A crowd gathered at the MIT Media Lab in September for a concert by musician Jordan Rudess and two collaborators. One of them, violinist and vocalist Camilla Bäckman, has performed with Rudess before. The other — an artificial intelligence model informally dubbed the jam_bot, which Rudess developed with an MIT team over the preceding several months — was making its public debut as a work in progress.Throughout the show, Rudess and Bäckman exchanged the signals and smiles of experienced musicians finding a groove together. Rudess’ interactions with the jam_bot suggested…
