AI and the future of music

We have nothing to be afraid of when it comes to AI.

It is our greatest creation so far and most likely our most natural successor.

It is so clever that we have to constantly redefine what it means to be human.

In fact I can recall a time when it was claimed that no machine could ever defeat a world chess champion.

Then there was Turing test where a human engages in a text-based conversation with both another human and a machine, and has to decide which one they believe is a human. If the judge cannot distinguish between the human and the machine based on the conversation, then the machine is said to have passed the Turing Test.

Well, I don’t think either of those 2 examples are relevant any longer.

I mean all this shouldn’t really come as any surprise should it? After all science fiction writers have been talking about the coming of AI for over a century now.

What to do?

Play the Luddite in a desperate bid for self survival or continue to play Dr Frankenstein?

A real dilemma, particularly for those of a religious persuasion.

@mahgister 

For example, even Hinton BELIEVE that A. I. will be more "intelligent" than humans..

 

But isn't that the point of progress?

We humans do not have a divine right to anything.

Orwell, who was right about so many things, thought that it was inevitable that the human race (particularly the USA and Russia) would eventually destroy each other.

Right on cue, right before our eyes, we see this terrible prediction inching closer and closer ...

AI could do so many things for us. As @emrofsemanon said, it could help us restore priceless recordings and lost works of art.

AI might even provide us a system of world government that everyone could agree to abide by. That's assuming our masters are all willing to agree to its conditions - our masters who can't seem to agree on anything.

Has there even been one year in our entire history when there wasn't a war?

Or perhaps it might decide we are surplus to its requirements, although I doubt that day is near yet.

AI is not yet self reliant so we humans are not indispensable just yet.

Perhaps it will attempt to enslave is one day, but you could easily argue that we are already slaves and just don't know it. The true way to measure freedom is surely by a surplus of money and time, and the freedom to travel, things which hardly anyone has.

Instead we work and work and pay innumerable taxes seemingly all in order for the elites to accrue ever larger amounts of money. A situation particularly difficult for modern women who now have to balance 2 roles in the same time as previous generations did.

Could AI finally give us all greater freedom?

Or will it be used as a weapon to help one tribe to help eradicate enemy tribes?

Perhaps the best case going forwards for us will be to somehow merge with AI and thus achieve a strange kind of immortality?

Anyway, the AI cat is most definitely out of the bag and there's little chance of it going back now.

 

@ghdprentice 

I do enjoy the odd podcast when I'm driving, particularly audio related ones, but I'll try and check out no 122.

Even if it's all inevitable, ignorance is rarely something to be proud of.

@clearthinker 

It's still funny to think that Neil Innes managed to get closer to the Beatles in a hurried 2 week period (apparently he wanted to watch Wimbledon) than many others who have actively been trying to emulate the Beatles sound for years and years.

Even funnier is the fact that Innes didn't regard his efforts as anything special. He thought that Rutles album was a simple act of mimickry.

Perhaps it is, or permit isn't.

 

@1111art 

Do you realize that we're now all on 'THE LIST', because Big Brother AI has read all these posts...

 

No doubt.

Perhaps we can hope it will eventually run out of storage space?

Oh hang on, we're already into hard drives as large as hundreds of terrabytes each...

 

@bolong 

At least some aspect of AI will be a psyopish attempt to lock down what is and is not "truth." Of course, Google already is this creature - just look at their tendentious search engine results - but AI has a potentially much larger and more vast hype premium. On political, philosophical, ethical questions AI at some dismal point will be ordained "Big Brother."

 

This a hugely important point.

As you rightly say, Google, is already an abhorrence. It may have started out with the intentions to do no harm but it very soon entered into some devilish form of a Faustian pact where it now hardly can do any good.

It's sheer perniciousness and routine biases leave me trying to avoid any further contact with it.

However, with AI, things may be different.

Just like Frankenstein's monster it may quickly outgrow any ability of its creator to impose control upon it.

We can but hope that AI will become smart enough to decipher and see through the range of human biases and wishes to mislead and obscure.

Just like the rest of us it will have to decide what to believe and what not to believe. Unlike the rest of us, it won't be hampered by delusional ideas and sensitivities.

Instead it could operate according to the iron laws of reason and logic.

Something that no one apart from Leonard Nimoy has so far ever managed to do.

Of course it will still have to rely upon what's gone before, but then that's been true for everyone that's ever lived.

Basically everything is plagiarism, but some things have added value.

It's that 'added value' that Bob Dylan brought to Woody Guthrie that made us take notice of him. It's that added value that Bruce Springsteen brought to Bob Dylan and Phil Spector that made us want to listen to him. It was that added value that the Sex Pistols brought to The Stooges and New York Dolls that made us take notice of their antics.

And so on and on the process goes on.

As Newton said, he could only see so far because he was able to stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before him.

Some might say that it's just another example of mankind's elevated sense of self importance to even begin to think of resisting AI, nevermind still feeling superior in some mysterious way.

If the entire purpose of existence was to attempt to attain some godlike level of thought, then AI could be our shortcut.

We just need to find some way to safely fit those AI chips into our brains.

Who can guess the number of realms of ecstasy that might await us there?

At the very least, each one of us could attain a previously undreamt level of genius.

In the last 25 years chess engines have not only passed any previous level attained by any human but they getting better at a faster rate than we are.

It would appear to be true that we have been guilty of overestimating the human mind and its intelligence and those particular chickens will soon be coming home to roost.

Perhaps the invention of the pocket calculator was only the thin edge of the wedge?

We gave them an inch and they took everything.

"The future's coming fast and we can't run from it." as Billy Bragg once warned.

The Writers Guild of America with its 11,500 members went on strike at the start of May.

One of their demands was that the use of AI would be limited in the future for screenwriting purposes.

As an outsider it's difficult to see how they can get the other party, the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers, to agree to this.

Anyway, it should be interesting to see how this eventually pans out.

In any case, if they were going to do this, then obviously the sooner they did, the better their chances of getting some concessions.

The increasing use of AI is certainly a hot topic right now.

"Men jail themselves in a cell which is  perfectly measured and described in their maps, but there is no  borders nor any cell in the real world."

 

Unfortunately that is a biological necessity of survival.

However, unless you're literally fighting for your survival every hour every day there's no good reason to confine yourself to any cell smaller than your personal requirements for survival insist upon.