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The Current Transcript for March 12, 2020

Host: Matt Gallaway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

We take the COVID-19 outbreak very seriously. This is a whole of government and indeed a whole of country efforts.

MATT GALLOWAY: A lot has happened in 24 hours when it comes to the coronavirus, as the WHO declares COVID-19 a pandemic. The NBA goes on hiatus and the U.S. suspends most travel from Europe. A conversation this morning with Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland about Canada's response and the economic anxiety many Canadians face. She's here in 30 minutes. Also this morning, as employers ask people to telecommute and social interactions are reduced. The New Yorker writer Bill McKibben joins me to talk about what we're learning about how to adapt our behaviour and how that could be applied to another crisis, climate change. And later on the program, the robots, they're coming for our jobs and musicians. Our next. In an hour, a look at the possible future of music. Shimon, an eight-armed marimba playing robot singer that uses artificial intelligence to write songs. It's not at all terrifying. Trust me. We begin, though, with a pandemic declaration and calls to shut everything from schools to sporting events down to slow its progress. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

COVID-19 now a pandemic

Guest: Andre Picard, Steven Hoffman, Luis Murguia Favelo

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SOUNDCLIP

WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we're deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction. We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.

MG: Well, they finally said it. The World Health Organization is calling COVID-19 a pandemic. That means it's too late to contain. But the stress, the spread can still be slowed down if people are willing to change their behaviour. Whether that will happen, though, wasn't entirely clear from these reactions we heard from Canadians.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: People should just continue to live their lives. Wash your hands, keep your wits about you. But you shouldn't really change your day to day. It being a pandemic does not change anything in my life.

VOICE 2: I understand that it is killing people. But how does the flu. So I think people just need to kind of calm down a little bit.

VOICE 3: Well, we've been concerned before they could call this pandemic officially. So we're extremely careful. We came on the train from Kingston. We brought our Clorox wipes.

VOICE 4: The presses are blown it. I don't think it's going to be that big. Everything is normal. I haven't done anything differently. I'd still bathe the same way. I wash the same way. I may not wash my hands so much, but I do wash the dishes.

MG: I'm not entirely sure that washing the dishes counts. But anyway, the WHO is urging countries to take urgent and aggressive action to slow the spread of cCOVID-19. That's what Andre Picard would like to see. Here in Canada, he's a health reporter and columnist for The Globe and Mail. Andre, good morning.

ANDRE PICARD: Good morning.

MG: What do you think when you hear those voices, people who say they aren't that concerned that this has been overblown and they're not changing how they live their lives?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, there's a full range of opinions out there, and those are among them. And I think people are going to realise when it hits home how serious it is. So it's easy to ignore. We don't have a lot of cases in Canada yet. But the question is, when are we going to try and bring in some action to mitigate it before it gets worse, before we become Italy?

MG: And to your point and the headline of your column yesterday, Shut it Down. What do you mean when you say shut it down?

ANDRE PICARD: I mean, we have to move from this notion that we can contain the virus, stop it altogether, to the realization that we have to mitigate the damage it's going to do. So we have to recognise it's going to infect a lot of people. And the question is more when they're going to get infected rather than if. And we have to really, you know, you're going to hear the expression a lot, flatten the curve, in the days to come. And it's about that. It's about making the number of people infected grow more slowly so that our health system can handle it.

MG: And so you say we don't want to become Italy what needs to be shut down it? Everything in Italy seemingly is shut down right now.

ANDRE PICARD: Well, only because they waited too long. So we're at a we have a small number of cases. We know they're going to grow quite a bit in the days to come. That's almost unquestionable. So what do we do? I think what we have to do is get rid of huge gathering. So I'm not saying quarantine mandatory. We live in a social democracy. We have to count on people to be responsible. But, you know, we can do without a few hockey games for the greater good of our health. We could probably do with a few weeks less school to make sure that kids aren't out there in huge numbers in high schools with a thousand two thousand kids spreading this virus. So it's doing things. It's getting rid of crowds. It's social distancing is that we go about our daily lives, but do them a little differently. Stay a little far away from people when you talk to them. It's just practical stuff like this. It's not the end of the world as we know it. It's just adjusting to this new reality for a little bit of time and again.

MG: Why do that now? Why take those steps now when it seems as though what's happening around the world is much more severe than what's happening here in Canada?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, you have to pick the right time to pull the trigger, right. So it's nobody knows exactly what the right time is. We knew we know Italy waited too long. Denmark has done exactly what Italy has done. They only have 400 cases. So they've decide shut all schools, no gatherings, over 100 people allowed. So the question is not if we're going to do this. It's when are we going to do it? So I'm sort of I'm error on the side of caution. Be prudent. Maybe we shouldn't be doing this in Ontario and B.C. now where there are the most cases and then do it elsewhere as it spreads. But let's try and rein this in as much as we can.

MG: And then if you wait too long, it'll be too late.

ANDRE PICARD: Exactly. And you know, it's because, you know how a virus spreads it, how one person has it, they infect to those two, infect two others. It's like this drop of water and it ripples out. So you want the drop to be as small as possible in the first place.

MG: Last night, the US president, Donald Trump, imposed what is essentially a travel ban from Europe. Is that, do you think, going to be effective?

ANDRE PICARD: Travel bans are not effective. They make people feel better, but they don't, you know, people on planes are the least of our worries. They're easy to track. They're not kept together for that long. It's not like a cruise ship. So that's a minor issue, I think for Donald Trump, it's really a distraction. The U.S. is a disaster in waiting there, doing very little testing. We have a good idea that there are probably thousands of cases there that just we don't know about yet. Planes are and are not what we should be worrying about. It should be domestically spread, community spread. And that's what's happening in Canada. We're starting to get cases of community spread. We have one in their nursing home. We have one in a day care this morning. We should start getting concerned.

MG: All of that said, do you expect Canada to follow suit? We're going to be speaking with Chrystia Freeland, the deputy prime minister, coming up. What do you expect Canada to follow suit with what the president announced yesterday, whether it's effective or not?

ANDRE PICARD: I don't think Canada's going to go with the travel ban. I think we've been very smart on that. We've followed the evidence. The WHO has not called for anyone to have a travel ban. But I think the government has made a good argument itself for social distancing. We had the health minister yesterday saying this is a national emergency and a crisis. And we had the chief public health officer making a Twitter thread, a really good argument for why social distancing is necessary. And now it's just a debate about the time.

