In this paper, we use critical and agonistic modes of inquiry to analyse and critique a specific application of AI to music practice. It records a structured interdisciplinary dialogue between 1) a musicologist and social scientist and 2) an engineer in music and computer science, focusing on folk-rnn and Irish Traditional Music (ITM) as a case study. We debate the role of data ethics in AI music applications, the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, and the nature of embedded value systems and power asymmetries inherent in applying AI to music. We discuss how identifying the value of AI music applications is critical for ensuring research efforts make musical contributions along with academic and technical ones. Overall, this agonistic dialogue exemplifies how questions of right and wrong — the core of ethics — can be examined as AI is applied more and more to music practice.
QC 20240523