Good Morning,
The San Francisco Symphony finally named a music director — Elim Chan — after the bruising Salonen departure left what once was one of America’s most ambitious orchestras adrift (KQED). Set it in the context of Laurence Vittes’ new report card arguing the field is changing shape, not just shrinking its budgets (Strings).
The day’s other thread is about authenticity. An AI cleared a Turing test for the first time, fooling the judges more often than the real humans did (Neuroscience News). Then it was revealed that a Commonwealth-prize-winning short story is now suspected of being AI-written (The Guardian). Also: AI-voiced pirated audiobooks are flooding YouTube faster than anyone can pull them (The New York Times). The capability isn’t the crisis, the missing chain of attribution is.
A useful counter-fact amid the gloom: adjusted for inflation, West End ticket prices have fallen below 2019 levels (WhatsOnStage). And as machines learn to pass for us, neuroscientists are wiring people up to find where beauty actually lives in the brain (Smithsonian).
See you tomorrow.
Doug
