AI and the future of music

Well, there is value and importance to ongoing discussions about AI and how society will respond/be impacted.  There are things that loom negative in the future with regard to AI.  There are also positive things as well.  This is true with pretty much every innovation.  There used to be a thriving industry in large cites and smaller towns.  Individuals and companies had contracts cleaning up all the horse droppings in the streets as horses are, shall we say, unreliable with their bowel activity.  The invention of cars killed that industry, took those jobs away.  We don't even remember them.

And I'm not ready to elevate Mr. Hinton to prophet of god status.  And I wouldn't say he "abandoned" his career when he left Google.  First, I suspect he walked out the door with quite a few millions of dollars in his pocket (good for him) and, second, I'm certain as well that he will have not problem finding very high paying work in the industry when he wants.  So don't weep for Mr. Hinton's great sacrifice and let's not put him up on a cross.  

AI will bring value to art.  I don't know exactly what value, but I'm certain it will.  Maybe it will make the creation of art more accessible to people.  Maybe it will help people find the art that most resonates with them.  For instance, there's a great website called Music Map.  It's AI driven.  If you put in the name of and artist or group you like it shows other artists or groups that are close in style.  A couple of years ago while playing with it I discovered Goose.  I listened to them and liked them enough that I saw them last fall playing with TAB and Billy Strings.  Fantastic show.

Point is, AI isn't the end of humanism.  We don't have to be so afraid.  And of course companies focus on profit.  They have to.  We live in a capitalist system.  It's not perfect, but far more "humanist" than the systems in Russia or China. If a company doesn't focus on profit it will go out of business.  I like the products of the modern world, my audio system and, as I said earlier, being able to learn and grow from forums like this one, which is made possible by the technology of the Internet.  (as long as we don't talk about cables)

Interestingly, AI might well be successfully used to spot AI generated art/music.  Isn't that a curious thought.  And with respect to copyrights, I believe the Copyright Office has declared that AI generated literature is not copyrightable.  What that would functionally mean is that even though a copyright might inappropriately granted, enforcement would be stymied should someone try to sue based on the copyright.  So it's a piece of paper (virtual) without value.  Anyway, I think maybe this is roaming a bit afield from the intention of the forum and I do loath wasting people's time on the internet, even though I am fabulously talented at wasting my own.

And if anyone from ROON is reading this, please update your predictive algorithms.  I'm really NOT interested in hearing more opera

Interesting reading all of the reactions to AI.  A lot of absolute declarations, which historically turn out to be inaccurate over time.  Few things in life are absolutely black and white.  I don't agree with the view that we are socially mature or immature.  It's a self-righteous evaluation.  Sorry, M, but you declared that my thinking is driven by money or hubris, which I didn't appreciate.

We are.  That's the relevant point.

Who wants to listen to music sourced from AI?  We listen to music all the time that is heavily sourced from computer software, from the playing to the recording, the mixing, the final production and all points in between.  AI is different, yes, in some respects.  From another perspective it's just a continuation of the evolution of the sophistication of software.  If I like a beat, does it matter where it came from?, who wrote it?, what nationality or color they are?, whether they played it or sample it or created it through an AI prompt?  

At the end of the day, I'm not afraid of AI because I'm not afraid of change.  I know change brings uncertainty and disruption.  With that come new things unimagined before and some things that seem like they'll be around forever go away.  But the toothpaste is out of the tube, my brothers and sisters.  The toothpaste is out of the tube.

Here's something to contemplate.  If AI were are human it would be an infant right now.  Not even a toddler, an infant.  Imagine AI grown up in 20 or 30 years.  30 years ago Tim Berners-Lee published the first version of Hyper Text Markup Language - HTML.  Look at where the Internet and World Wide Web have gone since then.  Personally, I love being able to see other people's perspectives in forums like this one.  And I do love streaming from Quboz.  It lets me hear pretty much whatever I want whenever I want.  I stream through ROON and god I do wish they'd update their AI because it NEVER correctly guesses what I'd like to hear next.  How do I possibly start with The Band and three hours later end up with opera??  Always opera, no matter where I start in the world of music it wants me to listen to opera.

I don't get the plagiarism claim.  If I read a lot of science fictions books and become inspired by the imaginative nature of them and because of that I write a sci-fi book, am I plagiarizing anyone?  Not unless I specifically lift a plot or dialog.  If ML software reads a lot of poems about nature in springtime and then writes a poem about nature in springtime, how is that any different?  As long as it doesn't lift lines, how can any of the poets legitimately claim they were plagiarized.  I'd say there's a far greater chance that a person could accidentally plagiarize someone they read some time ago than an AI program simply because the AI can more effectively avoid the mistake.

I'm looking forward, for instance, to a time when doctors have the AI tools to more accurately diagnose and prescribe treatment.  I'm not looking to replace them, but I do want them to have more effective support.  And btw, are you all aware that there is a critical shortage of doctors world wide?  A common complaint among almost all medical care professionals is they can't spend enough time with patients.  AI will absolutely help with that.

AI will definitely come with challenges.  The Web brought us an explosion in child porn.  We didn't expect that (probably should've). But we're getting that under control and law enforcement is using the Web and software tools to identify child abusers who otherwise would have gone undetected.  Not saying that problem has been solved, btw.  But AI is here.  The time of mechanized armies locking us in our homes is a long way off and we've time to anticipate and avoid that.  But if we turn our eyes and minds from AI we won't understand it well enough to be able to effectively manage it.

Questions Authority, Embrace Change