guitar so you think about all the post-punk bands that come out you as well as the other three but you created a sound that was a signature sound in the same way as people creating products have to find something slightly different yeah that's the How aware were you of that when you were, you know, 19 years old, 20 years old? We were very aware. But we were mostly aware of what we did not want to sound like, rather than what we did want to sound like. Okay.
7:34And who's that? Who didn't you want to sound like? We did not want to sound like a bunch of white kids playing the blues. Right. Okay, that's interesting. Because that was kind of played out. you know that kind of rock music to our ears was played out so punk rock happened and that was like a completely fresh take on on guitar music and we're like okay whatever we do it has to be us has to be ours we had no idea really what that would be but we just knew it wasn't going to be sounding like anything that had come before. So then you're into the blank canvas, the explorations, the experiments, trial and error, the failures.
8:24Problem solving. Yeah, problem solving to try and get to something unique and different. And our ears always told us, like, that's it. You discover it in the process and you recognize it when it arrives. That's, I suppose, the thing you've got to have is the ability to recognize when you've hit on something.
8:44David McWilliams: Yeah. Yeah. And how do you know that? Because again, what I'm doing is I'm thinking of the entrepreneur listening to us. I'm also thinking of young musicians listening to us, our older musicians thinking, how do you find, okay, we've hit on something that's kind of golden here. That's a harder one to explain because that's very instinctive. And often you wouldn't even be able to articulate why it is unique and special. But in the way that music hits us, it's beyond intellect. It is a kind of primal thing, music. And in that sense, it kind of goes beyond verbal explanation or intellectual explanation.
9:31and when you hit on something that's potent powerful and fresh and new you do instinctively know it and it's it's a funny thing in you too you know we often disagree on music but we never disagree when something's great we only disagree when something's not quite there and we we have debates about what's wrong with it or which version of it is better than the other version the debates are always about the songs that aren't great yeah yeah that's interesting because there
10:03David McWilliams: was a great come to you straight away when a great thing arrives everyone goes it's obvious yeah yeah i i in the back catalog because again many many you two so was there a song that really surprised you that you thought you know what that's that'll just about make it into the album because we're running out of time and we've and suddenly it's the song that actually the world responds to and you think to yourself wow what do we learn here it rarely happens but it has happened and the one that springs to mind is bad ah now the song bad is kind of midway through side two of unforgettable fire you know and at the time we we thought it was that's cool that's cool it was really only we started playing it live did it it sort of worked best and we realized oh my God, this is a monster song.
10:52It's not just a good song. It's like, this is, and it's been in the set probably longer than any other song, maybe bar pride on that album. But we didn't, at the time, although we loved it, we didn't get how big it would be as a song. Well, Live Aid really kicked that one off, didn't it? That was incredible response to that. You had the biggest audience as well. Yeah, and we were actually due to play Pride afterwards, but we ran out of time. Oh, okay. And famously, Bono, you know, he often would go into the audience during bad. In this instance, because of the journey involved, it took him so long to get down.
11:37And we're literally on stage. I remember it so well, Adam and Larry and myself were like, will he ever get back on stage? So we left stage feeling a little, you know, let down that we hadn't been able to finish out the set that we'd planned. But it didn't matter. I mean, that performance in Live Aid was a kind of seminal moment for us. And in fact, the drama of Vano getting to the crowd was kind of the highlight. But we couldn't see that. We had no idea what was the TV coverage. so we thought oh my god it's like we're we look like plunkers up here playing the same riff again I remember that day so well we were over in Murphy's can I just ask you a quick question just while we're on this and I know slightly going off tack but songs of surrender where you re-record songs what was that like you know because you're revisiting these songs that were when you recorded them first were perfect.
12:40They were, you know, you came to it and you had that, you know, they were great, as you were saying a few moments ago, but then you're revisiting them. So from a creative perspective, were you kind of trying to do something with the songs that you wanted to do all the time? It was like another version of that? Or how did you approach that? Well, I think the idea of a re-recording of those songs in a kind of stripped-down acoustic form was the first thing. Once we decided we wanted to try and do that, then it was a process of, well, okay, we've got to make this worthwhile. You know, if we're going to do an acoustic version, you don't want to just do it rote, like some kind of facsimile of the original.
13:30So every song we said, well, okay, the value has to be in some new interpretation, a new idea to make it worth our while and to make it worth the listener's while. So it became this beautiful kind of journey through the material looking for little other aspects of the songs to explore and bring out. Sometimes, you know, new lyrics, like Sunday Bloody Sunday, new lyrics, new arrangements, new chords in some cases. So it was fun, actually. And I did a lot of the initial work on my own, but then with the others, we would sit down and I'd play them some stuff. They'd be like, well, that doesn't really work, but we'll try that one again.
