BBC reports on robots that have learned to appreciate punk music. I like this story because it combines two of my favorite subjects. As far as building robots that evaluate music goes it’s an interesting reversal on the usual endeavor to have machines perform or write music. In the sci-fi vision of the future could there be a robot audience to a robot band? I can only see this as furthering the ability of computers to generate songs. If they have an ability to judge the musicality of a piece then by using genetic programming algorithms or even using a Monte Carlo approach there ceases to be a need for human interference guiding the process.

The robots can decide whether a song is punk or not within 30 seconds.

“It depends on the form at the beginning of the song. It flicks between thinking a song is punk and not punk at the start and then becomes convinced,” said Mr Jones Morris.

Professor McOwan added: “If you look at the audio cortex in the brain and the cochlea in the ear you find that’s exactly how the human system does it.

The robot reacts to the level of “punk” in the song.

The more punk it believes the song is, the more it pogos in a “happy and frenzied way”, said Professor McOwan.

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