If you’ve been following the massive advances in “non-human creativity” over the past few years, you know that AI is, for one, re-inventing music. But sometimes it doesn’t really hit home until you hear that LLM pounding out tunes, in a concert hall or wherever else the quickly disappearing uncanny valley is on display.

Do you remember that term? The “uncanny valley” is what we call the perceptible, discernible gap between what AI can do, and what humans do, in all their glory, when they sit down to accomplish something. Just a few years ago, say, in 2020, AI’s powers were relatively rudimentary: nascent Dall-E could make pictures, sure, but they were anything but realistic. Image models couldn’t create text – they spat out gibberish characters that weren’t even letters.

Now look at what’s going on.

IT turns out that one of the most impressive new MIT “musicians” was made right here at MIT.

Specifically, the “jam-bot” comes from the Responsive Environments group at the MIT Media Lab, part of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, although apparently, the Media Lab is not moving into the Met Warehouse with the rest of the S-AP this month.

Anyway, Media Lab created jam-bot while working with Jordan Rudess, of the Dream Theater, also an MIT CAST Visiting Artist, along with Lancelot Blanchard and Perry Naseck, and Joseph Paradiso.

Ambassadors for the technology cite a sort of “jazz conversation” between Rudess and his silicon companion, where the HITL plays, jam-bot interprets the musical context and responds, Rudess beckons back, creating a new segment, and the interaction continues.

The Metronome of the Future

When you really watch this, you see the rhythm of such a collaboration: Rudess knows when to start his measure, and when to stop. Then he stands back, and the music continues seamlessly along. The human role becomes, in a way, strangely rhythmic, which might be familiar to those who have played guitar at an old-time music fest jam band. In other words, since the AI is creating a lot of the melodies and chromatic footwork, the human role is shrunk down to a rhythmic conducting of a call-and-response, something that’s as old as humanity. But now, it’s brand new, in a fundamental way, because there’s a non-human counterparty that can call back.

To quite a few human observers, it’s positively uncanny, and that’s the least of it.

“There’s a real concern,” says Rudess himself in a widely circulated short video. Noting that streaming services are swamped with what a youngster might call “AI slop,” Rudess pointed to some of the unanswered questions around this evolution:

“How do you differentiate?” he asked. “How do you make sure that the human artists get more noticed?”

I don’t think anyone really has an answer, which is why, if you ask a professional musician about AI, you’ll probably get some sour grapes, just out of personal self-interest.

Jam-bot is winning accolades: it won a 2025 MIDI Innovation Award, and got a lot of attention on social media. The “machine” performed at the Bach Festival in Leipzig in June 2026, and is scheduled to perform with Rudess and the MIT Chamber Chorus at MIT Future Fest on October 3, 2026. Wear a tie.

Are you happy for this AI star? Or, to flip it on its other side, is the AI sympathetic to the human creatives it is competing with?

The answer to the second question is: probably not. The answer to the first question is in your jurisdiction, dear reader. Celebrate your humanity and leave me a human comment below here, and tell everyone what you think of this strange future. Otherwise, all we have is moltbook.