Carey Tan’s Symphony No. 3, The Rise and Fall of AI Humanity, is a futuristic fable about a society reshaped by artificial intelligence.

This excerpt comes from the opening of the first movement, Construction of AI Civilisation.

Here, humans and AI have just reached an agreement: robots will take over construction, production, labour, and social organisation, helping humanity build a new and seemingly ideal world.

Houses are built by machines. Resources are produced by machines. Order is maintained by artificial intelligence. Human beings appear to be freed from labour, left only to enjoy life, rest, entertainment, and
spiritual fulfilment.

The music moves with bright, rapid, and cheerful energy, as if countless machines are working busily and happily to create this new society.

Yet beneath this optimism, the low tuba sound occasionally tears through the texture, like a distant warning.

It suggests that this perfect agreement may already contain the first cracks of future danger.