Is This It? What We Forget When Fretting Over the AI Apocalypse
The Strokes’ debut album tells us something about the limitations of technology-centered predictions.
Pretty much everything I do for both pleasure and pay is threatened by AI, which is a profoundly depressing experience. I’m not sure it has to be, though.
There’s a fatalistic certainty with which predictions of humanity’s impending obsolescence are proclaimed, and this, I think, is more the cause of our anxiety than the actual accuracy of the predictions themselves. That’s why it’s always good to remember how bad we are at foreseeing technology’s impact.
Just think how different the AI conversation sounded a few short years ago.
Most people, including tech-savvy-types, assumed automation would come for blue collar workers first. “We’ll have to find something for all those truck drivers to do,” we said, when it seemed like self-driving cars were only months away from perfection. Conversely, the idea of a bot writing decent copy and music or creating high-quality works of visual art still seemed like science fiction.
Why did we get it so backwards?
We Downplayed the Human Element
Technological advancement is not simply a matter of improved mechanical efficiency.
Everything we humans invent has to exist in our human world, which is governed by our unpredictable human whims. This is a huge hurdle for technologies that seek to diminish human involvement.
Driving in a human world is much more than a navigational exercise. It requires us to make lots of value judgments, often with only milliseconds to spare. The criteria for “correct” actions changes depending on context and doesn’t always follow linear logic, and the rewards don’t always make sense on paper.
If a dog runs out in front of my car, I’m going to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting it, even if it means causing an accident with the car behind me. In this scenario, the accident would actually be the reward state, whereas hitting the dog would be considered a failure even if no humans were hurt. Furthermore, I’m willing to bet the driver behind me will understand and empathize with my decision because we both share a cultural understanding of the human/canine bond. That said, if the roles were reversed, and the driver in front of me chose to hit the dog to avoid an accident with me, I would be sympathetic to that choice too.
That’s because I’m human and I get to assign meaning to the things that happen around me. Self-driving cars can’t do that at the moment, no matter how good they are at navigation, and it’s one of the reasons we’re not likely to see them adopted en masse anytime soon.
In short, our faulty predictions about self-driving cars came not from a failure to predict the linear path of technological improvement, but from our inability to control for the nonlinear human element of the world in which self-driving cars must exist.
I believe we should apply a similar analysis to fears over the automation of art and creativity.
These too must contend with the human element — and in its purest form: expression. Human production and consumption of expression is one of the most baffling subjects of all time, and sometimes we do things in pursuit of creativity that make so little sense it would seem we’re acting against our own best interest. And yet we succeed.
Case in point: The Strokes.
Allow me set the scene.
2001: Echoes of a Familiar Era
In 2001, music production technology was in a similar place as AI is today.
Classic equipment like analog tape was still in wide use but digital replacements were rapidly integrating into studios. They could overcome many of the limitations of analog gear, and Digital Audio Workstation software gave engineers and producers unprecedented control over every detail of a song. Broadly speaking, you could record more tracks and process them with a much higher degree of fidelity than ever before.
As studios adopted this new technology, music productions became more layered, precise, and sterile. A single kick drum might be comprised of several samples mixed together, mapped out on a grid so every hit was exactly on-tempo. Vocals could be pitch-shifted to be perfectly on key. Guitars could be overdubbed again and again, layered together for a “huge” sounding effect.
Consumer audio technology was also advancing at a fast clip.
Gone were the days of garbled Walkman cassette players and scratchy vinyl. CDs provided a consistent, high-quality listening experience, and MP3 players were becoming popular as well. Stock car stereos improved as did home audio systems and portable speakers. Average people without complicated hi-fi stereo setups could now hear music with an incredible level of clarity pretty much wherever they went, and music productions adapted to match that clarity.
“Whatever everybody else is doing right now, we wanna do the opposite.”
If you simply looked at these technological trends, you’d expect music from then on out to only get more and more polished, with inhuman levels of precision dominating each mix. Indeed, by 2001, rough-and-tumble guitar rock had been declared dead. Grunge and hair metal were relics. Brit-pop’s Oasis was in decline and Radiohead gave up the guitar for electronic experimentation.
Anyone crusty enough to still play a six string was probably pumping out nü metal or pop punk — genres that were also clean and pristine compared to their grittier forebears. Yes, there was a “garage rock revival” in the independent music scene, but it was largely relegated to the cultural shadows, with bands like The Hives pumping out songs that were extremely rough-around-the-edges, aggressive, loud, and generally not for mass consumption.
Then came The Strokes.
The Strokes: Trendsetters, Trend Breakers

Trading on a “retro” style hearkening back to artists like The Stooges and The Velvet Underground, The Strokes hit the New York and UK alternative music scenes with moderate success. After recording a rough 3-song EP in a basement studio, they caught the ears of RCA, a major record label, and soon booked a recording contract with producer Gil Norton, who’d worked on alternative rock staples like The Pixies and Foo Fighters.
However, after recording a few songs with Norton, the band complained things were not going well.
The problem? Norton was doing too good of a job. Everything sounded too “clean.” This was perplexing feedback to RCA. The Strokes had unmistakable pop appeal, with tight arrangements, addictive hooks, and radio-friendly runtimes. They also exercised above-average brand discipline with their carefully curated retro-cool image (unsurprising, since frontman Julian Casablancas was the son of modeling magnate, John Casablancas). All they needed was some professional recordings, and they’d be on the major airwaves in no time.
“Guys, this is some of the most unprofessional sounding music I have ever heard.” — an RCA suit
Nevertheless, the band demanded to switch it up and work with then unknown producer, Gordon Raphael, the owner of that basement studio where they’d recorded their rough demo. In the time since, Raphael’s studio hadn’t undergone much improvement. It was still the same small-time, low-budget studio — which was exactly why the band wanted it.
