An AI told me to raise a "GLOBAL BUSKER ARMY"

I’ve just gotten home from two hours in the gym doing weights, ending my 42-year run avoiding bench presses. The result is I’m finding it difficult to type. Thankfully, this email will write itself.

Or I suppose I should say this email already wrote itself, when my AI-obsessed friend prompted his home-built AI tool to say what it thought busk.co should do in the future. For fun, he told the AI to imagine that we had unlimited time, money and resources.

The AI divided its suggestions into three “levels” of scope, starting with the mundane and ending with…well, world domination.

It’s hilariously dystopic—and funny enough to republish.

I think by “newsletter automation” it means cutting me out of the picture entirely. I object. Still, the rest of its Level 1 suggestions aren’t too radical.

This…isn’t completely crazy. “Scraping” the internet for busking laws and permit changes is kinda what I do already with Google Alerts, which are automatically sent to my inbox so I can then write about them. There’s no reason why an AI tool shouldn’t do that instead. It could then format the information in an easy-to-read way. I might actually look into that.

Absolutely not. Can you imagine a system that relied on knowing exactly how much all buskers earn all the time?! Also, if an app notified every busker in a city exactly where they should perform next, it would create an instant queue of very annoyed artists. Horrible idea.

This is a little confusing, as what does “recording evidence” or “coordinating support” mean in practice for us?

On the other hand, connecting buskers to local advocates is kinda what we tried to do with buskers.guide. We made it possible for buskers to get notified every time a street performer posted about about a [topic] in a [location]. So, you could get notified every time a busker reported getting [arrested] in [Boston], for example. Could have been very useful for advocates, if we’d managed to fund that site’s completion. Hopefully one day we’ll actually get it finished!

a.k.a. where the AI completely lost the plot.

Creepy. But, I can’t wait to see this appear in a movie.

Coordinating protests isn’t a bad thing, but an AI coordinating protests is incredibly unethical. A black box making unaccountable determinations about where thousands of humans should spend political capital is the kind of thing reserved for only the bleakest science fiction.

Honestly not impressed. This is just a suggestion to create a “guidebook but in AI”. Instead of coaching, a busker would only need a translation app on their phone, and maybe a one-page pdf for each country. The pdf could let you know that when Australian men watch you with their arms crossed it doesn’t actually mean they hate your show. Or when British people come forth to tell you that “You’re not that bad” it’s the highest of compliments.

Serious question: would you use this? If you had Augmented Reality glasses that secretly scanned your audience for demographic data in order to tell you what to play, would you wear them? [Forget how it would work, I’m only concerned with my readers’ moral compass. Let me know in the comments!]

Let’s do it. First, we’ll need to build a buskermobile for each city. I’m imagining a giant hat on wheels. When a busker gets a fine, they hit a button on their emergency beacon and we launch into action, sirens blaring. On arrival, mimes jump out and distract the cops while lawyers collect witness testimonies and badge numbers.

“Instant strike capabilities”. Worrying that this language has ended up in an AI’s exploration of the arts. A whimsically unhinged response, which somehow ends with a pretty sedate suggestion: musical collabs mixed with AI tools. Doesn’t that kind of thing already exist?

After my friend showed me the above responses, I asked him to prompt the AI to explain exactly what infrastructure we’d need to put it all into action. Here’s what it said:

Now, I know some of you think we can probably afford to build all of that, but we’re not quite there yet. Maybe if you upgraded to a paid subscription, we could begin?

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News, stories and gig opportunities from around the world that I’m not writing about elsewhere. In this newsletter: 60 complaints can shut down a city, tell Toronto what you think, cops handcuff a teen, the record for longest busking marathon has been broken, Charley Crockett’s New York Subway busking past, the Piccadilly Rats, and a 93 year old sings for the first time in decades…

First up: in answer to a Freedom of Information Request, Birmingham council revealed they had just 60 complaints about street performers in 2024 — the year that the city decided to ban busking entirely. Insane. Indie rock legend Pete Doherty shared a petition asking the council to repeal the ban.

Toronto is offering feedback on its busking policy. This might be a good thing, so if you want to let them know what you think, here’s the survey to fill out.

Seventeen year old busker Charlie Wilson found out what happens when a cop is determined to mess with you. He was handcuffed in Bury, a town just north of Manchester. The same week that story came out, the news was reporting that Elliot James Reay went from busking in Bury to supporting a music star on a tour of the USA. Weird coincidence.