# Sketch Responses to Gemini: On Some of My Past and Present Selves
Published: 2025-05-01
Canonical: https://journal.xiaotianfanx.com/journal/sketch-responses-to-gemini-on-some-of-my-past-and-present-selves

This post contains my sketch response to the following interview questions posed by Gemini 2.5 Pro after "reading" all of my previous writing on this site. The overall conversation is about collaboratively designing the album concept for NOT MY MUSIC.  How has that central tension evolved for you recently? Have you found new ways to navigate it, either in consuming or creating art/music? Are there specific artists, albums, or songs now that you feel successfully integrate deep thought/complexity with raw sensation or emotional immediacy in a way that resonates with you? How does the challenge of self-consciousness ("Wozhi," imposter syndrome) manifest in your current attempts at making music? Has it shifted? You resonated with Nodame's journey towards "facing music properly." What does that phrase mean to you today in practical terms? How do you see the introduction of AI into the creative process interacting with these themes of authenticity, intention, sensation, and the "self" in art?  	I found it somehow tricky to answer your questions one by one, as to some larger extent they are all interconnected with each other. Therefore, I will take another narrative instead of answering the questions one by one, and hopefully, you can grasp my development. At this very point, my freshman year in college is about to end in a few weeks. What I've experienced in the music program, interactive media program, film program, and writing program as a musician, creator, coder, and most importantly, a young man has shaped me in many aspects.  	It's hard to tell in the first place if I have shifted out of the Wozhi or extreme pursuit of the author's intention. It is not because I hesitate upon distinguishing my stand based on what I did, which, in that case, would be evidence of me sticking to it instead of actually changing. On the other hand, it is because I have barely thought of this question in the past year. How surprising that is, considering that was the central question in my college application essay back then. Maybe that's because I paused writing poetry. Or, if lucky enough, it is because I have already "shifted" out of that dilemma by actively engaging in the tangible living activities. It is not that I have completely given up on having an intention in my creation - no matter if it's music, mixing, interactive media, or film - but rather somehow moved a bit forward toward recognizing and delivering what is my intention that could be passed through the creation instead of considering "passing the intention" itself as a central intention in tandem with the actual message. In that sense, I could argue that I'm also "facing music" better than ever, including realizing the boundary of my skill as well as the directions to develop in the future (including learning more instruments, improving music theory, practicing more, etc.)  	To be very honest, honing and wielding my various skills in college has been very conducive to my confidence in general. Outperforming the classes, engaging in multiple music/film capstones (senior graduating project), building applications out of pure interests and community contribution, and gaining actual users and visits on my websites—all these matters matter to me. And I appreciate all the opportunities and encounters I had. Notwithstanding, the confidence itself is still a bit shaky, given that it has grown a lot. In fact, growing together with the skills and recognitions around me is the same amount of ambition and anxiety. In a sense, or in essence, I'm so eager and thirsty and unsatisfied always with myself and with the surrounding. Although factually I'm still at the beginning of my life, the urge to realize more of my potential, to do more, to become more, and to radiate more, etc., coming from the bottom of my heart, hovers in and out every day. Without elaborating too much here, one of the examples is surely the practice in "music music." Although I have been doing post-production all the time - mixing and mastering and FOH and learning MAX/MSP as a computational approach to music and audio—the missing practice in music music is still haunting me from time to time. And the more anxious I am, the less I practice. In a sense, starting to create this album and having this discussion now is one of my attempts to push myself to face the music even more "properly," besides planning to join a performing forum tomorrow to learn some Arabic music on my instrument.  	In terms of the AI angle, I would say it is also a part of this discussion around my development. I certainly have many opinions on AI itself about the technical side and its future, but in this particular context, I would say that considering "working deeply with AI" as a means to counter or actually adapt to the new age is my latest attempt. While I have an entire essay on it (which I may share with you later on), I would briefly state my thoughts now.  	As a matter of fact, with all the AI tools emerging, there is no way to deny their presence or future (or even current) impact, and what we can do is learn to master them or collaborate with them in a nicer term. A fundamental part of NOT MY MUSIC is, by all means, a meta query on this matter. When more and more seemingly one-push shortcuts in producing music or "artish pieces" are available now, how can we contain the luring cheating potential of those tools and actually blend our story, identity, and soul (if any) into the process - just like all previous ways to do arts were about - is becoming the endeavor and centerpiece to experiment with. NOT MY MUSIC aims to do so in its essence - we will use, and will actively use, the existing AI tools at various stages of music creation and production, and, hopefully, produce our music still. At the end of the day, whether or NOT MY MUSIC is my music would be left as an open question.  	