17/04/2026
My alma mater, Berklee College of Music, has decided to embrace AI-generated music, integrating Suno and other such tools into some of its curriculum.
This saddens me on many levels, but probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, because the institution—far from its roots as a jazz school most concerned with artistry and musical expression—has over the years aligned more and more closely with the principles of capitalism and commercialism. Of course, learning how to make music in a profitable way involves acquiring a necessary set of skills, but this move towards AI-generated music (mirrored by the music industry itself) will in the long run be bad for the planet, bad for consumers of music, bad for the artists themselves.
The move towards AI is inline with every other industry’s thoughtless embrace of it at every turn. Even as I write this post, the stupid, nagging “Help me write” button directly in the composition box screams at me, “Take the easy way out, let the computer do the work of expression for you.” As a writer, as a musician, it is so infuriating.
Earlier this year, I formed “EQV LLC”, an umbrella for all of my creative work. I named it after Berklee’s motto, “Esse Quam Videri”, which is Latin for “To be rather than to appear to be”. It’s such a powerful motto that has guided me all of my professional career (and also just happens to be the motto of my home state, North Carolina). It urges me not to pretend to be something I am not, but to work hard at making beautiful things; because the world needs my honed artistic expression, not a cheap imitation of something or someone else.
I love Berklee. It was a dream to attend there through the years. But Berklee’s embrace of AI-generated music is a slap in the face to all of the great artists, composers, educators, clinicians, faculty, and brilliant musicians who have come up through the legendary institution. It should rethink its stance. Or else change its motto to “Simulare Quam Fieri”: to pretend rather than to become.
