Few people on the planet have thought longer, deeper, or more rigorously about what artificial intelligence means for musical creativity than François Pachet. Researcher, composer, former director of the Spotify Creator Technology Research Lab, and architect of some of the most influential AI music systems ever built, including Flow Machines, which produced the first AI-assisted pop song to reach a mainstream audience. Pachet has spent decades asking the questions the rest of the industry is only now beginning to take seriously.

In this intimate fireside conversation, he reflects on a career spent at the intersection of computer science and musical imagination: what drew him to the problem, what he got wrong, what surprised him, and what he believes is genuinely at stake as AI moves from research lab curiosity to the engine room of the creative industries. Does AI expand human creativity or quietly hollow it out? Can a machine have taste? And what does it mean to compose in a world where composition itself is being automated? A rare opportunity to hear one of the field's true pioneers think out loud about where this is all heading, and what we should be doing about it.