Dr. Stephen Roddy Publishes Work on Ethical Framework for "AI" in Music

6 Aug 2025

Dr Stephen Roddy publishes work on ethical approaches to artificial intelligence in music composition and performance

Dr Stephen Roddy of the Department of Digital Humanities and the Radical Humanities Laboratory, University College Cork and his frequent collaborator Dr. Brian Bridges of Ulster University publish their work on deriving an ethically grounded framework from the field of Cybernetics in the volume Artificial Media: Emerging Trends in Narratives, Education and Creative Practice in Springer’s series on Cultural Computing.

The chapter, Cybernetic Resurgences: Machine Music Beyond AI Slop, draws on a recent rethinking of Cybernetics in the work of Yul Hui and N. Katherine Hayles to motivate a reappropriation of machine learning techniques away from the hegemonic tech giants pushing their so-called "artificial intelligence" agenda, and into the hands of artists and composers working with ethically sourced datasets and sustainable, resource aware training techniques.

Several artists and composers already operating at the forefront of this cybernetic resurgence are then considered before concluding with some suggestions for how an ethically grounded cybernetics of musical machine learning might open a new space of artistic possibility beyond the algorithmic monoculture of AI slop.

For more access please visit: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-89037-6_5

For more on this story contact:

sroddy@ucc.ie