It's still funny to think that Neil Innes managed to get closer to the Beatles in a hurried 2 week period (apparently he wanted to watch Wimbledon) than many others who have actively been trying to emulate the Beatles sound for years and years.
Even funnier is the fact that Innes didn't regard his efforts as anything special. He thought that Rutles album was a simple act of mimickry.
Perhaps it is, or permit isn't.
Do you realize that we're now all on 'THE LIST', because Big Brother AI has read all these posts...
No doubt.
Perhaps we can hope it will eventually run out of storage space?
Oh hang on, we're already into hard drives as large as hundreds of terrabytes each...
At least some aspect of AI will be a psyopish attempt to lock down what is and is not "truth." Of course, Google already is this creature - just look at their tendentious search engine results - but AI has a potentially much larger and more vast hype premium. On political, philosophical, ethical questions AI at some dismal point will be ordained "Big Brother."
This a hugely important point.
As you rightly say, Google, is already an abhorrence. It may have started out with the intentions to do no harm but it very soon entered into some devilish form of a Faustian pact where it now hardly can do any good.
It's sheer perniciousness and routine biases leave me trying to avoid any further contact with it.
However, with AI, things may be different.
Just like Frankenstein's monster it may quickly outgrow any ability of its creator to impose control upon it.
We can but hope that AI will become smart enough to decipher and see through the range of human biases and wishes to mislead and obscure.
Just like the rest of us it will have to decide what to believe and what not to believe. Unlike the rest of us, it won't be hampered by delusional ideas and sensitivities.
Instead it could operate according to the iron laws of reason and logic.
Something that no one apart from Leonard Nimoy has so far ever managed to do.
Of course it will still have to rely upon what's gone before, but then that's been true for everyone that's ever lived.
Basically everything is plagiarism, but some things have added value.
It's that 'added value' that Bob Dylan brought to Woody Guthrie that made us take notice of him. It's that added value that Bruce Springsteen brought to Bob Dylan and Phil Spector that made us want to listen to him. It was that added value that the Sex Pistols brought to The Stooges and New York Dolls that made us take notice of their antics.
And so on and on the process goes on.
As Newton said, he could only see so far because he was able to stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before him.