14:19So it was a playful, very quick. We didn't spend a lot of time. It was a month or so. just experimenting and trying them and then the proof was always like when when bono sang like does this happen or not and some we we had to scrap and start again but a lot of them really came together and um yeah that that was the that was the moment when he would saying you'd know instantly okay yeah this is going this is working yeah it was an interesting just a really curious way of kind of, you know, reinventing. Yeah. And revisiting it. I love the album, by the way. I like it too. I haven't listened to it for a while.
15:02But yeah, some of them, I, you know, discovered some things.
15:06David McWilliams: I'm like, oh, I wish I'd done that on the original. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you must do that all the time. You must do that all the time.
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16:36David McWilliams: So tell me, if we look at the progression again, because we're looking at adapting, changing, taking risks, leaving some baggage behind moving on one of the big pivots you two fans would have said was the acting baby pivot almost geographically as well as sonically away from the united states into the darker place that was berlin after the fall of the wall and the music changed completely Yeah. It was a very creative period for us, but it was born from a decision that we were turning a page creatively in the, that our kind of Joshua tree and into Rattle and Hum phase had brought us to a big peak in terms of international kind of recognition and success.
17:30but within that also the need to move into something else. And, you know, our record company, we're kind of used to this at this point because we'd had some moderate success with the album War. Steve Lely White produced, you know, we had New Year's Day, Sunday Bloody Sunday, like some big songs. And we told the record company, the next album we're going to work with Brian Eno and Brian at that point ambient music
18:05David McWilliams: which isn't really, it's not really number one stuff. There's a story and I'm not sure if it's true but it doesn't really matter you know some great stories don't have to be true but it tells them the truth so Brian might deny this but this is the story that went round at the time that Brian had been into Island Records literally a few weeks or a month or two before we told them we were working with him with his new art project which was called bird list and it was a it was like a 15 minute track with some ambient music and and brian going seagull robin oyster catcher whatever that was right now cut to two weeks later and you two come in and say, yeah, we're not, we're not going to do the next one with Lily White.
18:57We're going to work with Brian A. They almost lost their minds with apprehension and concern. Anyway, that album, Unforgettable Fire, was for sure a kind of step up for us. And working with Brian was such a privilege. And with Danny Lanois, it really kind of brought us to a whole new level, creatively and artistically and their help was was crucial in that so we'd done that once before when we got to the end of the Joshua Tree was like okay this is a proper like change of direction and we don't know where we're going but we're we're going to do something quite different and one of the breakthroughs was understanding that and this was an Eno quote I think you know oh yeah, I'm used to, I'm used to like the New York scene where everyone's like, you know, there's a sort of layer of irony to everything.
19:54Everyone's like, there's a sort of wink and a nudge and it's very stylized. He says, you guys, it's just full on earnest, like hearts on sleeves. It's soulful. It's like gospel music, what you're doing. It's so different. And we were like, that's true. And then we got to the end of this period and we realized, wow, we've kind of done the earnest thing to the point where it's kind of played out. We have to now find some other light and shade in the way we approach our ideas. So Bono found these fly sunglasses and he was like, you know, we're all obviously big Bowie fans. I was like, okay, maybe it's like time to really go into a more theatrical mode.
20:44Something we'd experimented early on with, like on our live shows in the Gondagles, we'd always had little touches of this. And with Gavin, you know, the version of the film, it was very theatrical. So it was there, but we hadn't really gone into that side of our work for a while. So that was the beginning. Okay, there's this persona, the fly, and we're going to allow him to be the kind of the point of view that these songs are written from in certain cases. So on Actung Baby, you've got the Fly song and, you know, you've got Mysterious Ways. You've got a lot of songs which do not sound like anything like U2 from previous records.
21:31And we really set out to deconstruct the band in a way, As I think Larry said, you know, we were busy chopping down the Joshua tree on that record. And that was, so it was really a conscious decision. But again, another blank canvas. Like, we don't know where we're going, but we just know we're not going there anymore. We're going somewhere different. And Bono and I also did a soundtrack for A Clockwork Orange, just leading up to starting work on Actual Baby. So we were deeply into sampling and experimental use of sounds. I was listening a lot to industrial music. And, you know, some of the underground stuff that was coming out at the time was really fascinating and a completely different take on, you know, what a band should sound like.