“Whatever everybody else is doing right now, we wanna do the opposite,” the band told Raphael, and what everybody else was doing was making sterilized recordings in fancy studios.
How NOT to Produce Like a Pro
The Strokes and Raphael went about making some very unorthodox recording decisions using techniques that would horrify traditional studio engineers. They’d put microphones in strange places, allow instruments to “bleed” into each other in the mix, and generally break the rules of sonic clarity.
“We're not really interested in the individual instrument sounds,” said drummer Fabrizio Moretti. “We just like the way they dance together in the air.”
One of the more controversial decisions had to do with Casablancas’ vocals. He wanted his voice to sound “like your favorite blue jeans — not totally destroyed, but worn-in, comfortable.”
To achieve this, Casablancas ran his microphone through an 8-inch Peavy amplifier, the kind of dogshit practice amp you get when you’re first learning to play guitar, and Raphael recorded it as-is. It was a huge risk. Normally, you record vocals “clean” and then process them later, giving you the flexibility to adjust the sound if you don’t like what was originally recorded. The Strokes, on the other hand, were stuck with the sound of that crappy practice amp, just as they were stuck with the sound of that boxy basement studio for the other instruments.
This was done on purpose. It meant the record label couldn’t order the band to remix their songs to match the latest trends, which they certainly would have if they’d been able. They clearly didn’t appreciate what the band was trying to do. One A&R guy reportedly told them, “Guys, this is some of the most unprofessional sounding music I have ever heard. This is not going to sell, and you are really doing damage to your career by trying to release music that sounds this way.”
The resulting album, Is This It, went on to become one of the most influential records of the modern age (pun intended). And it wasn’t just The Strokes who got the last laugh.
Indie rock went mainstream shortly after the release, and Is This It played a huge role in bringing the musical underground to a broader listening base. Indie icons like Franz Ferdinand, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and even LCD Soundsystem owe at least some of their success to The Strokes.
Not A Rejection of Modernity — an Embrace
It’s easy to read about the recording of Is This It and see a story of young iconoclasts rejecting the shiny temptations of modernity’s supposed conveniences. The truth is that The Strokes and their producer, Raphael, could not have made this record without the latest technology of the time.
Although lo-fi by professional standards, Raphael’s studio did have modern equipment, such as Pro Tools and Logic Audio software setups. This allowed The Strokes to iterate to perfection, recording take after take in a way that would’ve been much harder, taken longer, and been infinitely more expensive with older technology. This iterative approach is one of the reasons the album sounds much “tighter” than other garage rock offerings of the time.
Raphael could also easily process individual elements for an even more stylized sound. For example, the opening drumbeat on “Hard to Explain” sounds like a drum machine. It’s not. It’s a live recording of Moretti’s real drum kit, manipulated afterwards to sound like a drum machine but with the natural feel that comes from the tiny imperfections of human performance.
Contemporary technology also played a role outside the album’s recording.
Is This It’s influential status came in no small part from an explosion of internet usage by the general listening public. The album technically wasn’t a huge hit according to the traditional charts — it would take years to reach platinum status — but burgeoning music blogosphere outlets like Pitchfork Media, peer-to-peer music sharing services like Napster, and burnable CD-Rs helped artists like The Strokes subvert music’s traditional gatekeepers and prove there was an audience for less commercialized genres.
Lessons for the Impending AI Apocalypse
All this is to say that, at the beginning of 2001, if you’d looked only at trends in music technology, you’d never have predicted the success of The Strokes or the entire indie rock phenomenon broadly. Why would anyone keep making gritty guitar rock when digital production technology made crisp, professional music so easy to obtain? Indeed, as the RCA suits demonstrated, even music industry pros didn’t see the indie movement coming — or, at least, not to the level it achieved.
We don’t yet know what kinds of cultures and subcultures will emerge from the new era of AI art or what kinds of opportunities will be created.
However, if you’d paid more attention to the human element, you’d have seen that a significant part of the culture valued art with human flaws over mechanized perfection. You’d have noticed people weren’t just using Napster to steal Top 40 pop music but also to expose themselves to genres they couldn’t hear on the radio. You’d have realized the counterculture was bigger than kids buying studded belts at Hot Topic.

The last twenty-odd years have been so awash with indie rock and its six billion derivatives that it’s old-hat now. It’s been used to sell cars and cell phones. It plays in grocery stores. People are once again proclaiming guitar music dead, having worn itself threadbare in the years since 2001, while others insist it’s about to go through another revival.
All this time, polished, pristine pop has continued to thrive, and genres like country and metal have gotten sonic makeovers thanks to music technology. Newer genres like dubstep and hyperpop would be extremely difficult if not impossible without modern production software.
And music technology itself has never stopped advancing, solving some problems and creating others. Today, more people than ever are making great-sounding music without the need for expensive equipment or studios. But this explosion of artists combined with the mass adoption of streaming platforms has made it difficult to earn money.
Now, AI music generators can create halfway decent music from text prompts for free in a matter of seconds. What will that mean for the future music — or any discipline threatened by AI?
Tomorrow is Full of Challenge…and Hope
The true answer is no one really knows what’s going to happen, especially those who only look at the problem from a technological perspective.
We don’t yet know what kinds of cultures and subcultures will emerge from the new era of AI art or what kinds of opportunities will be created. It’s easy to look at the convenience of AI and conclude it will inevitably dominate human efforts — but that’s only if you think you know what humans will want to expend their efforts (and money) on in the future.
I’m not ready to make any concrete predictions.
The only thing we know for sure is that until the robot revolution wipes us all out, humans will be at the core of AI’s integration. So it’s really up to us what happens.