MG: Why do you think, if it's necessary, an epidemiologists are saying this: why do you think it is that the schools, universities, daycares haven't been shut down across this country?

ANDRE PICARD: [Unintelligible] comes back to what I said. I think it's all about timing. When are we going to do it? You know, there are people who say, well, you heard people in the intro saying, oh, it's nothing, let's not worry. But there's also a lot of people out there saying, why didn't we do this a month ago when it started in Wuhan? And the reason is you have to be able to maintain this. So you have to do it at the time where it's going to have the most impact.

MG: It's also going to have huge disruptions if you close schools and daycares and universities. Again, we're seeing this in parts of the United States where people's lives are thrown into turmoil because of that. Is that one of the reasons why perhaps governments aren't moving as swiftly as you would like to see them?

ANDRE PICARD: Yes. So you have to worry about the turmoil. But it's a trade-off. What's the turmoil going to be if we have 5000 extra infections? So it's a trade-off. And the turmoil, I think we have to prepare for it and we have to offset it. So take South Korea. South Korea closed all its schools, but it opened emergency daycares for the children of essential workers with small classes. Denmark is doing something similar. It has, Denmark has a $20 billion dollar program to compensate people, workers and business. Canada's announced a billion dollars. Denmark's a much smaller country. So I think we really have to to step up the investment and recognise this having such a huge impact on the economy. We have to share this burden over the collectivity.

MG: Just briefly before I let you go, Chinese officials are saying this morning that they think this pandemic will be done by June and they're already seeing changes within that country, which seemed to be unimaginable perhaps a couple of weeks ago. How long do you think this will go on for?

ANDRE PICARD: You know, the American, the great American philosopher Yogi Berra, always said, I don't like to make predictions, especially about the future. And I think with this virus, we just don't know. I also heard China say they're worried about people from the rest of the world bringing this virus back into their country now. It's really shifted. This is exploding outside of China. China has gotten control, but they've taken drastic measures that we could never taken in a democracy.

MG: Andre, good to speak with you. Thank you.

ANDRE PICARD: Thank you.

MG: Andre Picard, health reporter and columnist for The Globe and Mail. He was in our studio in Montreal.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: There shouldn't be any people too close. We're not going out to eat.

VOICE 2: We're not going shopping in malls. We're not going where there are a lot of people.

VOICE 3: Or universities. There's some things we need in class time. We need hands on experience.

VOICE 4: I sing in a choir, anyone that's travelled is not to come for 14 days. No, you have to get out. You have to live. You have to meet people. Get out there and enjoy life. And don't think about it.

MG: Shut it all down or don't think about it. That line between panic and caution is a tough one to navigate in a pandemic. Steven Hoffman is a professor of global health, law and political science at York University and director of their global strategy labs. Steven, good morning to you.

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Good morning.

MG: What do you make of what Andre Picard was just saying? Is it time to shut it down?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Well, it's hard to disagree with Andre. He's one of the best in the business. That being said, while I agree with his advice, the idea of shutting it down gives the impression that we're talking about a lot more than actually when Andre just recommended. What it gives that impression of it shut down borders, shut down all schools everywhere. That's not the way public health works. And that's not the way it should work. Public health needs to be a much more precision focus. It has to be based on the actual facts on the ground that are going to be different, community by community. And so the kinds of things that Andre did talk about, social distancing, rethinking whether we should whether we do need to go to that conference or can employers, if it does get worse, can they enable workers to work from home? Those sorts of things? Yes, we should be doing now, but we're not yet there when we should be shutting it down.

MG: I'm going to use that phrase that he reference, which is flattening the curve, which means that you lower the immediate kind of impact, that it's not that giant spike, that this is kind of more manageable because it's played out over time and over a larger population in some ways. If you do if you want to get to that point, when do you have to take those steps where you have to have more extreme social distancing?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Well, flattening the curve is indeed something we're going to hear more about because it saves lives. Right. If the health care system is overwhelmed, it's not going to be able to respond us as well as we'd like. The challenge, though, is if we react too early, if we overreact, it can actually be just as dangerous as under reacting. And the reason for that is it's not just that shutting down schools, for example, is a disruption. It is. But also think of, for example, the many doctors, nurses, other health professionals who have kids. And suddenly, if they find that their kids are no longer in school, we might actually find quite a lot of doctors and nurses unable to go to a hospital if they're having to worry about their kids. Or if, for example, as many countries have started to impose travel restrictions, that makes it more difficult for trade to get through. It makes it more difficult for medical supplies to be transferred or food. And so it's really important that we don't underestimate the downstream consequences of doing some of these measures.

MG: Andre was talking about timing. And to a lot of people, that's the thing. I mean, you hear from epidemiologists who say the same thing, that if we wait too long, it's too late. That by the time you know where the virus is, the virus has moved on somewhere else. How do you get the timing right?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Well, they we never really know in the process. The important thing, though, is to base decisions like that based on the best available evidence and real time data. The good news is that in Canada, we have a fantastic system for public health, where our public health authorities are actually looking at the data in a very granular way and trying to make those kinds of decisions. As of now, public health authorities in our country have not said that a mass quarantines are those kind of approaches would be good because they probably would not be effective.

MG: You don't worry that you really by the time that they make that call, it's going to be too late.

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Well, that's that is always one potential. But I even more so worry that many countries around the world have overreacted too early, causing too much disruption and actually undermining the public health response in the process.

MG: What countries would be in that basket?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Well, China's one good example. I mean, there's unprecedented mass quarantine of Wuhan and other city cities like we've never seen before in public health. That's a lot of people who tried to flee that city, who didn't have access to schools. Some people were bolted into their homes. That's not the way to do a public health response to an outbreak. Italy, similarly, I mean, China initially, it was focussed on the northern part of the country. And of course, when people are forced to be in a place that they perceived to be at greater risk to themselves, it's just human nature to try to flee. And so we saw some very natural reactions from folks which actually were counterproductive for public health.

MG: What would you say to people who were on the edge of spring break in a lot of places across this country? What would you say to people who are rethinking travel plans right now? Is that the right thing to do?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: People should be taking stock of whether they should be travelling or not. Ultimately, that's an individual risk assessment. So it's based on not only their individual risk profile. For example, we know that people who are older are more at risk of getting severe symptoms, but it's also based on where people are going. Is their healthcare system. Do they have a social safety net where they're going to such as friends or family. As well, what would happen if there's maybe a quarantine imposed or there are countries that are reacting in ways that isn't logical? And so as a result, you might want to think about, well, am I going to a country where the response will be appropriate or might there be an overreaction that could affect me?