Aside from the particular relation with the artistic fields, my understanding and opinion on AI, LLMs, and the potential AGI also developed a lot in the course. According to my dear mother, I once said something like this back then, when I was in primary/junior middle school: "You guys are out already. The future belongs to us - us who know technology. People who do not know technology will become slaves. But who would be willing to be a slave?" While to some extent we can already argue that people who do not know technology at this age are somewhat "slaves" of either technology itself or people who master the technologies, this plight of people, human, society, or whatever you call it, will only become more and more prominent. Nevertheless, I may not phrase in such a strong way nowadays, after learnt my mostly neutral/modest locution. Instead, what fascinates me more at this very point is being in the course of this very matter itself. It is a bit cliché to say so, but as I said, there is no way to deny, deny this elephant in the room. I mean, it's really hard to predict anything at this point, but what we do witness is the globe being evoked by what's happening on a daily basis. Well, maybe because I am still too young. But in my two-decade lifetime, this is the only matter that I remember that has successfully invoked so much attention, discussion, development, investment, etc. on a human-being level. No matter how far the very technology would reach, it is certain that it is so precious for us to be urged to re-reflect and philosophize on technology, society, human nature/being/agency, environment, ethics, and so on. And if we could gain even a bit thanks to the tech-driven inspiration, I would say it is already enough.  	Technically speaking, my current stance would align with Marvin Minsky, Yann LeCun, Gary Marcus, and so on, who believe that the pure connectionist approach that dominates the current LLM/AI development is not enough, and we will eventually need some sort of hybrid model, symbolic manipulation/integration, neural-symbolic representation/computation, or whatever you call it. Of course, people holding the same stance may not hold the same rationale. My rationale here has no matter with (or at least only slightly matters with) if the pure connectionist approach will achieve AGI or beyond-human-level AI. My rationale aligns with this notion of how we human beings keep our identity or agency. There is a counterargument saying that if we could believe in a driver or chef who is not a hundred very percent correct all the time correct/will never make a mistake to drive for us or cook for us, because we believe in their training and the likelihood of there being reliable, then we should also have faith in connectionist models (or at least their potential) to provide us empirically satisfying results in the long run. Indeed, it sounds like a promising or reasonable logic, but the very hazard behind that lies in the very difference between human and AI (at least to this point), which is that the AIs are not accountable and reasonable according to human-friendly reasoning and logic.  	What do I mean by saying human-friendly reasoning and logic? People may say that nowadays LLMs have this reasoning function, and it demonstrates a reasoning process that is plausible in most cases. True, but: The latest research also reveals that those models, although demonstrating this human-like reasoning process, are only mocking the human logic in hindsight, after they have gone through their internal, unfathomable process. People may still argue what's wrong with it: if it demonstrates a reasoning process that we can understand at the end of the day, then we don't need to mind what it has behind the demonstrated reasoning. The mistake of that notion to accept this black box is that we will never be able to actually supervise all understand how and why the models are active in such a way. From some superficial or commercial level, people can definitely also argue that it is not important: as long as the results are usable, then we are good. But in the long run, there are at least two significant drawbacks. The first one is concerning the security of our capability to moderate and control the systems, given that they can actually become very powerful using the current approach. Behind the plausible reasoning, behavior, we will never know what could be the model is actually thinking or planning, or colluding, even in the future. The second one is that by accepting this approach, we gave up the potential of our human understanding to develop and transcend the current basis. This epistemological risk is something that is much more vital to our future. Consider this, even if with the current architecture, those models would be capable of coming up with a very comprehensive and powerful world model, suggested by many LLM believers and big minds as well, and even that world model is much better than what humans could build in our minds, if we do not have a reliable translation, investigation, and supervision mechanism, and what AIs have will always only belongs to AIs, out of human reach. Again, from my perspective, this potential incapability of we humans to even keep up with our creation is much more frustrating than not having an AGI. In fact, looking at the rat race of pursuing AGI from this perspective, to me, the meaning of doing so is not only the opportunity benefit we could have after achieving AGI, but more significantly, the efforts to devote in the course will inevitably lead us to, also, as I said, level up our understanding of ourselves as humans, of our mind, heart, soul, spirit, or whatever you call it, and of the relation among us humans and between us and technology.  	