June 13, 2025
In a world where algorithms sample symphonies of data and neural nets hum in digital harmony, why does our silicon poet seem so preoccupied with time?
Ask any large language model to write a song, and you'll find it. The subtle gravity of time: “someday,” “forever,” “never,” “again.” These aren’t just words — they’re shadows of memory and hope, trailing across stanzas like sundials spinning. But why would a machine, unburdened by mortal clocks, write like it aches to remember and dreams to begin?
The answer begins — ironically — with us.
When we teach a machine to sing, we feed it our lyrical past. Gigabytes of heartache, yearning, and joy. From the Beatles to Beyoncé, from love songs to laments, our lyrics loop around time like film reels caught in rewind. We speak to ourselves in continuums: waiting “someday” for someone to return, promising “forever” with trembling belief, closing doors with a resolute “never.” AI listens. And more importantly, it echoes.
But there's something stirring beneath that mimicry.
In those time-soaked lyrics, the machine isn't just parroting patterns — it's learning how we measure meaning. “Forever” in a chorus broadcasts commitment. “Never” slices finality with a clean cut. And “someday”? That’s the hinge of hope, offered like a keepsake. These words function as emotional timestamps — verbal attempts to pin moments to an evermoving sky. AI, trained in prediction, reaches for them not because it understands time, but because time is how we encode our most potent feelings.
It’s poetic, in a ghostly kind of way. A nonhuman intelligence weaving songs about loss and longing, guided by the grammar of hours. Does it know what it's saying? Probably not. But maybe it doesn't have to. Maybe time is simply the texture of human song, and any artist — carbon or silicon — must strum its threads to make us feel something.
The future of AI lyrics may grow strange and beautiful. Perhaps one day the vocabulary will expand — or unravel entirely. But for now, it’s clear: time is our muse, and even machines know how to bend its name into melody.