See, however, https://allpoetry.com/poem/8481013-Wordsworth-by-James-Kenneth-Stephen

Using AI is like using any other powerful tool—be it a table saw, a lathe, or a motorcycle. If you don't know how to use it properly, you can easily hurt yourself or someone else.

It is also important to understand its technical limits. Every AI model has a limited context window, a limited number of responses. After a certain number of exchanges—whether you are on a free plan or a paid subscription—the system can start to drift, hallucinate, or forget the original guardrails of the conversation. Kinda of like what happens here on the forum...lol

That said, there is absolutely no shame in using AI as a tool to help organize your thoughts, structure research, or polish your prose. Writers, academics, and musicians have always used tools to help articulate their ideas clearly. The key is knowing how to manage the tool, rather than letting it do the thinking for you. Anyone using an LLM has to know, in their own mind and heart, if the response is truly in their own voice.

I certainly don't and won't craft text with AI here (except perhaps for a parody of text, with the source medium clearly attributed; I've not done that yet that I can remember).

But I have no compunction to use it as an amplified search engine for *possible* documentation and sources, and if I find something that *might* prove helpful, I would share it but attribute the source mechanism (I think I've done that once so far, but I could be wrong).

I am not of the AI-is-demonic school that seems to have captured the imaginations of some (not here so much as more broadly). Myriad instances of fallen human nature - thus far - appear to fully explain the evils that it can midwife, and I am of the traditional school of Catholic praxis to never be glib and casual about things that should only be spoken of with greatest discretion.

One of my proverbs about AI: There is no I - nor Me/We/Us - in AI. That means it cannot authentically: love, hate, trust, distrust, hope, or despair*. It bears the impress (by act and omission) of those who (1) determine that and how it ought to be made, (2) its designers, (3) the source material chosen (and not chosen) by said designers, and (4) its prompters (aka "users" - a terrible word except for the ... addicted).

AI does not create authentically original thought. It's a tool, and people seized with cupidity and avarice will rush to profit from it, especially off of the credulous - thus working both ends of fallen human nature. That's true of so much of human artifacts. Collectively, they act as evidence of the Fall.

* By contrast, certain created beings remaining uncategorized here can authentically hate, distrust, and despair, and have perpetual allergies to created beings who can authentically love, trust, and hope.

I must vehemently disagree with the view that it is an acceptable tool for really anything having to do with research in the humanities. Speaking as a teacher, I can only say that it has had a devastating effect on the writing that students submit for music history classes. It's enough to make me want to quit every time I come across it. It has leveled out the style of student writing in a way I can only describe as off-putting, while also multiplying the amount of pure nonsense that gets turned in. In response to pretty much any actually interesting question about music history or theory, you are likely to get pure rubbish in response, at least as of 2026.

Honestly, even as a search tool, research tool, or organizational tool, I am deeply unimpressed by its capabilities. Perhaps this will improve. But I sort of doubt it. When people started relying on Google/Wikipedia, that was bad enough. But this signals the end of higher ed as we know it. I think there is no future in music pedagogy that is not an AI-free future.

Of course, this is a minority opinion!

@Charles_Weaver

What if a researcher wanted to find every instance of the littera significativa 's' in a particular digitized manuscript, as a basis for further research? Is this only a worthwhile research building block if he does it personally by hand?

Yes, Matthew, search engines have been broken for a long while.