22:25So, again, we weren't, we didn't want to copy any of that work, but we did allow it to percolate through our approach to sound and song structure. So yeah, it was just, again, experimentation. That was it. But this is where I come back to this idea of the economics of Schumpeter,
22:45David McWilliams: the gales of creative destruction. You have to destroy something to create something. This was Schumpeter was all about. And his idea was you can't preserve in the economy. so the politicians urge in the economy is to preserve it's like we are who we are we have a big let's say semi-state company it does kind of more or less what's on the tin let's keep going let's preserve that but the shumtering idea is no let the market decide let people decide let the consumer decide what they want and give them something and see what they want but you're constantly pushing boundaries and that's what the the creative economy your palo altas of this world for example are constantly in what i would call an act on baby mood they're changing all the time but they have because they're not sitting on their laurels they're introducing new products some of which work which don't work which comes back to this idea that the creative artist and the creative commercial mind are constantly in what I would call the theater of jeopardy.
23:53You're on the stage of public risk all the time and nothing is guaranteed.
24:00David McWilliams: True. And so when you two make those moves, you're going to get as many fans pissed off saying, I can't believe I wanted five Joshua trees. I didn't want this actung baby. but you're creating a whole new within every product you create new consumers and is there a lesson there for your endeavor entrepreneurs yeah not to be scared of taking risks to realize that not to take risks is its own strategy which ultimately will lead you nowhere and have confidence i suppose to put yourself out of your comfort zone yeah to kind of also believe in your own process i mean that's not a call to be reckless that's that's really called to be super aware and awake to opportunity and not just be complacent about what you've got going you know because if you're awake to opportunity and you're taking risks then you're going to open up new avenues and find new new exciting things to explore but if you don't take any risks i think you're just going to be left in the dust there's a vulnerability to that though as well you know when you as you were saying before when you you come up with an idea and you all instinctively know this is a good idea but then you present it to the world and you're not sure if the world is going to agree or not.
25:33But that's the vulnerable bit and the brave bit as well. Yeah, of course. And we have got it wrong in the past at times as, you know, as any risk-taking concern does. You know, you fall on your face. But it's like that Sam Beckett quote, you know, when asked what's any advice, what is it? Fail again, keep failing, fail better. Yeah, the fail better is,
26:00David McWilliams: And that's it. Yeah. And that's what keeps life going. Right. And not be afraid to fail. And that's one of the things in the Irish startup entrepreneur culture is a little bit of, oh, I better not fail. So what tends to happen is you get a company that's kind of just about surviving. And rather than them going, ah, well, that didn't work. Pull the plug on that. Now, what's next? They kind of take a very long time to fail. Yeah. And like, it's no big deal. Particularly in America, they like, people will invest more in a sort of entrepreneur who's had a couple of failures and is like going for a second, third or her second or third company than somebody who's fresh out of college who seems to be, you know, going for it.
26:50Because they know failure is where you learn. Yeah. You don't learn from success. Success is sort of just, you take for granted. But when you fail, that's a lesson you'll learn. Is it because we're not very forgiving as a society? We don't forgive failure. I mean, you could forgive yourself for failure, but everybody else around you. I think it might be a little bit of that. And I think in America, things move fast. There's always something new happening. It's sort of forgotten very quickly. Yeah, yeah.
27:25David McWilliams: Yeah, Irish people have long memories. Yeah. Very long memories. But let's actually explore this idea a little bit, because what the Americans have also, not just networks, they have a deep pocket culture where there is the finance in the United States. It's like a tap that's almost always on. Whereas in Europe, not just in Ireland, in Europe, it's a tap that has to be jammed open. Right. Do you think part of our hopeful potential success will also be a different attitude to the power of capital? And that's what I mean. So capital unlocks amazing things. Whereas in Europe, there is what I would call an almost instinctive obsession with savings.
28:16David McWilliams: So people save a lot. They don't invest. They don't risk capital. They wait for the state to do it or somebody else to do it. Whereas the Americans understand the power of capital. Yeah. Now, you know, you've been successful at the top of your game for years. You've seen people, you've talked to all sorts of people, but you've also talked to money men, like the people who invest. Do you think that our attitude to money and the power of money has to change a bit? I think it does. but I also think it's born of the fact that we're a small market. And America, if you're a successful business person in America, you have access to an absolutely enormous market.