MG: WHO declares this a pandemic yesterday, and that sounds scarier. Where does fear fit into the equation in terms of how we react to this?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Well, I've been saying that we're actually dealing with two outbreaks here. The first is an outbreak of the virus that causes COVID-19. The second is an outbreak of fear, misinformation, stigma and some racism. And I worry that actually the consequences of that second outbreak, the outbreak of fear, might actually end up resulting in more harm than the virus itself.

MG: How so?

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Well, I say that because when we say when we're looking at, for example, the recent U.S. government decision to shut down travel between the U.S. and continental Europe, that is not motivated by the science. That effort will not help. It 's much more likely to hinder the response. And so that's an effort that's being taken either for politics or at fear or both. And it's probably meant to provide some reassurance, the public, that the U.S. government is taking action. The challenges that action actually makes it more difficult.

MG: Steven, thank you.

STEVEN HOFFMAN: Thanks for having me.

MG: Steven Hoffman York University Global Health Law and political science professor and director of the Global Strategy Lab. Well, we've seen it in China and Italy. Now in Denmark, schools in some of the first places to close as a COVID-19 spreads. Nearly 40 countries are enforcing some sort of shutdown right now. One of the big mysteries around this virus is that it seems to be affecting children less than adults. Although a child in Calgary in a day-care there has now tested positive for COIVD-19. Dr. Luis Murguia Favela, is a pediatric immunologist and clinical assistant professor at the University of Calgary. Doctor, good morning to you.

LUIS MURGUIA FAVELA: Hi. Good morning.

MG: What goes through your mind when you hear about countries completely shutting down schools and daycares?

LUIS MURGUIA FAVELA: Yes, I agree with even in that in the sense that we need to trust the public health authorities and in going by the information that is coming on a daily basis and assessing the information on a local basis and also on the sense of the entire country and acting accordingly. But I agree that we do have to be measured in the sense of assessing risks and benefits of taking actions such as that.

MG: What do we know about how this virus actually affects children, too?

LUIS MURGUIA FAVELA: Well, we know from the information we got from China, which is that the country that we've had have had the most cases in and of course, has gone out for the longest time. We know that for the majority of the cases are adults, the ones that are getting at least sicker. And then from that information, for example, at the end of February, we know that only around 2.4 percent of the reported cases were children, which is a very small amount. It was something around 1300. But even from that number, only around 0.2 percent of all of these kids were getting severely sick. So that's only about [unintelligible] on those almost 50,000 cases back in the end of February. So right now there more around a 81,000 cases. So that comes about to four children, if we still go through that statistics of 0.2 Percent.

MG: Do we have a sense as to why that is? I mean, often with respiratory illnesses, we'll hear that they affect the elderly and children. This doesn't seem to be the case for COVID-19.

ANDRE PICARD: So we don't know the second answer is yes, I know that virologists and epidemiologists are trying to understand the reasons why this is different. We know that it's happened before in other similar coronavirus outbreaks like the SARS and MERS, where it also seems to affect mostly adults and the elderly and spare in terms of the severity of the symptoms, to spare kids. We're learning more about by knowing this information, we'll know more about how the virus itself goes into our system, but also how our immune systems are fighting this type of stuff at different ages. For example, even with the amount of insulin and inflammatory response that we mount against the virus, may be different between kids and adults. And we know that the severity of the disease seems to be this overt, inflammatory response to that, that the immune system is throwing against the virus in particularly in the elderly. And in that inflammatory response that leads to the more severe symptoms and the requirement of more intensive care.

MG: We have just about a minute left. I want to ask you two quick questions. One is, if a child isn't showing symptoms, could they still be spreading COVID-19 again?

LUIS MURGUIA FAVELA: Yes. That is something that we don't fully know yet. What the exact role of those children may play in this transition is not fully known. I know that the WHO is looking carefully at that. To this date. It seems that those with symptoms seem to be the people may be spreading the virus. So we don't know much about asymptomatic carriers, which children could be playing a role in this.

MG: Just finally, if given all that we don't know, is there a point at which you could imagine a full shutdown of schools and daycares would be considered?

LUIS MURGUIA FAVELA: I think all options are being pondered at the moment and assessing risks and benefits will be the most important. I know that the public health authorities are pondering every possible situation. At this point, I know the World Health Organization UNICEF has [unintelligible] guidance to schools and how to keep kids safe and also how to prevent transmission in schools and off school. So there are guidance that are coming up every day.

MG: I appreciate your insight into this, doctor. Thank you.

LUIS MURGUIA FAVELA: Thank you very much.

MG: Dr. Luis Murguía Favela era is a pediatric immunologist and clinical assistant professor at the University of Calgary. The CBC News is next. And then more on Canada's response to the pandemic. I'll speak with Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. We'll talk about the billion dollars Ottawa has put into this effort, how the money and the plan will break down and more. She's next. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

As U.S. suspends EU travel, Freeland won't answer 'hypothetical questions' about Canada following suit

Guests: Chrystia Freeland, Bill Mckibbon

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, an unexpected effect of this Corona virus is that global carbon emissions are down, which is what we wanted. Just not like this. More on that coming up in about 12 minutes. But first, Ottawa's billion dollar plan to fight COVID-19.

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MG: The news that covered 19 has been declared a pandemic comes as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prepares to host the first ministers meeting in Ottawa and COVID-19 is the first item on that agenda. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is overseeing the federal covered 19 response and she joins me now. Chrystia Freeland, good morning.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Good morning, Matt. And if I may say congratulations on taking over the current. I don't think we've spoken since you moved to this great new role.

MG: We haven't. And thank you and I appreciate you being here on such an important subject. When you take a look at this, with the WHO declaring COVID-19 a pandemic, what is the best case scenario for Canada?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: I thought people usually asked me about the worst case scenario, Matt.

MG: We might get there.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Look, let me just say this. As you said, the WHO has declared this to be a pandemic. COVID19 is now in more than 100 countries. Our Canadian response is very much guided by expert and scientific advice. And the advice we are receiving, which I think all Canadians are hearing, is that the situation is very likely to get worse before it gets better. We are ready for that. The government has been working hard in close collaboration with the provinces for more than two months on the health response. We have a terrific health care system in Canada, terrific health care professionals. We're also aware of the economic impact which is mounting and we are on that, too.

