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Human curation is “elitist”, says Alphabet boss

By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 15 September 2015

Google boss man Eric Schmidt, now technically CEO of the web giant’s new parent company Alphabet, has taken a light swipe at Apple Music – and any company that thinks real live people know anything about music – in an article for BBC News, accusing them of being “elitist”.

Discussing the use of artificial intelligence, Schmidt said: “In the future, we need to do even more blending of AI research with solving real-world challenges. In the next generation of software, machine learning won’t just be an add-on that improves performance a few percentage points; it will really replace traditional approaches”.

“To give just one example”, he went on, turning to music. “A decade ago, to launch a digital music service, you probably would have enlisted a handful of elite tastemakers to pick the hottest new music. Today, you’re much better off building a smart system that can learn from the real world – what actual listeners are most likely to like next – and help you predict who and where the next Adele might be”.

“As a bonus, it’s a much less elitist taste-making process”, he concluded. “Much more democratic – allowing everyone to discover the next big star through our own collective tastes and not through the individual preferences of a select few”.

Many streaming services, including Apple Music, Spotify and Deezer, mix automated and human curation to serve up recommendations to users. In part, this is because they recognise that a bit of elitism goes a long way sometimes. Though obviously Google is totally egalitarian and wouldn’t ever deign to know what’s best for anyone.