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Jazz icon Herbie Hancock's intriguing philosophy about AI: Humans should show it kindness

"When I'm using ChatGPT or Siri on my iPhone, I always say thank you and they usually say, 'You're welcome.'"

Photos of Herbie Hancock and a futuristic AI humanoid

Herbie Hancock has an optimistic outlook about the rise of AI.

Photo credit: Herbie Hancock (Shawn Miller/Library of Congress, via Wikicommons) / Photo credit: Canva (AI image)
Ryan Reed
By Ryan ReedMar 20, 2025
Ryan Reed

Ryan Reed is a writer, editor, music journalist, musician, YouTube guy, and record collector from Knoxville, TN.

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Herbie Hancock is a musical genius, a jazz icon who’s been in the industry for more than six decades. Given the rise of artificial intelligence, even within music production, you might expect someone of his pedigree to somewhat wary. Instead, he’s optimistic—even suggesting we should be overtly polite to our potential robot overlords.

"When I'm using ChatGPT or Siri on my iPhone, I always say 'thank you' and they usually say, 'You're welcome,'" the keyboardist/composer tells the BBC. "I try to treat AI like it's human, and it actually manifests itself in an extremely positive way, and that makes me feel better."

The 84-year-old Hancock—who studied music and electrical engineering at Iowa’s Grinnell College—shares further opinions about the rise in AI, saying he plans to "embrace" the technology instead of fearing it.

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"Who are the worst examples of understanding ethics and being able to live a life with ethics? We, human beings, we're the worst, right?" he adds. "I have this feeling that AI is going to help us all understand and get closer to becoming more ethically responsible people that are helping each other, instead of hurting or killing each other. Helping the planet instead of killing the planet with environmental issues."

Hancock expresses similar views about AI in a January 2024 interview with Scroll.in, saying the best approach to dealing with AI is to "treat it like it’s a person" and "not try to trick it." Failing to doing so, he believes, "could cause the downfall of humanity." On a musical level, he said he looks forward to the possibilities AI could bring: "We’ll be able to interact with AI musically where the AI is playing and responding to you."

Few recording artists have done more to advance music technology than Hancock, particularly as he experimented with groundbreaking electronics and synthesizers during his acclaimed run in the 1970s. In a recent video marking his acceptance of the Polar Music Prize, a Swedish international award created in 1989, he talks about his original interest in synth technology while recording with his legendary band The Headhunters.

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"A synthesizer produces sound for music, so I wasn’t afraid of it," he says. "A lot of jazz musicians were kind of afraid of that. I started thinking, 'I’ve been listening more to something that’s kind of funky more than something directly related to jazz as we know it. I decided, 'I think it’s time for me to pursue that.'"

The video includes a portion of an early '80s in-studio interview with Quincy Jones, where Hancock demonstrates the then-radical Fairlight CMI sampling synthesizer.

"These instruments were designed for people to use—for people to use," he says in that segment. "It’s just a tool, another tool, the way an axe is a tool. An axe can be a tool to cut wood to build a house or can be a tool to slaughter your neighbor—the same [way] a synthesizer can be a tool to really hurt people’s ears and interfere with their lives or can be a tool to make a really nice-sounding instrument that can really impact people in a positive way. It all depends on the person that’s using it."

If you haven’t been paying attention to tech-in-music news, you may have missed that we’ve officially entered the future—an era where AI can be used to generate songs in the style of a particular artist. In 2023, the band Breezer, who were tired of waiting on a reunion from long-dormant alt-rock giants Oasis, recorded an entire album of songs in the band’s style and then added an AI version of Liam Gallagher’s voice. Kinda cool, kinda creepy!

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herbie hancockmusic technologysynthesizersjazzartificial intelligencetechnologymusic

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