Mikey Shulman, CEO of AI music generation startup Suno, actually thinks people don’t enjoy making music anymore. “It’s not really enjoyable to make music now,” according to him. “It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software.” Shulman is the latest tech bro trying desperately to solve a problem that isn’t a problem.

What he’s misidentifying is the sport—that is, the effort and enjoyment—of making music. Like anything you do for sport, you do it to apply yourself. But Shulman says, “I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.” Even if this were the case, having AI do it for us doesn’t solve the core issue. We must learn to enjoy the process by letting go of commodity fetishism and embracing the limits of our ability.

In the 1960s, psychologist Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term “flow” to describe a phenomenon in the creative process. He discovered that people are happy when performing a meaningful activity for the sake of the activity itself. Music composition is a kind of puzzle game, and performance is a kind of exercise. If you have an AI solve the puzzle for you or run a mile for you, you’ve missed the point.

When one’s primary purpose is to make a product, I would contend that one is no longer in “flow,” no longer enjoying the happiness of creative work. Commodity fetishism, which is endemic to capitalism, trains us to treat creative works as merchandise, not as the fruit of a creative experience. It conditions us to believe everything ought to be profitable, and if it’s not, it’s not worth doing.

Shulman’s statements also betray a low view of humanity common to industrialists and capitalists: ultimately, people are lazy and want quick results. These types often defend capitalism, saying without it no one will have the incentive to make something new and good. This is out of touch with the reality of the tens of thousands of Spotify artists who don’t make a single dime from music streams.

Giving Shulman the benefit of the doubt, he seems to want to help people make music, but taking production from them and giving it to the machine is not it. We live in perhaps the most accessible era for learning to make music, and while music-making can always be made more accessible for people with different abilities and means, it’s still the sport of music that is the appeal.

Those of us who are poor or disabled still want to make music, and the world needs such music. Giving us a text box is not empowerment. Violinist and folk singer Gaelynn Lea, whose brittle bone disease has shaped the way she plays and sings says, “You wouldn’t have my music if I didn’t have my disability.” Shulman’s vision of a tech-solutionist future of music threatens further erasure of marginalized musicians.

In Nathan Schneider’s book Everything for Everyone, he writes, “When tech people talk about ‘democratizing’ something, like driving directions or online banking, what they really mean is access. Access is fine, but it’s just access. It’s a drive-through window, not a door. Access is only part of what democracy has always entailed—alongside real ownership, governance, and accountability. Democracy is a process, not a product.” Again, people enjoy this process: the ability to act and enact. If AI is to help us, make it open source, so all own it.

Musicians, the professional, hobbyist, and aspiring types, are not throwing in the towel. Music, like any pastime, is just too much fun. If we can one day resolve the ethical problems of AI, its threat to the environment and the livelihoods of workers, perhaps AI could be a beneficial tool for learning and accessibility. But Suno isn’t that. It’s just a vending machine for junk food, and home cooking belongs to the music-makers.