Ludvig Van Beethoven wrote one of his most iconic symphonies in 1823. The 9th symphony contains the famous Ode To Joy, the current anthem of the European Parliament. It was the first time choral music was introduced into a classical symphony and stunned audiences when it was first performed. Today, it is played at almost every major symbolic world event. It was also written 9 years after he went completely deaf. Think about that. One of the most ambitious and complex pieces of music written by a man who couldn’t even hear the notes he was playing on the piano!
Beethoven wrote his first symphony in 1800 at the age of 30. By then he had started to notice that his hearing was declining. By 1814 he was almost completely deaf but still wrote four more symphonies and countless more pieces of music over the next 13 years. These included the 6th symphony (a personal favourite for my untrained years), and the much more famous 9th symphony. But many things about Beethoven represent the essence of innovation, and a study of his life and work is extremely instructive for any innovator today.
It seems to be generally accepted by experts that Beethoven fundamentally changed classical music. That which came before him was significantly different from all that came after him. He transitioned music from the old ‘classical’ era into the new ‘romantic’ period along with Haydn and Mozart. He introduced new instruments (and voice) into symphonies and imbued them with far more emotion than ever before. His 4 note innovation in the 5th symphony, described as ‘fate knocking on the door’, not only inspired future classical composers, but there are aficionados who can trace the antecedents of this all the way to rock riffs such as Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water, or the John Williams’ music in the movie Jaws. And along the way he helped to introduce the metronome, helped improvisations with pianos, and influenced the evolution of concert halls.
I find it interesting and relevant that for the first half of his life, Beethoven was a essentially a pianist, rather than a composer. Born in Bonn, his father, a musician himself, put young Ludvig through his paces with zeal and aggression. By the time Ludvig was in his late teens he was a leading Pianist in Bonn, and when he moved to Vienna at the age of 21, it was to pursue a career as a practicing musician, in the city of Haydn and Mozart. He trained with Haydn, and played for the nobility of Vienna. He was known as a virtuoso pianist and although he railed against being (and playing) at the beck and call of the nobility, that was indeed how he earned his living. This is relevant in two important ways - the first is that by pushing piano playing to its limits allowed Beethoven to conceptualise music through the eyes of the performer and to expand the limits of the possible. And the second equally important aspect is that even after he went deaf, his intimate familiarity with music - almost as his spoken language - allowed him to compose without access to his auditory functions. He could explicitly translate the compositions in his mind. For me this is a huge lesson. You always need the mastery of your tools to be a great innovator. It’s as true of Picasso as it is of Steve Jobs.
Let’s also consider the impact of his deafness. He was devastated when he discovered this and at some point idly considered ending his life. But he turned it into his personal mission to overcome this problem. He promised to "seize Fate by the throat". His early years of composing through deafness is known as his ‘heroic’ period, and his commitment to defying fate is evident in the quality of his music and the reference to fate knocking on the door. And in another note to himself, he commented "Let your deafness no longer be a secret—even in art." For the longest time he had to keep his deafness to himself for fear of losing his livelihood and social status, and often came across as rude as a consequence. But could his deafness also have helped in some way? Most composers composed music keeping in mind the limitations of instruments and musicians, but Beethoven pushed those boundaries constantly, requiring musicians to play in ways that they had never had to before. Is it possible that his deafness made him immune to the challenges of actually playing the music he was composing and in a perverse way, helped his work become even greater? This is another key aspect of innovators - many of them get to greatness by overcoming a great obstacle ranging from dyslexia to difficult family environments. Lesson number 2: the ability to turn a setback into a springboard is a hallmark of great innovators.
“I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly never wholly overcome me.” Ludvig Van Beethoven
It wasn’t just his lack of hearing that made him appear rude. Beethoven was never really adjusted to social norms. He was thin skinned and prone to fits of rage at the smallest things, usually followed by periods of great contrition as evidenced by the many apologetic letters he wrote. He was untidy, unkempt, and uncaring of social norms. At the peak of his fame, he was once mistaken for a hobo and kept in a police lock up for the night. He was permanently restless and despite living in Vienna for most of his life, had an absurd 60 different residences. He quarrelled constantly with his brothers, his friends, and even his benefactors. In all of this he held on to a few things steadfastly - notably his personal values, which didn’t always conform to popular opinion. And his music notebooks, which he carried around from home to home steadfastly. Lesson number 3 - it’s okay to be different. You don’t have to fit in. Sometimes fitting in and following the rules takes too much energy out of you.
In fact, a principle I’ve come to appreciate more of late is the idea of doubling down on your strengths. Beethoven lived through his art. He was average to poor about almost everything else. He was poor at managing his finances. He exercised poor judgement in how he managed / interfered in his brothers’ lives. He fought to establish guardianship of his nephew after his brothers death, but his heavy handed behaviour drove his nephew to attempting suicide. His love life was a litany of unrequited feelings. He declared in a letter that he was aware that outside of his music, he had little by way of skills or qualities. His health was brittle for most of his life. Most of his life he went bouncing from incredible highs to devastating lows. But despite all of this, Beethoven had incredible self belief and confidence in his musical ability, which allowed him to constantly challenge the existing rules and ‘laws’ of music and even of society. He never cowed down to convention.
Beethoven Unleashed is a BBC 3 Audiobook which talks you through his life, works, and music - as a lay listener of classical music, I found this very illuminating.