MG: Let's go back to the question. Angela Merkel, leader of Germany, said yesterday that she expects 70 percent of that country's population to...

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: She didn't quite say that, Matt. I love Chancellor Merkel and she is a scientist. She said up to 70 percent.

MG: Up to 70 percent. Is that what those are the numbers that Canada is looking at?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: We are getting the same expert advice that Chancellor Merkel is getting that everyone is getting. And look, I think it's important to be careful about how we cite what scientists are saying and what scientists are saying right now as they just don't know for sure. But the best scientific advice at the moment about an evolving situation is that, in all countries around the world, it is likely that between 30 and 70 percent of the population will get COVID-19. The advice is also that the overwhelming majority of people who get COVID-19 will have a very mild case. And what that says to us here in Canada is we have to keep on doing what we're doing, get our health care system prepared for a surge. That's going to be one of the things that will be so important about this meeting with the first ministers today and tomorrow. And also, Matt, you know, you and I and every single Canadian needs to take personal responsibility. I hope you have washed your hands a few times today.

MG: At least 30. Yes.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Okay. I've done it, too. And we really like it. It can sound so simple when you're talking about something which is a pandemic. But we all just need to take these basic precautions, wash our hands a lot, practice some basic social distancing measures. When I meet the premiers, I'm doing a hand gesture now. I'm going to greet them with an elbow rather than a handshake. And if any of us are unwell, whatever our job is, we need to stay home and we need to do that to protect ourselves. But it is also being a good citizen and a good neighbour.

MG: You will have seen our neighbours south of the border in the announcement last night from the U.S. president, Donald Trump, announcing a 30 day suspension of most travel to Europe. The European Union has said this was unilateral and done without consultation. Did you know that this was coming?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: It was unilateral and done without consultation.

MG: So you didn't know it was coming?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Correct.

MG: What was your response?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: My response was to immediately get in touch with Kirsten Hilman, our outstanding acting ambassador to the United States. She has been in touch with U.S. officials. And today, the prime minister and cabinet colleagues and I will be reaching out to American counterparts.

MG: Do you think it was an appropriate reaction?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: You know, American leaders take the decisions that they think are right for the United States. Canadian leaders take the decisions that we think are right for Canada.

MG: When will Canada follow suit with what the United States has done?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: That sort of seems to assume that Canada automatically does what our American neighbours do. I think, Matt, we don't behave that way, but when it comes to Canada's border, we do have measures in place right now for heightened monitoring of travellers coming from areas where there has been more of a coronavirus outbreak.

MG: But given what the United States announced last night, is Canada now considering following suit with the United States?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Canada is constantly looking at all the measures we are taking to keep Canadians safe and healthy, including border measures. I had a conversation last night with Minister Bill Blair. We have a daily call of the members of the coronavirus cabinet committee. And the committee met already once this week. And so we are constantly reviewing the situation. It's an evolving situation around the world.

MG: It sure is.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: And the only other thing I would say, Matt, about all of the health measures that the government will take is to say we in Canada believe in science. We believe in listening to experts, to medical experts. We have a fabulous chief medical officer. And in all of our health and safety measures, we are going to be guided by the best scientific advice, which is what we have been doing thus far. We're going to continue to take that approach.

MG: Which is why some people believe that what's happening here in Canada is a good deal different than what's happening in the United States. So the last point on the border, if as we see the U.S. has higher infection rates than Canada, what are we going to do as a nation in terms of dealing with people crossing our shared borders?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Well, we do. That is a very good question. And I think when we talk about Canada's borders, it's important for us to bear in mind, as you've just pointed out, that our largest border is our border with the United States. More than 400,000 people cross the border between Canada and the United States every day. And that is crucial, a crucial sort of social connection, a critical economic connection. We are very, very closely intertwined with our neighbours and they are intertwined with us.

MG: And so what's the answer to that good question about what we're going to do with the border, if there's a higher rate of infection south of the border?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: You know, Matt, I have a policy of never answering hypothetical questions. But let me just say, we are looking carefully at all scenarios and we are in close contact with our American partners. I had a very good conversation on Monday with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. We talked about the border. We talked about the coronavirus response in both of our countries. We talked about what's happening on world commodity markets. We need to continue that discussion and we will.

MG: You raise the issue of social distancing. Andre Picard was just here talking about his piece in The Globe and Mail in which he says, shut it down. That now is the time if we want to be ahead of this game, to look at, for example, closing schools for a period of time. When will the federal government recommend social distancing on a more widespread scale?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Well, I first want to say I think Andre Picard has been doing a fantastic job in his writing about this situation. I read every single word he writes avidly. So, Andre, if you are listening, thank you for your great work. On social distancing, I already spoke a little bit about the measures that I think we can all take as people and as individuals when it comes to sort of more specific decisions. Those need to be really taken on the ground by communities guided by public health officials.

MG: Isn't there a role for the federal government in providing that guidance, though?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: There is absolutely a role for the federal government in this situation. And I want to be very, very clear, Matt. We understand that this is a really serious situation facing the world and facing our country. And the federal government is here. We understand that we need to take a leadership role and we are and we will continue to do so. And that very much includes providing all the support necessary for health care systems across the country. When it comes to sort of specific decisions about what schools need to do, what, for example, basketball teams need to do and so forth, those decisions are correctly taken following the very smart advice of public health officials at a community level. This is something, you know, when we talk about social distancing, what that says is this is about the people who we are one meter away from. And so the best decisions, the best guidance will come from people who were there on the ground. Having said that, I do want Canadians to know the federal government is on it. We are watching this very closely. We are in extremely close contact with provinces, with health officials across the country. We have an excellent public health care system.

MG: Do you expect those provinces to consider closing schools for a period of time to expect that to happen?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Well, we will be meeting with the premiers later today, and we are certainly going to be talking about the whole of country response to the coronavirus. And I do want to say, you know, as you know, Matt, there are some very significant political disagreements between the federal government and many of our provincial governments. Having said that, Canada is very good at coming together when we need to play as Team Canada. And I'm very grateful to all the leaders of provinces and territories for the excellent collaboration that we have been having in this situation. And I do want to give a shout out to Patty Hajdu. Do our minister of health, who has been working very effectively with her provincial council.

