[dejb]

> it's just cold, heartless automation

An alternative view would be that he has captured part of the 'warm, emotional' essence of a few of the algorithms that are at work in musician's brains when they compose music is making them available to the world. Instead of just delivery a 'golden egg' he is trying to create the goose itself. To me that is a far more spectacular act of creativity/passion (no I don't see 'humanity' as being synonymous with these). It is probably worth noting the the silicon chip he runs the algorithm on probably operates at higher than the temperature of a human brain so perhaps 'warm, electronic automation' would be a better description.

[EAMiller]

To be clear, my comment was made in surprise that that his creativity/passion goes unappreciated - I agree it's an amazing accomplishment.

In general though I think the binary of warm/emotion vs. cold/heartless is kind of useless. As in his quote : "I can understand why it’s an issue if you’ve got an extremely romanticized view of what art is" Art is amazing stuff people make, be it software or music.