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MICHAEL SCOTT ASATO
CUTHBERT: Hello, everybody.

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I'm excited to be
presenting a video

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by renowned professor
and artist George Lewis

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on computers and improvisation.

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I just want to give
a quick introduction

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to how much his work
had an impact on me.

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I remember hearing
about various projects

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on teaching computers
to do things

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like automatically accompany a
jazz improviser so that it would

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do exactly what he
or she wanted and put

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the right chords
at the right place

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and then hearing a comment
from George Lewis on how that's

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exactly wrong in
the spirit of jazz

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in the African-American
tradition,

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that when we have improvisers,
and they work in a group,

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the other people aren't
pure accompanists.

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They're collaborators.

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And one of the things that
a collaborator should do

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is respond to you.

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And one of the responses is,
well, if you get into a rut

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and you keep doing
the same things,

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it shouldn't be letting
you stay in that rut.

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If you keep playing the
same chord progressions,

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well, a good jazz group will
start playing different chords

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for you or mix up the rhythm to
try to make you have to think

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and stay in the spirit.

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And there were comments
about with the early history

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of jazz coming out of
a tradition of people

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who had been through the
injustice of enslavement,

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that why would we want a
computer system that replicates

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jazz to be the slave or
servant of a master performer,

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so that there's an
ethical dilemma in--

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ethical component of how we
teach computers to improvise.

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And that's why I think this
video is very important for you

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to see.

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