MG: Just before I let you go. This story is changing that day by day, but it seems like minute by minute.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Correct. I agree.

MG: And what's happened and what's hard. I agree. Well, what's happening now would be dismissed by some people last week. Where do you think we'll be at this time next week?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: I really don't have a crystal ball, Matt, but I agree with your point that it is evolving minute by minute. That's why the prime minister established the ad hoc coronavirus cabinet committee. That is why we have a call of ministers every day every morning.

MG: I'm sure in that committee they're thinking about what's next. Again, just if you think about it, where are we going to be? What sort of situation do you think we could be in a week from now?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: You know, Matt, I do not have a Phd in immunology, and I really believe in being rigorous about listening to experts when it comes to talking about the science. And when it comes to scientific scenarios, I do want to say to you and to your many, many listeners, because I know that this is a great and popular show, the government is looking at all possible scenarios. And Matt surprised me at the beginning of this show by asking me about the best case scenario. And that was a surprise to me because our plans are all about the worst case scenario as they need to be.

MG: Chrystia Freeland, good to speak with you. Thank you.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Good to talk to you, Matt.

MG: Chrystia Freeland is the deputy prime minister and she is overseeing the federal response to CCOVID-19. Your thoughts on what she said? Welcome. Perhaps you have a sense as to where we'll be at this time next week. You can let us know through the Current's Web site, cbc.ca/thecurrent or tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway. Governments around the world are working overtime to deal with this pandemic as it brings economies and lives to a standstill. My next guest says that terrible as COVID-19. Is this virus could also teach us some valuable lessons about climate change and how the world might fight that global crisis. Bill McKibben is an environmentalist and Vermont founder of the climate advocacy group 350.org, and he just wrote a piece for The New Yorker called What Can the Corona Virus Teach US? Bill McKibben, good morning to you.

BILL MCKIBBEN: Good morning. Good to be with you.

MG: Great to have you. As you write. There is nothing good about the Corona virus But given that, what could it teach us?

BILL MCKIBBEN: Well, look, I mean, we're going to learn a lot of lessons, we're going through a we're going through a weird and difficult moment in human history right now. One of the lessons is science works. Pay attention to scientists. What they tell you isn't convenient always; you have to stay home from work. Your school might have to close. You have to change the way you're doing business. But, Matt, they're telling you that for a reason. Because they know what they're talking about in just the same way that when they say, look, you can't keep pouring carbon into the atmosphere. You can't build a new pipeline. Then one should take them seriously, too. Science works. I think the second lesson is we live on a very physical world. It's easy for us to forget that we spend our lives staring at screens. We live in kind of bubbles. You know, it's easy enough to never go outside if you can drive from your garage to the parking garage at your office. You can go a week at a time without really spending any time outdoors. But the world that we live in is deeply, deeply physical. Biology is real. There's no way, despite the best efforts of President Trump to spin a microbe or to persuade a virus to compromise any more than there is to, you know, out politic CO2 molecule. The world is a physical place and reality can bite and bite hard. There are some other lessons, I think, that we're beginning to learn from.

MG: Some of them and it seem to be around carbon emissions and what's happening. As economies slow down.

BILL MCKIBBEN: Well, yeah, I mean, no big surprise there if you shut off an economy, carbon emissions go down. But that's clearly not a long term solution to the problem. In fact, it may come back to bite us harder. I mean, there's already a fair amount of evidence that the Chinese government is planning to respond to their economic slowdown with their usual technique, which is a huge, huge stimulus for infrastructure spending. The last time that happened in 2008 and as the financial crisis was roiling the west, Chinese emissions went way up. So, I mean, there's no end. Meanwhile, you know, as the price of oil goes down, down, down, it's quite possible Americans may decide to continue their love affair with SUVs. So, you know, be careful what you wish for. On the other hand, what's been demonstrated, I think, is that we can be at least a little nimble in the ways that we react to things.

MG: What do you mean?

BILL MCKIBBEN: Well, I mean, think about the ways that companies around the world and people around the world have scrambled to learn how to work from home, how to telecommute. Those are things that over time may actually help us rearrange. There's no law that says it makes sense for everybody to get in a car every morning and drive to some centralized place, spend an hour doing it, you know, work all day and then drive an hour home. This may teach us some new and flexible and useful pattern.

MG: Does it tell you that there were an adaptable species, that that, again, in the face of something that nobody wants, we can be forced to change our ways?

BILL MCKIBBEN: Yeah, we're adaptable. You can overdo that analysis. The other side of this and it's hard, I think, and we're only sort of beginning to realise it as we go into self-quarantine and things is there's something very unnatural about what's happening. We're a social species. In times of crisis, our instinct is always to come together to help each other. Natural disaster after natural disaster proves that, yes, occasionally there's a few looters or something, but mostly it's people showing up to help each other. And in this case, we're being told just the opposite. You know, no laying on of hands, wash hands, don't go to other people's assistance. Stay away from them. That's for obvious and good epidemiological reason. But I think maybe one thing we should do well, we're well, we have these weeks of a natural quiet is reflect a little bit on the amount of kind of social distancing we're doing already in a world ruled by cell phones and things.

MG: You wrote that hell is no other people.

BILL MCKIBBEN: That's what it seems to me is going to be one of the Roma. One of the things we learn from here and when it's done and when it's over, then we may feel some real relief that our release from detention. And as we do, perhaps we'll start to re-evaluate whether or not the satisfaction that we want as human beings comes mostly from contact with other people, not from consumption of stuff. If that message sank in then, then there might be some real benefit for the larger, more enduring crisis that we face in the planet's atmosphere.

MG: If you go back to the issue of carbon emissions, there's less air traffic, there is less industrial output, as you mentioned, in China, people perhaps aren't commuting as much. There is this huge economic cost that's associated with that. What is the thing that we might practically learn? I mean, because to your point, once the economy restarts, China could start to build more subways, build more cities, and that's going to tip the balance the other way. How do we take what's happening right now and play it out in the long game?

BILL MCKIBBEN: I think that the place that we're most likely to see change is around, maybe, around these questions of social solidarity. I mean, the hope is that we'll learn for the first time in a while about how to do things as a society that are necessary when we're in danger. And we're deeply, deeply in danger from the climate crisis. So this is a moment to remind ourselves that that's what societies are for.

