Isn't that exactly how music is consumed nowadays by most people? They put something when driving, cooking, doing homework, etc. It's used mainly for mood/focus and they're not exactly paying close attention to it the same way one would to a audiobook of, say, an abstract algebra textbook. Especially considering how cheap and easy it is to steam music nowadays. I suspect focused, attentive listening only makes up a small minority of the total streams.
The inverse is likely true with the classical audience. Just like with jazz, although there will be a small portion of users seeking “vibey jazz” sort of playlists to use in the background while working, the majority of jazz fans consume jazz as albums and still concerned with things like personnel and liner notes, perhaps even who mastered this recording. Classical fans are similar except I would say even more picky IME (worked in a jazz and classical CD store/venue for a number of years)
The same may be true for Jazz, though in that genre there may be a bit more of a separation between jazzy background mood music and jazz as consumed by fans. There are some overlaps ("The Girl from Ipanema", "Take Five", etc), but they may not be quite as central to the canon as their classical counterparts.
You haven't justified your assertion of the dichotomy between pure blind consumption and active, focussed listening. You must actually argue that the negation of one implies the other. Your comment is totally meaningless as it stands
Or, just keep your pacifier, baby ;)
I've chosen to think of art in terms of products I consume, and less as admiration of artists, though of course I do some of the latter too.
I would think they would want to listen to it for the same reason they listen to human generated music.
Is your thought here that AI generated art is not art? Is it the nature of the creator that determines the listeners enjoyment? If the music generated by a computer is indistinguishable from human made music, how can this be possible? Moreover, at what point would the computer generation be sufficient to shift it from art to “screensaver”? Would it be one simulated member of an otherwise human orchestra? Would it take 50%. If you can’t draw a line, doesn’t that further indicate it’s irrelevant?
If you want a quick example of what I'm saying, look online for Music for Installations by Brian Eno. It's a "almost-generative-but-not-really" music album made for audiovisual installations. It's... kinda nice but it's 6 hours long and literally gets boring after less than 30 minutes.
I can't imagine listening to something even more abstracted from a human composer for more than 20 minutes. I mean, I'm pretty sure you can generate something even quite pleasant with AIs. Most people will just listen for 15 min, say "uh, cool", and go back to regular music.
And if that does happen, expect a far more exciting backlash movement, like alternative rock in the 90s was to garbage excesses of the 80s.
It already exists, and is known as elevator music or muzak. I can certainly see the value in generating endless copyright-free background music, because so many human effort has been put into composing it already.