The Sorcerer's Apprentice

You probably know this next work from Disney's Fantasia, but the original inspiration came from a 1797 poem by Goethe that says, The Spirits I Have Summoned, where a sorcerer in training greatly underestimates the power of the spell he has cast.

This is The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Ducas, performed here by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein. . . . ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶.

Thank you.

¦ ¦ Thank you.

¶¶ ¶¶ Thank you.

Thank you.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Ducas.

Leonard Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic.

He wrote, quote, "If we use, to achieve our purposes, a mechanical agency with whose operation we cannot efficiently interfere, we had better be quite sure that the purpose put into the machine is the purpose we really desire." Automation risk goes even farther back.

The famous German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote The Sorcerer's Apprentice in 1797 about a broom that keeps fetching water by the pail until it floods the sorcerer's workshop.

If you're my age, you learned about Goethe's poem from the famous Disney animated film Fantasia, with the role of apprentice played by Mickey Mouse.

The apprentice knew just enough magic to get the broom to do the water fetching for him, but not quite enough magic to get it to stop.

Control prevents a machine or an AI model from doing things that would harm us.

Alignment makes it not want to do those things in the first place.

With alignment, Gretel's broom from The Sorcerer's Apprentice would have done its job, but it also would have known better than to keep fetching water even after the floor was flooded.

With perfect alignment, control is mostly unnecessary.

Sting, of course, the author of the lyrics of the song, says that it's a spiteful song about turning the tables on someone who had been in charge.

And in his book, Lyrics by Sting, he also says that it's vaguely alchemical, and probably about a friend of mine, a professional psychic, and my tutor in the tarot, with bits of Dr. Faustus and the Sorcerer's Apprentice thrown into the pot.

Oof.

Sounds like the perfect song for Tori to cover.