According to Hans Moravec, adjunct faculty member at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, a representation "landscape of human competence" has often been used to gauge the potential of AI. He represented AI capability as a rising sea level, increasingly covering the landscape of human competence. Human functions like rote memorization and arithmetic were the lowlands to be first flooded by AI. Playing the Go game, speech recognition and language translation were considered mountains. But recently, AI has clearly outdone humans in these areas too.

Almost two centuries after his death, Beethoven's 10th symphony has now been completed - with extra help from Artificial Intelligence (AI). The world premiere was presented last Saturday (9 October) in Bonn, Germany, the birth city of the legendary composer. It took two years for an international team of experts to complete the work. Before his death, Ludwig van Beethoven had started writing the 10th symphony. But only a few notes and musical sketches were left.

Artificial Intelligence served as an instrument for musicologists and classical music experts to complete Beethoven's X Symphony. A known fact is that Beethoven left his tenth symphony unfinished, for some experts what would have been his masterpiece. But on October 9, 2021, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn performed the complete work under the baton of its conductor Dirk Kaftan. Ever since Ludwig van Beethoven died in 1827, the notation of his 10th Symphony, which was only written in handwritten sketches in the year of his death, has been nicknamed "the Unfinished". One year after the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, an attempt has been made with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) to transfer the composition fragments into a fully formulated work.

Welcome to our October 2021 monthly digest where you can catch up with any AIhub stories you may have missed, get the low-down on recent events, and much more. In this edition we cover our latest focus issue, the concept of foundation models, 100 days of machine learning, Beethoven's 10th symphony, and more. Our latest focus series life on land (as part of our wider series on the UN sustainable development goals) was launched this month. We spoke to Lily Xu about her work in green security. Lily and her colleagues apply machine learning and game theory techniques to wildlife conservation.

When Ludwig van Beethoven died in 1827, he was three years removed from the completion of his Ninth Symphony, a work heralded by many as his magnum opus. He had started work on his 10th Symphony but, due to deteriorating health, wasn't able to make much headway: All he left behind were some musical sketches. Ever since then, Beethoven fans and musicologists have puzzled and lamented over what could have been. His notes teased at some magnificent reward, albeit one that seemed forever out of reach. Now, thanks to the work of a team of music historians, musicologists, composers and computer scientists, Beethoven's vision will come to life. I presided over the artificial intelligence side of the project, leading a group of scientists at the creative AI startup Playform AI that taught a machine both Beethoven's entire body of work and his creative process.

When Ludwig van Beethoven died in 1827, he was three years removed from the completion of his Ninth Symphony, a work heralded by many as his magnum opus. He had started work on his 10th Symphony but, due to deteriorating health, wasn't able to make much headway: all he left behind were some musical sketches. Ever since then, Beethoven fans and musicologists have puzzled and lamented over what could have been. His notes teased at some magnificent reward, albeit one that seemed forever out of reach. Now, thanks to the work of a team of music historians, musicologists, composers and computer scientists, Beethoven's vision will come to life.

When Ludwig van Beethoven died in 1827, he was three years removed from the completion of his Ninth Symphony, a work heralded by many as his magnum opus. He had started work on his 10th Symphony but, due to deteriorating health, wasn't able to make much headway: All he left behind were some musical sketches. Ever since then, Beethoven fans and musicologists have puzzled and lamented over what could have been. His notes teased at some magnificent reward, albeit one that seemed forever out of reach. Now, thanks to the work of a team of music historians, musicologists, composers and computer scientists, Beethoven's vision will come to life. I presided over the artificial intelligence side of the project, leading a group of scientists at the creative AI startup Playform AI that taught a machine both Beethoven's entire body of work and his creative process.

When Ludwig von Beethoven died in 1827, he was three years removed from the completion of his Ninth Symphony, a work heralded by many as his magnum opus. He had started work on his 10th Symphony but, due to deteriorating health, wasn't able to make much headway: All he left behind were some musical sketches. Ever since then, Beethoven fans and musicologists have puzzled and lamented over what could have been. His notes teased at some magnificent reward, albeit one that seemed forever out of reach. Now, thanks to the work of a team of music historians, musicologists, composers, and computer scientists, Beethoven's vision will come to life.

When Ludwig von Beethoven died in 1827, he was three years removed from the completion of his Ninth Symphony, a work heralded by many as his magnum opus. He had started work on his 10th Symphony but, due to deteriorating health, wasn't able to make much headway: All he left behind were some musical sketches. Ever since then, Beethoven fans and musicologists have puzzled and lamented over what could have been. His notes teased at some magnificent reward, albeit one that seemed forever out of reach. Now, thanks to the work of a team of music historians, musicologists, composers and computer scientists, Beethoven's vision will come to life.

BERLIN – A few notes scribbled in a notebook are all that German composer Ludwig van Beethoven left of his 10th Symphony before his death in 1827. Now, a team of musicologists and programmers is racing to complete a version of the piece using artificial intelligence, ahead of the 250th anniversary of his birth next year. "The progress has been impressive, even if the computer still has a lot to learn," said Christine Siegert, head of archives at Beethoven House in the composer's hometown of Bonn. Siegert said she was "convinced" that Beethoven would have approved since he too was an innovator at the time, citing his compositions for the panharmonicon -- a type of organ that reproduces the sounds of wind and percussion instruments. And she insisted the work would not affect his legacy because it would never be regarded as part of his oeuvre. The final result of the project will be performed by a full orchestra on April 28 next year in Bonn, a centerpiece of celebrations for a composer who defined the romantic era of classical music.