29:01So your success there can be like 100x what a successful company that stays in Ireland could achieve. So I think that has been a bit of an impediment to Irish entrepreneurs. they know as successful as they can ever be in Ireland, it's never actually enough. They have to go to Europe, to the UK, or most likely to America. And that's where they, if they do have a success, that's where they'll ultimately really see the results. So what's good is Ireland, because of its history, it never had the industrial revolution. So we're kind of much more agile as an economy than a lot of European countries.
29:50And we've sort of been able to get very successful in med tech and technology. So I think the time is right now for the Irish entrepreneur to really be able to space themselves here, but be a global company. And that's, I find now, I'm talking to a lot of people from finance and they're coming to Ireland to look for investments. There's a different mentality now about this country out there. And I think it's a very good moment for the culture of entrepreneurship here.
30:27David McWilliams: So let's talk about technology. Because as I said at the start, the history of human progress is the history of what I've described as a clever ape, which is what we are. And our ability to use technology to change the world. in music technology is having a dramatic yeah it's got to get much more dramatic with ai so explain exactly yeah let's let's look forward as we conclude let's look forward okay well um obviously rock and roll is is a music that couldn't really have happened without electricity really you know it's you know about amplifiers and guitars and you know pas whatever yeah so and then you got like the fuzz box and the wow-wow pedal and all these kind of gadgets that really allow guitars to have a color and a personality.
31:20And obviously the vinyl records, crucial CDs, digital revolutionized thing. And then we get to downloads and streaming. And, you know, this is really, I think, been a great thing for music fans to be able to access any music from any era instantly. I mean, that was when we were kids. if you heard somebody you know had a jimmy hendrix record you kind of walk across town yeah yeah jimmy hendrix or or whatever it was and as you said before i was waiting for the thursday night top of the pops right yeah that was our exposure to new music yeah so now it's it's a sort of a in some ways you might argue it's become a little bit more of a commodity it's almost like you know you you want music you turn on the tap and there it is hasn't got quite the rarefied quality it used to have so unfortunately because of this more and more music is being listened to um but the the value for the artists has just plummeted like it was the heyday was probably the cd era that's when artists were really getting well paid for their work because they were cheap enough to produce the record labels at the time said oh no these are way more expensive than vinyl records so we have to have to charge you a bit more for the manufacture in fact they were the dirge yeah yeah yeah so it's a little bit of a yeah for the artist yeah but now subsequently the streaming is driving down the revenue stream for artists and it's really a worry because it's almost impossible now to make ends meet if you're if you're just starting out yeah and then touring which is actually still profitable if you're if you're playing in front of a decent sized crowd you know it doesn't happen overnight it's very rare most bands have to go through years of small crowds clubs theaters whatever arenas once you get to the arenas like the you know the point depot whatever that's where you can start to actually make ends meet and do well but that takes years so that's the that kind of valley of death between, you know, you're starting out and then you've just got to hope that you make it through somehow financially to the point where you're selling enough concert tickets to make it.
33:43That's tough. And I'm really concerned we're just going to see things like so difficult that artists, a lot of people just not even go into music. And then the ultimate specter, unfortunately, is AI. velvet sundown and the like yeah i mean this i've got mixed feelings about it like on one hand i think if they work at it right it could be a means for artists to collaborate with each other in a way that they couldn't otherwise where you know if you imagine that the ai knows my work intimately knows every kind of idea i would ever come up with on guitar so i can sort of lend my ip if you want to another artist for a song that they want to record or write so but i maybe i might get something out of that i could see that model working like do you mean that you'd allow AI to come up with a an edge like riff well if it was something I could approve of think about this like now unfortunately Marilyn Monroe is not with us but say her estate is approached and they want Marilyn Monroe in a movie they might say okay if we like the script we think that she's good in this AI version I think that's okay that's valid yeah yeah if there's approval involved because it's ultimately her likeness, her personality, her voice, everything that she was as an actor being reapplied in a new context, even though it's AI generated, it's based on her.
