Can teaching robots music make them more human?

Gus Xia plays music with robots. To be more precise, he collaborates with robots to create unique musical compositions, and through these compositions he studies a wide-ranging topic we’re all grappling with on some level: as artificially intelligent systems become more powerful and more intuitive, how do we relate to and interact with them?

Xia is an assistant professor of machine learning at MBZUAI and he is interested in the design of interactive intelligent systems to extend human musical creation and expression. We spoke with him recently about his research into human-computer interactive performances, autonomous dancing robots, and quite a bit else. 

About Gus Xia

Before joining MBZUAI, Xia was an assistant professor of computer science at NYU Shanghai. He received a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University where he studied machine learning and computer music under Professor Roger Dannenberg. He was a Neukom Fellow at Dartmouth from 2016 to 2017. In 2010, he received an undergraduate degree in information science with a minor in psychology at Peking University. 

Alongside his research, Xia is also an accomplished artist and performer. He is a professional DI and XIAO (Chinese flute and vertical flute) player. He was the prime soloist for the Chinese Music Institute (CMI) of Peking University, where he served as president and assistant conductor.

Read more about Gus Xia.

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