MG: That when you when you hear the deputy prime minister of Canada, Chrystia Freeland say that this is a whole of country approach to this outbreak, you want that applied to two other issues as well, like the climate crisis.

BILL MCKIBBEN: Exactly right. And in the whole of world approach. One of the things that we really need to be reminded and we are being reminded is, you know, Donald Trump can build all the walls that he wants, but microbes don't care about them. You know, we can talk all we want about, you know, country by country approaches to climate change. And those are important. But look, CO2 travels everywhere. If, you know, if we said all the oil in Alberta on fire, that CO2 is going to travel all over the world. It is travelling all over the world as people burn it in gasoline, in gas tanks, in their cars. So we need to really be serious about what science says. It gives us limits. There are limits as to how much carbon we can have in the atmosphere. The scientists tell us 350 parts per million a limit we're already above. So maybe this will remind us to respect the physical nature of the world and the limits that it imposes.

MG: What's the role of government in this? Because that sounds great. But practically you wonder whether people will take those steps once this crisis abates, whether it's in summer or whether it's three years down the road. What's the role of government in taking what you're saying, what you've been writing about and actually making it happen?

BILL MCKIBBEN: Well, I think the deeper question is what is the role of people in telling governments what they're going to do? And, you know, I mean, we're right now in an election in the United States, for instance. It's clearly kind of in part a referendum on whether the to my mind, insane hyper individualism of the kind of billionaire class that Trump represents is what we want or do we want a society that has some idea that people are responsible for each other. And that's the kind- I mean, look, I think there's no question that the coronavirus, for instance, is going to hurt Trump in this election, not because of what it's doing to the economy, but because it reminds people that we actually rely on each other.

MG: But I just wonder whether you actually see the opportunity of people coming together. I mean, the president last night in his speech talked about this as being a foreign virus. We already see xenophobia and racism being applied and popping up as people talk about this. So is this really something that can bring people together?

BILL MCKIBBEN: That's the danger. That's the danger. And the opportunity is that people will come together precisely against that. We won't know for a little while, because for the moment, we our job is to deal with the very practical set of challenges that we face. But when we go through experiences as deep as this and as unusual as this, it can't help but leave a kind of residue in how we think about the world. And so we'll see on the other side, we'll see if people are more open to the idea that we should take everyone in a society, including, say, in Canada, indigenous people seriously and in how they think about the world. We'll see if we're able to think about other societies that take frail and poor and vulnerable populations more seriously, because we're being reminded precisely how vulnerable they are. Those are the possibilities that are on. So when you have an emergency, we'll see.

MG: Bill McKibben, it's great to speak with you. Thank you.

BILL MCKIBBEN: A real pleasure. Take care.

MG: Bill McKibben founded the Climate Campaign Group 350.org. He's also the Schumann distinguished scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont and writes for The New Yorker. Up next on The Current. When was the last time you felt stuck in a rut? Gil Weinberg is a musician and an inventor and he has been there.

SOUNDCLIP

And I played with humans. And humans are great. But at some point I just I was looking for new ideas.

MG: Coming up, how Gil Weinberg got his groove back by inventing a robot musician. Meet Shimon, the singing robot. Coming up in about 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current CBC Radio.

Shimon, the robotic musician

Guest: Gil Weinberg

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

[Music]

MG: The song you're listening to is called Into Your Mind. It's by a singer songwriter named Shimon, he doesn't just sing, he plays the marimba. You can hear it kind of clinking along there in the background.

[Music]

MG: Shimon loves to collaborate with other musicians, jamming, riffing, bouncing ideas off of one another. Should probably mentioned that Shimon is a robot. He's a creation of a man named Gil Weinberg, professor in Georgia Tech's School of Music and the founding director of the Georgia Tech Centre for Music Technology. Gil, good morning.

GIL WEINBERG: Good morning, thank you for having me. Thanks for joining us. What did I just hear?

MG: What was that? What was that tune?

GIL WEINBERG: So that was the first single that we are releasing as part of an album that will release in a month where Shimon, for the first time, is composing parts of your music and most of the lyrics and collaborates with me and other students, for example, help too in creating songs that will have some human elements in them so we can connect to them, but also some artificial elements. So hopefully it will push our boundaries and make us not only listen to new music, but also think about music in a new way.

MG: Okay. So explain how that works. The song that we heard, how was it created?

GIL WEINBERG: So all of my robots are all about human robot collaboration. And there's some questions about were able to replace musicians. So not if they follow the way we go about it because I suggested a theme for Shimon. And in this particular song that you played, it was Mind in Consciousness, because I was wondering what he thinks about that. And then based on these two words and a few others, one went on a huge data of lyrics, anything from prog rock to jazz standards and even Hip-Hop in some of the other songs and generated lyrics using deep learning, which is a set of algorithms that really try to find correlations between data and generally new and interesting data.

MG: So let me stop you there. You take those two words and you plug them in to the machine and then Shimon is able to build something based just on those two words.

GIL WEINBERG: Right. And based on learning from data sets that humans have been created like thousands of tons of songs. And he looks for themes and words similar to consciousness in mine in this case and tried to generate something new.

MG: And so what does he then generate? What gets spat out of the computer?

GIL WEINBERG: The lyrics that you just had, and they're all kind of interesting elements that are very different than what humans were composed. For example, he even come up with new words that I don't know where he come up with this words from. In this song and word called Reeperbahn.

[Music]

GIL WEINBERG: Somehow, based on all this dataset, it was constructed, but we love it, we use it as a feature and we show it in order to really create music that humans would not.

MG: And so then once the lyrics are created, like on that tune, who's playing what and what is what is the robot doing and what are the humans doing?

GIL WEINBERG: Okay. So those the lyrics. But it wasn't music. The melody and the harmony. So before we played, I used similar methods by giving Shimon a seed and let it go over data sets of melodies and harmonies and suggest melodies for me for this song. So I take samples as melodies. Here's where the human selection is. A human choice came to play and I choose the melodies that would fit with the lyrics that he said. And then together we can compose it. Humans are good at, you know, expression, emotions, things that robots are not good at yet, but they are also better at large scale structures. So I can compose a song with a chorus and a verse. So this is my input, but it's based on melodies and the lyrics that Shimon came up with. And then when it's done, I actually let humans and robots play together. So I played the keys in this song and there were other students and family members actually that played guitar and bass. We also have an amputee drummer that we developed a prosthetic arm for. And he plays drums with us. And of course, Shimon plays marimba, which is has always been his interim instruments. Shimon is about 10 years old. He's been playing moming before about 10 years. But the new thing is the lyrics.

