Pharrell Says A.I. Developments are Part of Human Nature—“There’s Not Much You Can Do, So Buckle Up”

Pharrell Williams is giving his take on the recent artificial intelligence takeover in hip-hop.

Lending his voice to the specific controversy surrounding A.I.-generated copies of mainstream artist’s voices, in a new interview with Rolling Stone, Williams felt that the fight for artists’ rights could be futile. Without outright condemning A.I., he explained that it is just another facet of human nature.

“Disrespectful? I don’t know about disrespectful, but I do know that it’s human nature,” he said. “And there’s not much you can do, so buckle up.”

Williams’s quote comes during a month where a faux Drake/The Weeknd A.I. song stirred up drama, while electronic artist Grimes gave a favorable opinion towards A.I. Although Williams’ conversation with RS was mostly predicated on his Something in the Water Festival, which takes place this weekend in Virginia Beach (April 28-30), portions of the interview saw him discuss the A.I. topic. When first asked about A.I’s heightened relevance in hip-hop lately, he pointed towards smartphones and Spotify to make a point about how algorithms are already incredibly prevalent.

“We have depended on our phones for about ten years,” he said. “Our phones have been, in many different ways, making precognitive suggestions on what you may like because it’s looking at your every move, of everything that you’re doing, and assuming what your choices might be or what you might like. Or when you’re on Spotify, and it plays you a bunch of stuff that it thinks you’re going to like. These things, we’ve been used to. We’re used to this.”

After discussing how in-person libraries are becoming antiquated and being replaced, Williams then touched on how A.I. is another next step past search engines.

“I think what AI is doing is lightyears beyond searching,” he said. “It’s like it not only gives you an answer, but it also gives you an image, or a moving image, or an audio image of what you’ve asked for. And we’re at that point now. We’re approaching singularity.”

Referring to the current state of A.I. as “the Wild West,” Williams suggested that its use will only become broader. Recognizing that he does not have all the answers for how to confine or combat its spread, he insisted again that A.I.’s development is a product of human nature.

“Wake up, everybody. We’re here. And it’s only going to get deeper,” he said. “It’s only going to get, exponentially much wider than we can quantify. This is where we are. And at the end of the day, when you really look at it, the catalyst for all of this was human nature. We did this.”

Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for Urban One Honors