Triumph of the Cyborg Composer

An anonymous reader writes "UC Santa Cruz emeritus professor David Cope's software, nicknamed Emmy, creates beautiful original music. So why are people so angry about that? From the article: 'Cope attracted praise from musicians and computer scientists, but his creation raised troubling questions: If a machine could write a Mozart sonata every bit as good as the originals, then what was so special about Mozart? And was there really any soul behind the great works, or were Beethoven and his ilk just clever mathematical manipulators of notes?'"

Comments

Re:Too much time on their hands

[Anonymous Coward]

A soul? It's a fabrication by religious nutjobs who think that humans somehow hold a special place in the universe instead of being a bunch of parasites that live on a tiny spec of a world in an endless void.

Self awareness is another matter and I don't think it's limited to biological life. Any machine that becomes self aware is a sentient, living being.