Humanity in radio

Is the automation of radio a good or bad thing? In my view it was always an inevitability. When Capital Radio installed the cartridge carousel system (seen on left) in the 70’s there was outrage from some and pressure from the union so it was never used.

I am definitely old fashioned, I like driving a car and soon that will be done for us. Machines are doing more and more of what humans used to do and soon broadcasters could be replaced altogether by computers.

The AI examples of DJ’s I heard the other day were impossible to differentiate from ‘real’ humans. Voice Tracking may be time saving, but it is also a route to perfectionism at a cost of humanness in my view. At some point the Turing Test will be completed and it will be impossible to tell the difference between a human and a computer.

What a novelty it will then be to have a human being playing records and carts in a studio and human imperfections will have a new value…..