Why Google's AI can write beautiful songs but still can't tell a joke

Creating noodling piano tunes and endless configurations of cat drawings with AI may not sound like an obvious project for Google, but it makes a lot of sense to Douglas Eck. Eck has spent about 15 years studying AI and music, and these days he's a research scientist on the Google Brain team, leading Magenta--Google's open-source research project that's aimed at making art and music with machine learning. He spoke to MIT Technology Review about how Google is producing new sounds with deep neural networks, where Magenta is taking AI music, and why computers suck at telling jokes. Below is an edited excerpt of the interview. Premium MIT Technology Review subscribers can listen to the full interview. Using AI to make art isn't new, so what's unique about Google's approach?