35:29Yes. So I can see that happening in other creative forms. But the problem is that's not what's happening today in AI generated music. What's happening is the AI models are like the language models that going into the catalog of music and they're hoovering up all the ideas willy-nilly like everything is going into the the ai so when you go to the ai composing software and you say i want a country song with this lyric it'll spit out a song in like three minutes now the good news is most of them are terrible yes that is the good news but they will get better but they will absolutely experimented a bit and was reassured reassured no this is terrible terrible and then it came up with something oh that's a riff of yours for example no well actually to their credit they do not allow direct like if you went on and said i want a youtube it won't do it you can't name an artist but you sort of sneak up on it a little bit yeah it happens in podcasting as well where you can stick in to ai and say give me a 30 minute podcast on the economics of the music industry right and it will spit it out and there'll be two two people just giving them the ammunition here no but if you begin to wonder like where where do you call the line this is so this is where i want
37:00David McWilliams: want to conclude here, you know, is that every generation is terrified of innovation. That's the general human condition is to say that innovation is going to rob us of something. We don't know what's coming forward. We don't know what's coming in the future. All the way back to the Luddites, people have always said, you know, I prefer the horse. I don't like this car, you know, or I don't want these trains or airplanes or whatever. And in some way we've managed always to possibly get not the best out of it, but something positive out of lots of technological leap forwards. With AI, there is this fear that it's going into a completely different world because it's scraping our barrel of our information.
37:46David McWilliams: And maybe to conclude, one of the fascinating things about rock and roll was that it was, or any fashion or any design or anything that animates people is that it's new. comes from somewhere. We started talking about the creative brain. It comes from the creative brain. One of the problems with AI is it's because it's scraping what went before. It's actually the algorithm. We're onto the issue of the algorithm. The algorithm doesn't give you the new. It gives you the familiar. Yeah. And what is familiar means that what has been downloaded on your Spotify, for example, is what you're familiar with.
38:28David McWilliams: the familiar always drowns the new because the new by definition can't be familiar yeah because it's new and are we possibly going to this world where the creative spark that drove you and bono and larry years ago and adam it's much more difficult for the new to get hurt and without the new there's no new art right i i think that there's there's two things that will likely happen And one is that the new, the truly innovative and will become more valuable, weirdly, because you're right. AI isn't going to surprise you with something that you've never heard before. It's looking for the average. It's looking for the conventional.
39:12And most of the pieces of music that I've created with AI are really awful. They're awfully.
39:20David McWilliams: That's very reassuring for us and all the listeners. Yeah, they're really so cliched, banal, like hokey, just rubbish. And, you know, you can imagine how, and I've noticed myself doing this, where I'm now, my eye tells me when I'm looking at something that's being created by AI, visually. Yeah. And my ear will soon tune in and know if something's being AI'd. And once something becomes cheap and ubiquitous, inevitably it loses value. So we're going to end up, I think, getting bored with it quite quickly. And it's still going to be pure creative imagination that will have the true value. Artists, people doing their work will have real value and we'll just get bored with the AI stuff.
40:18David McWilliams: Entrepreneur is exactly the same. Exactly the same. The human imagination is an incredible thing. And, you know, I'm not scared about artificial general intelligence taking over the world and, you know, killing humans because we're inconvenient and in the way. I just don't think that's possible. But I do think it will be very disruptive in certain areas. But I don't think in creativity, because I don't think it can be creative. on that note edge such a great conversation in terms of listeners who have great ideas who feel their companies are close to where they should be where can they find endeavor well endeavor can be found online and if you're an entrepreneur that's got a business going that you really think this could go big, definitely get in touch.
41:13As I say, the bar is pretty high, but we're always looking for ambitious entrepreneurs. And that's, that goes for North and South. I mean, also we run events occasionally and they're very inspiring because you, we had one of the international selection panels in Dublin last year, and we had 200 people, you know, brilliant entrepreneurs and business people from all over the world come to Ireland. And so that's part of it as well. So look out for Endeavour events as well.
41:47David McWilliams: Brilliant. It was a fascinating conversation. You know, listen, we're going to play you out with a track from Edge's son and my daughter Lucy, which they recorded a couple of years ago. The Fusion of Creative Art of the Second Generation. This is great. It's been wonderful. Listen, great to have you. Lovely to talk to you guys. Thank you so much. Thanks, Edge. And we're playing out with Lucy and Levi.
42:36As of late, I've been acting like an incel But now we out and it's all show Swig the bottle, talk some more Getting closer of elbow I hope I know where this will go Oh, parasite locked our eyes I melt with a drink, got it on the ice We feeling in tune, so I guess it's right We don't even need to try I'ma fall for it again I don't mind not if but when It's like we've met a thousand times Oh I know it's been a while and I don't taste back Thought you knew me by now I'm just like that I heard you, you heard me But I thought that we were into that baby On and on and on Always the same thing
43:36Parasite locked our eyes I melt with a drink, got it on the ice We're feeling in tune, so I guess it's right We don't even need to try I'ma fall for it again I don't mind, not if, but when It's like we've met a thousand times Oh, oh, oh, oh
44:32Thank you.
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