MG: You mentioned that Shimon is 10 years old. How did you start doing this? Where did this come from?

GIL WEINBERG: Generating music that will surprise and inspire me started when I was in a low care of in my creative kind of career and I didn't have new ideas and I played with humans. And humans are great. But at some point I just, I was looking for new ideas and I set in. I studied the double major oboes, music and computer science. And I said, how about I combine these two? And maybe I'll write some algorithms that would listen to my playing and suggest new ideas based on what I play in real time. But then something was missing and the acoustic sound. And then I was thinking, what would be the kind of algorithms that will be able to listen to me and then suggest new ideas but also play acoustics? How should I go about it? And of course, robots was answered when you play music together. It's a lot about looking at each other, synchronizing your gestures, anticipating what you're going to do.

MG: What was the first pass at Shimon like? What was the first incarnation of the robot?

GIL WEINBERG: Like the first incarnation was on his arms. And then we developed the head that provides a visual cues, you know, anything for just bobbing. Based on the tempo. Just makes you feel that it grooves the same way as you do or looking at you when you play something different on interesting. And we have emotions. Now we have eyebrows for Shimon so it can produce more emotion. And there's no doubt that this is much more engaging experience when you play with a physical robot.

MG: Let's have a listen to one of the early bits of Shimon's performance. This is Shimon performing onstage for the first time with a human musician alongside him.

[Music]

MG: Gil Weinberg, what's going on there?

GIL WEINBERG: So this is a piece composed and played and programmed by my previous postdoc Guy Hoffman, who's now professor at Cornell, and he was looking at how the robot can really listen to subtle, expressive elements of his playing. So this is a song called Jodo, which is, well, standard, but when they play fast, Shimon understand this and play faster when Guy is allowed Shimon sometimes to play softer, to improvise. Sometimes we play loud with him to create some kind of an decrescendo and crescendo elements. So it's really about capturing the subtleties of human playing and using gestures and improvising.

MG: So this is happening. Just to be clear, this is happening in real time. This isn't like all pre-programmed and the robot is playing along with the musician, knowing where the musician is going to do and the musician knows what the robot is going to do. This is this is happening in real time.

GIL WEINBERG: Exactly. This is in real time. We call our robots robotic musicians as opposed to musical robots. The emphasis here is that our musician first and then robots later or robust also because there has been musical robots for hundreds of years. You know, even the player piano is at some kind of a musical robot. But our robots are listening and improvising and composing. And then, of course, they use the physicality to play. And our motto is that all the robots would listen like humans and play like machines. And by this, I mean, if they listened like humans, meaning they understand music the same way we humans do, they understand what is tension and release and rhythms that is stable or not stable and all of the things that we appreciate about music. Then they can connect to us and create music that will connect to and will appreciate. But if they also add to that the ability to play like no human can using algorithms that humans can, but also physical abilities that humans don't have. For example, our robots can play 20 hertz each, stick each mallet off the marimba can place 20 hits, press second together, eight of them create timbres in colours of sounds that no human can.

MG: Because he has eight arms.

GIL WEINBERG: Eight arms and each one can play much faster than any human.

MG: Here's another little bit of a tune. This is the band with you on keyboards and the robot musician, musician, robot in the mix as well. This is a tune called Bafana.

[Music]

MG: So anybody who has been in a band knows that there is this give and take when you're playing with other human musicians that you know where somebody might go and you get those little visual cues back and forth. What is it like to perform with Shimon?

GIL WEINBERG: So when we start to perform with Shimon, it was mostly me and my students who worked with me forgiving Shimon for all the mistakes. It was just a big vision that that needed a lot of time for development. But recently and over the last three years, and especially in the last few months when Shimon is singing and actually we have a new application, we're going to release it in in a month. When Shimon is rapping, a rapper, understands the semantics and actually raps backs at you. And there's kind of a rap battle between- that same idea with the music with it. Was it melodies. But now with lyrics. There are more and more moments of inspiration and moments where I don't know how Shimon came up was what he came up with. And I'm really building on what he's doing in a way that I feel I would not build and it will not explode with humans. When I start was a beat, I give something of a beat and then Shimon starts to dance in bob head and bobbing my head like. But you can see immediately a different feeling and you feel that he goes with you.

MG: How would you describe your relationship with Shimon?

GIL WEINBERG: It's like, it's like it's a kid that I really want to help to get to a point where instead of I'm teaching him, he's teaching me. And so and this is happening more and more. At first I really felt that there's so little he knows and so much and to program. But in the last few years, it's very interesting to see how new ideas come from Shimon and inspire me. And I think this is a relationship in development. I really hope to see what what's coming next.

MG: I mean, if you looked at it, it doesn't look like a person. Obviously, it's got eight arms. It's a robot. But when you're playing with Shimon, can you forget in some ways that it's a robot.

GIL WEINBERG: I can forget he's a robot, but I do not want forget too much it's a robot, because we believe that robots should bring what they're good at and they should be proud of being robots. They shouldn't replace humans. They shouldn't be like humans. And for example, a robot can bring the ability to remember exactly what you played 10 minutes ago and just played exactly in reverse. Or a robot can play faster or using algorithms that it can in human being what they good expression and motions and so on. So I do want to remember it's a robot, and that's part of the reason that we didn't really make it anthropomorphic. It's it. It has some kind of fair entity character, but it is a robot. It do what it's good at. It looks like how it looks like. And the idea that together, when each one of us are bringing what we're good at, the robots are mechanical and the algorithm meets the expressions, the emotions, there will be a spark that will inspire both of us and push both of us to uncharted domains.

MG: I want to play one more tune that you worked on with Shimon. This is going to be on the new record as well.

[Music]

GIL WEINBERG: Sometime it will come up with and kind of impotent line; distance, which is not how you say it, you say long distance.

MG: Tell us about that song. So where's the inspiration for that coming from? You give Shimon a word or a few words or a theme and then what happens?

GIL WEINBERG: That's right. In this case, it was space and time. Actually, I was writing a script about some space and time and machine learning and search for intelligent lifeforms. So I was inspired by hiding in space in time, and it looked a morphic enough and unknown enough for him to maybe inspire me, maybe give me ideas for my script. And he came up with these lyrics. The song starts by me playing a motif that I came up with in some cases she won't come with Motif. But in this case, I come with this motif da da da da da. And then you hear Shimon, listen to me and take this motif, but play it in its own way, like really cuts the notes or a shot dadadada. All kind of random different rhythmic values, which makes me think about this motif in a new way.