A World Without Beethoven is a Netflix documentary which explores his impact on contemporary film and rock music, on the music business, and on instruments. It’s an excellent take on the massive innovation footprint of Beethoven, on our lives, in ways that we don’t always recognise.
AI In Healthcare
The World Health Organisation (AKA WHO) have released a guidance paper on the ethical use of AI in healthcare. The paper sets out 6 key principles. Here are my thoughts on the 6 principles
Promoting inclusive use of AI: nothing to disagree with here, in fact we’re planning to have an event around Inclusivity in AI, so it can be designed into systems from the outset rather than having to be retrofitted later.
Responsiveness and Sustainable AI: Sustainability is going to be a tradeoff between the overall energy footprint of creating and using AI, vs the benefits it delivers. Responsiveness is I think about reacting to the ongoing use and assessment and using the lessons learnt constructively, for improvement. Again this seems fair. But it’s always an interesting question as to whether current pharmaceutical interventions are subject to the same principles.
Protecting Human Autonomy - this is about ensuring that at the core there’s a human in charge. This can be a bit tricky, especially if we’re using a system to solve a potentially complex problem. What if the human doesn’t really understand the working of the AI? Consider Google’s alphafold identifying 250m protein structures - how could a human sit in judgement on the AI in cases like this? I think the idea of human autonomy needs to be scrutinised.
Creating transparency: the report says “AI technologies should be intelligible or understandable to developers, medical professionals, patients, users and regulators”. While this sounds good in principle, it seems to me that very few medical professionals end even fewer regulators might truly understand AI and how it works. So the idea of intelligibility is a tricky one. Somebody in the system should of course be able to understand it. But that might be the AI experts, rather than the medical professionals. The under-explored aspect here might be predictability, and repeatability of AI systems and their outcomes, which is what the medical professionals require. I wonder if most doctors truly understand the physics of ECG Machines, for examples.
Ensuring accountability and Responsible AI: Again, the wording that’s used here is “application of regulatory principles upstream and downstream of the algorithm by establishing points of human supervision. If something goes wrong with an AI technology, there should be accountability.” There is an implicit assumption that the AI system is purely supporting a human expert - which may or may not always be the case. Also, I wonder how much of the healthcare system today stands up to the test of accountability! Books such as Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed have highlighted how the lack of transparency, accountability and data sharing is hurting the healthcare system as well as patients.
Avoiding harms and promoting well being: “Preventing harm requires that AI not result in mental or physical harm that could be avoided by use of an alternative practice or approach”. Indeed, but as always and especially in healthcare, there are trade offs. Almost every drug in use has side effects. Weight loss drugs, now being prescribed to millions of people, have many unhealthy side effects which could be avoided by recommending better diet and exercise for a vast number of recipients. Should we not also then hold all existing interventions to the same high standard? Obviously as a guideline this makes ample sense, but it’s always going to be the context in which these will be implemented, and whether the spirit of the guideline is evoked or its literal implications.
In summary, while most of the principles are laudable, there is often a tendency with new technology to question its efficacy because it has some flaws or is not perfect. But perhaps the question to be asked is does it move us forward? Is it better than what we have today? Will it save more lives in healthcare? Occasionally, in the language of setting up guardrails there is a hidden fear of change or the unknown. Or a resistance to progress that might erode our existing professional competitive advantage. We need to guard against this too. A principle I greatly espouse is that progress, not perfection is the point of any new technology or advancement.
AI: PEDS
PEDS Neural Networks: in essence this seems the back swing of the pendulum. When the computational load gets too big for highly complex problems - instead of letting neural networks do all the heavy lifting and learning, introducing domain models from the sciences is a more efficient way to go. In this case involving partial differential equations, used for modelling real time-evolving phenomenon, such as spread of pollutants in the atmosphere. Hence the term Physics Enhanced Deep Surrogate or PEDS models. (IEEE Spectrum)
Other Reading
Productivity: The productivity debate spills over onto hybrid working. Given the decades old conundrum about productivity growth or the lack of it, it seems natural that the impact of hybrid work on productivity remains equally a contentious issue. Short answer - it depends. (Bloomberg)
SDLC: Big Tech companies are laying off people despite the economy booming. I suspect this is partly due to shifting investment focus, and partly due to the impact of AI on the SDLC. (Washington Post)
Luxury: LVMH goes all in on the Olympics. Do Luxury and Athletics mix? And if 60% of all luxury sales come from people who spend less than $2,000 a year, is the luxury industry looking beyond exclusivity? (WSJ)
Automation Risks: As Tim Harford writes, “a low-grade algorithm and a switched-on human make better decisions together than a top-notch algorithm with a zoned-out human. And when the algorithm is top-notch, a zoned-out human turns out to be what you get.” In other words a level 2 autonomous vehicle might be safer than a level 4.(FT)
Kodak Moment for Eli Lily: (I call it a Kodak moment in memory of the fact that Kodak had access to digital photography tech but chose to turn their backs on it and perished as a result!) Eli Lily has a successful obesity drug today. But 30 years ago, they walked away from being the first to get to the category. “They weren’t interested” according to Di Marchi, the scientist who made the initial discovery and has since started and sold multiple biotech companies to Novo Nordisk and Roche. (Business Week)