Last week’s conversation on the Labor Heritage Power Hour with David Rovics about AI-generated music
sparked one of the strongest listener responses we’ve received this year—thoughtful, passionate, and deeply rooted in labor values.
Joel Cornell wrote in with a forceful critique, calling the segment “disappointingly anti-labor” for not addressing how platforms like Suno are trained on uncompensated human labor. “These AI programs are trained from music made by humans, yet these humans are never paid for their labor,” he wrote. “I am completely speechless at how this never seemed to occur to a group that has always been so consistently in support of humans being paid for their labor.”
Saul Schniderman sent a reminder from Marshall McLuhan’s famous insight about new media: “The medium is not something neutral… it massages them and bumps them around… the general roughing up that any new society gets from a medium, especially a new medium, is what is intended.”
He also shared this timely reflection from fantasy and science-fiction writer Joanna Maciejewska: “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”
Michael Funke, host of The Radical Songbook, echoed concerns about the speed of technological change and the historical challenge unions—especially the AFM—have faced when confronting new technologies, noting “The AFM has a history of resisting technological and cultural changes… and in some cases resistance without figuring out a response that acknowledges reality has not worked out well.”
And Paul McKenna heard a song emerging from the discussion itself—“When the Machines Begin to Sing”—set to the tune of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Finally, Paul Gottlieb sent in Bertolt Brecht’s 1926 poem “Song of the Machines”, a powerful reminder that debates over labor, technology, and exploitation are not new. Brecht frames machines as creations of workers—embodying both human ingenuity and the contradictions of capitalist production:
The machines sing
Hullo, these are our singers, our black stars
They don’t sing sweetly, but they sing at work
As they make your light they sing
As they make clothes, newspapers, waterpipes
Railways and lamps, stoves and records
They sing.
Thanks to everyone who listened and wrote in. The conversation around AI, labor, craft, and culture is only beginning, and we’ll continue bringing a range of labor voices into the discussion on future episodes of the Labor Heritage Power Hour.