[Music]

GIL WEINBERG: And then generates a melody and we all kind of make softer and listen to the lyrics and the melody that he came up with based on my space and time themes. Then I must give credit to UPF University in Barcelona and we developed all the machine learning for their playing, improvising and for the lyrics. But they developed a machine learning that actually synthesized the voice.

MG: And so in creating the voice. What were you looking for?

GIL WEINBERG: They trained their machine, learning all the hundreds of songs of humans, sang songs. And at some point we thought maybe we'll base the voice of human on our son's voice. We ended up using a different voice because we felt that it better fit with Shimon personality. Our students voice was pretty low and Shimon kind of fell. We want to keep it genderless. We wanted to keep it artificial. So if you hear it, it sounds clear you understand what the words on. In some cases even beautiful. But it also sound artificial. You hear it's not a human. And again, we celebrate that. We don't want to do deep fake listen like a human or something that sounds like human.

MG: You said Shimon's personality. You think that the robot has a personality?

GIL WEINBERG: I think different people can find different personalities in Shimon. I definitely have my own idea about what Shimon's personality.

MG: And what is that?

GIL WEINBERG: First of all, as I mentioned, I want to keep him genderless I say he, but it's kind of genderless. And I also look at him as a very curious and, curious, I want to learn about the world. But at some point I'm going to be the one that teaches you about the world and something in this and the physicality of him kind of projects this for me.

MG: You're familiar with the concept of the uncanny valley.

GIL WEINBERG: Yes.

MG: Which is this idea that I mean, eventually we create technology that becomes closer and closer and closer to who we are as human beings. But the closer it gets, in some ways, the less appealing it becomes.

GIL WEINBERG: Right. It's a concept in robotics that when you do something very simple, maybe with one degree of freedom or two and it's functional, that's great. And then you try to have more degrees of freedom, more and maybe the face. Suddenly you have robots with face and lips and eyes. But the closer it looks like a human, it becomes maybe more personable. But at some point it drops down because it's too much like a human. And that's a value that you're talking about because it's too uncanny and creepy. So they became too similar to humans that you just don't want to interact with them. We had a very difficult time deciding what to do with Shimon's head because to avoid the uncanny valley. Shimon only had an eye in the in the previous life when he just played music. But then we want him to sing. So we thought, should we bring a mouth? And then if we bring a mouth, should we do something else? We decided to bring just one degree of freedom for the mouth, just going up and down. Not more, not multiple muscles on the lips, being trying to simulate it. And one degree for the eyebrow. And we were constantly worrying, are we going towards too much Uncanny valley or will that help? We decided to do it because we felt that if the singing robot you need to see their embodiment of singing. Otherwise you don't believe that the sound come from the robot.

MG: You may have heard what the musician Grimes was saying recently, where she talked about AI surpassing the ability of human beings to create music. And she said these are her words: "It's a cool time to be creating now as we are presumably nearing the end of human only art." What do you make of that? And are you accelerating the end of human only art?

GIL WEINBERG: So multiple people working on it. And I believe that different approaches. I think my approach, it might be a little different than what you described because for me, it's about human creativity. So the robots makes me more creative. And there will always be in the foreseeable future elements that are humans. That must be in music, if we are to enjoy and listen to it and musicality, the structure, the expressions and emotions. Maybe in five thousand five million years, there will be consciousness for robots. I don't know. But in the foreseeable future, I think it's still a lot about what we are doing. And the robots role is not to replace us or to end the era in which we are creative, it just enhance our creativity and all of my work and we are doing the same. We have, for example, amputees that we develop robotic prosthetics for. And in their case too, it's bringing them abilities, not only that they lost, but abilities that they didn't have in enhancing the expression of the human.

MG: What do you think musicians think of that? Do you think that they worry that should they be looking over their shoulder thinking that Shimon is going to be coming and taking their job?

GIL WEINBERG: So there are some purist musicians that thinks music is the most humane experience and it should stay purely human. I obviously collaborate with people and musicians who are much more open to push the boundaries. So I believe there's more and more people who are open to that, more musicians who are open to that, because I believe they realise that this is not about replacing. This is about enhancing. You know, people were afraid about technology, replacing humans for hundreds of years since the industrial revolution. And even in music when they come up with a vinyl. And everyone said, hey, we don't have to go to see music anymore there is not going to be jobs for live musicians. And today, we know this is the opposite. Most musicians make some money from live performances. Not only is that. The Vinyl created new genres. Without the vinyls, there wouldn't be scratching. There may not have been hip hop, which is, you know, prevalent today. Without a camera. Who knows? They may have not, definitely there will not be photography industry for very creative people to explore. But maybe also there wouldn't be expressionism and impressionism because painters said, hey, we don't have to be realistic anymore. Let's try to explore new things. So I always think new technology into art in particular can be used and has been used as a trigger for creativity and not ending it.

MG: So we shouldn't be frightened then of our robot musicians.

GIL WEINBERG: Should be excited about.

MG: Gil, thank you so much. It's great to talk to you about this. I appreciate it.

GIL WEINBERG: Thanks so much.

MG: Thank you. Gil Weinberg is a professor in Georgia Tech School of Music and the founding director of the Georgia Tech Centre for Music Technology.

[Music]

MG: More robot marimba music for you. That's it for The Current for today. Stay tuned to CBC Radio One for Q. You can comment on anything you hear on this program through Twitter or Facebook. Just look for The Current CBC. Also, go to the Web site cbc.ca/current and click on the contact link if you want to send us an email. It turns out that Shimon is not the world's only AI songwriter. Researchers at Sony used artificial intelligence to make this song.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: Daddy's Car]

MG: That is an intentional rip off of the Beatles. It's called Daddy's Car. The Canadian musician David Usher is also embracing AI and he used software to help him write this.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song by David Usher].

MG: Remember what I told you, but the robots coming, they're already here. The future is now. Robot lyrics will be everywhere very soon. I, for One, embrace our new robot overlords. But it's nice to hear a human artist once in a while. So we'll go out on one while we still can. Here is the Sam Roberts band, a tune called Metal Skin. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Music]

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