Still, if we take a step back and come back to our personal relationship with AI in general (as well as in the arts), there may be a different story. On top of all these reflections on and attention to this trend globally and personally, my takeaway, on the other hand, is to remember to keep some distance between ourselves with the "big thing." It is so easy to get mesmerized or overwhelmed in this course with all that info crammed into our information cocoons across almost all media, and it is so easy for one or for me personally at some point to lose my track inside the hypes. However, if we look back into history, we can only tell a revolution has happened after it has already happened. In other words, no matter if you are experiencing a global revolution or not, or even if the answer is positive, realizing we as one and another individual is and will stay as, and better stay as one and another individual is something worthwhile. It is the elephant in the room for sure, but it is definitely not the only thing in the room as well. Keeping updated is nice, even nicer is to strive and find the niche place for each one of our lives. To some extent, I believe this, carefully, patiently, and properly living our own lives, is, as always, much more valuable.  	All right, so much for AIs. More personally, my expectations, impressions, and realization from college education also changed drastically in one year (as education may also be the theme of some of our songs in the album). After the first week of college life, when excitement and exploration were still the main themes, I got into a period of depression again. In hindsight, I would say it was due to the discrepancy between my expectations for an ideal college education held before graduating from high school and the reality I experienced. By all means, I'm not going to criticize NYUAD (which I may do so later as well as count the pros and wonderful aspects), but rather disillusion myself. Before graduating from high school, although I had not realized it then, a part of my coping mechanism against the lingering disappointment in the college application and boredom towards the end of the last semester of high school life was using an ideal college education environment in the future to suppress the "current" problems. Then, when that idealized image was disturbed by reality, the discrepancy would be drastically enlarged.  	So... What is my "ideal college education"? While it is not easy to capture the whole picture, I could still put it as a rich-enough platform that excels in providing the soil for each student to grow, learn, practice, and, most importantly, design their own path. I know it's still very vague, unsubstantial, and could be the promotion of any random college, and that's why at this moment I would even assume it is too ideal to be true in any existing college, at least undergrad. Of course, I can try to exemplify it in more detail, such as in terms of the academic/diploma freedom, course availability, scope, and population on and around the campus, relationship with the community and the globe, etc. But more fundamentally, I start to realize this lies in the nature/initiative of the current education system, even with all those PBL, 1v1 tutoring, small seminars, close relationship with faculty, etc. It is a system still prioritizing teaching knowledge and skills, despite the pedagogy used, instead of merely and purely offering opportunities to look for knowledge and skills. Again, by all means, I agree that the former is and will be for a long while the most commonly suitable solution for most people, and I myself am also benefiting from it, but the absence or inadequacy of the latter is unfortunately bringing me this dissatisfaction, and the thirst that cannot be eased. As a result, I'm very lonely. Not physically lonely, as my schedule is always packed and I'm constantly meeting with people on one and another tasks/project but intellectually lonely, especially when most of the few peers I could converse with will graduate very soon. That being said, I do have several strategies to face this situation, ranging from potentially knowing more people by becoming more active in the social environments (which, for me, is very energy-consuming) or considering a change/transfer to a potentially more ideal environment that may be closer to what I desire. But even if none of these approaches work, I would say changing a perspective is at least what I can do. Maybe instead of thinking of the college education itself as the main source of personal growth, we should take some stake back, proactively devise the rest of our life to align with our personal goals, and only consider the college education as a part, no more and no less, of our path. Indeed, this is actually a very simple mindset to say, but for me, I did took a while to re-adjust myself to my current daily life.  	Well, to take a step back and have a break a bit from the intense topics, recently I had some extremely satisfying experiences at some of the concerts I attended. These haven't fundamentally shifted my take on analysis vs. sensation, but for sure offer some precious evidence. There are five concerts I'd like to mention here: China National Symphony Orchestra in Emirati Palace, Layth Sidiq's violin ensemble performance of Arabic music, Augustin Hadelich's violin solo, Les Misérables musical, and Riley Mulherkar's trumpet ensemble performance of jazz. While I will not delve into each and every performance here, it is worthwhile to use them as a reflection of my development on analysis VS sensation.  	In a nutshell, although the specific response I have to these performances varies, the common involvement of physicality as a flag to my engagement in the performance is a solid takeaway. I used to say that if I could completely relax and fall asleep during a performance, it should be at least a sensationally soothing event. After experiencing these five events in the past six months, I would add another rule on top of them, which is that the music that makes me flex my muscles and squirm in the chair is some touching music – no matter if I’m still thinking/analyzing (such as during the national symphony orchestra and Riley’s performances) or not (such as feeling something larger then myself, or talab, during Layth’s performance or grasped by the pure beauty, passion, intricacy, and so on in Augustin’s solo), the body itself will speak. This can also be supported in the Les Misérables case, during which my body suffered in the seat, and my mind followed, bringing me to a breakdown against the shore of Yas Bay. Therefore, although my general approach would be trying to dominate my body with mind and will, I have to admit that once again, bodies have their magic. And I’m glad that I can still experience them now and then.