Music and sound are fundamental aspects of how we interact with the environment and play an important role in shaping culture. Dr. Michael Frishkopf is an ethnomusicologist who is deploying the power of AI to formulate and test new hypotheses about the relationship between music and culture, speech and individuality. In this wide ranging conversation, we cover the relationship between math and music, the tough challenges of applying machine learning to sound, how the evolution of music technologies impacts culture, and what we can learn from sound in cyberworlds. We also discuss music’s role in conveying important public health messaging and what lessons that might hold for our current times.

Dr. Michael Frishkopf is a Professor of Music at the University of Alberta, an ethnomusicologist, performer, and composer. Dr. Frishkopf’s ethnomusicological research interests include music of the Arab world; Sufi music; sound in Islamic ritual performance; music and religion; comparative music theory; the sociology of musical taste; social network analysis; (virtual [world) music]; digital music repositories; deep learning for sound recognition and music information retrieval; music in West Africa; participatory action research; psychoacoustics and music cognition; music and global health; indigenous medicine and music as medicine for integrative health; and music for global human development and social change.

Find out more - m4ghd.org

AI4Society Dialogues is a co-production between AI4Society, a signature research area at the University of Alberta and the Kule Institute for Advanced Research (KIAS), an endowed institute at the University of Alberta that supports research in the social sciences, humanities and fine arts.

Host: Katrina Ingram, Founder and CEO, Ethically Aligned AI
Technical Producer: Corey Stroeder
Special thanks to Dr. Scott Smallwood and the Sound Studies Institute at the University of Alberta for providing recording space.
Theme music: “Seeing the Future” by Dexter Britain

Dr. Eleni Stroulia, Professor, Computer Science and Director, AI4Society
Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell, Professor, Philosophy and Digital Humanities, Director, Kule Institute and co-Director, AI4Society
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