Take a look at the picture. The robot on the left is a famous "musician" named Shimon. Shimon is a robot with four arms and a ball-like head. He holds small mallets(木槌) in his "hands" to play a marimba(马林巴琴). His head moves around with the beat(节拍) of his music he plays.
Actually, Shimon can do more than that. He is taught to write his own music with the help of a new technology known as Artificial Intelligence(AI). The leader of the Shimon project, Gil Weinberg, calls this "deep learning". After a four-year "training", now Shimon can not only write his music, but also play it in real time with other musicians, as the picture shows.
Singing the songs is another story. Yes, Shimon has his own voice, too. His voice was created by AI and sounds very like a man. The researchers even recorded one of Shimon's songs called Into Your Mind. To show the world how wonderful Shimon is, the team has put out an album(专辑) of his songs on the music streaming media(音乐流媒体) Spotify. Some listeners comment(评论) that they can't believe the voice is from a robot. Next, the researchers want to make plans for Shimon to go on a tour(巡演) with a band and play his music live. Of course he can sing some of them.
AI is developing at a surprising speed, but the main goal of projects like Shimon is never to show human how much robots can do. "The most important is that we know together, human and robots can and will make something beautiful. " says Gil Weinberg.
