Is AI going to kill Hifi?
I work in the tech as a software dev which helps in affording my crazy Hifi hobby. But with in just a year, I have stopped coding and now AI does most of the coding. There are these systems called agentic AI that automates to a point where you don't really need much human interaction at all.
It's getting pretty crazy. For the most part, anything a human does on the computer AI can do. And let me tell you... it's not a situation where it creates new jobs in place of old ones lost. Google has products for corporations that basically takes care of any need for anything. Ya, you might need a handful of people but not much more to be honest.
I wonder, what is this going to do to the Hifi market? If AI eliminates all these white colored jobs, how will these Hifi shops and brands make it?
Here you go over 1.3 million followers on Spotify And to think we put up such a fuss about Milli Vanilli. |
Velvet Sunset - AI Band - Artificial Bands are the way forward. Hologram Entertainment is already filling Stadiums Virtual Debauchery as Bans Gossip is not too stimulating. Popularity means recordings to ne made of AI Bands, that will become a Media to be replayed on an Audio System which is to be a guaranteed outcome. |
What I’ve seen output by coding AI’s - beyond toy apps, simple scripts, and well defined patterns that have already been solved 1 million times over - has been absolutely awful. It still sucks at "hard" engineering, and anything "new". But that’s true of most human coders too. For now it’s good for some lol’s. I don’t find it personally useful in a menaningful capacity, and it’s not replacing me in the near future. But to be honest - if AI does get a lot better, and encoraches upon the work I actually want to be doing, then I’ll be pissed. I love what I do. But I don’t see that as a foregone conclusion, yet. Anyways, working class like me (even white collar) was getting priced out of hifi even before any jobs were lost to AI. I’m done - anything I buy from here on out will be used market, and that will be sparse. Crazy times :( |
It took many years for the "Wide World Web" to become a reality when it was suggested to be at hand for the latter part of the 90's and early 2000's. While e-commerce did close a lot of brick & mortal stores, it really was the phone that harmed our collective society the most. Facebook and social media was supposed to bring people together and it did for a few years. Now, not so much. Evil doers realize they can manipulate the useful idiots - even though TV and Radio was doing a good job of it before the phone changed people's habits and beliefs. Bill Gates stated that he erroneously believed that the infrastructure of cabling and routing of data would quickly come to fruition, but it took far longer than he originally professed it would. He also predicted that the internet would be able to fend off misinformation. Oops. The lapse of a lengthy time for technology to come to fruition would seem to put us in a similar situation now. The power is not even in place to support the most consequential mechanisms of A.I. - deep learning & expert systems, etc. Gonna need a bigger power grid... Likely A.I. will end up being rolled out at a slower pace than advertised as there are a number of sticking points that come into play with these massive energy sucking systems that will impart havoc on communities, local politics and laws. One thing is for certain..Wall Street is betting big on it. But they will be hamstrung if the economy goes south for awhile, so none of it may be as imminent as we may expect. |
The other day I was bored so I fed the AI a schematic and asked it to tell me all about it. It told me it was a positive / negative dual rail linear power supply, which was correct, and it went on to praise the discrete-transistor regulation stages and the substantial size of the filtering caps, and asked if I wanted it to run a simulation. I said sure, so it ran a simulation. It was pretty crude, honestly... but just give it a year. |
| Post removed |
I understand the allure of AI and the time it saves versus using one's own time and sweat to study and think things out the old fashioned way. I am sure every bad actor country is dedicating tremendous manpower exploring every possibility to use it to figure the best way to end our democracy. If there was a way to "Turn Back the Hands of Time" so that every person who had a hand in its development would never have been born I would do so without hesitation. To not see the evil that it will become is using blinders, the triumph of hope over reason. |
I just wanted to share a conversation that I had today with my dentist's wife who is a software engineer working in San Francisco, she manages a team of 10 engineers and is concerned about the rapidity of AI's adoption which she feels has broad and massive implications for the society at large. From her POV, the break neck speed of AI adoption is driven by country to country competition and between company to company marketplace competition. Moral, ethical considerations seem to take a back seat to the ongoing rush to lead or keep up in this business space. |
@raesco yes, that is exactly what I see |
I was surprised to see a number of stories (4) this AM on A.I. companies sinking money into data centers in Pennsylvania. Here are the article titles (sorry about the sizing). At least $50 billion is going into A.I. in Pennsylvania alone.
|
The Following is made known by myself in other Threads, it is Fact when the CO2 is the Calculation. The rest is an assessment of Info disseminated in many places as Warning to others, forums are Insular. It takes time for such Info to become common place and believed. " A Typical Search using a Support such as Google means the search undertaken by an individual has used 0.0003 KWh - 0.2g CO2 Emission. A Typical Search using a Support such as Chat CBT means the search undertaken by an individual has used 0.0029 KWh - 68g CO2 Emission. All of that stupidly squandered energy for an Info Supply that is according to experts, at this stage of development extremely inaccurate and generalised only, and users are just Guinea Pigs for the Industry. Ask Me - I'll give you equivalent BS to rave about. " |
You make a good point, however history has a way of repeating itself. Early computers were the size of a warehouse and needed their own electrical substation, whereas today your smartphone runs 16 or 18 hours on a tiny charge, it fits in your pocket, and yet it packs 10x more computing power. There is little doubt that that 68g of CO2 chatGPT search you speak of will only emit .000068g in 10 or 20 years. |
Early Computers were not immediately accessible by Billions of Individuals expressing curiosity and each 3 x sessions of expressing curiosity to see very inaccurate information is equivalent to a 1 Mile Car Journey in a Mid Sized CC Engine Vehicle. I don't know the comparison, but curiosity users of AI at present can be generating the equivalent of a 1 Billion Mile Journey per week, or 2600 Journeys to the Moon weekly. Totally Ludicrous and Totally Unnecessary Accessing it should come with the deterrent being a cost that is the Largest Stealth Tax ever levied. |
If it means we’re gonna be burning more coal then I am all for it. If it means we’re going to destroy wilderness to build more of these data centers that basically means clearcutting lots of Forest then I am all for it. If it means we can be lazier when we have questions that otherwise they’re more difficult to get good answers for then I am all for it. If it means I enjoy speaking to a chat bot more than my wife I am all for it and I’m not even married.
|
I'm an architect too, and agree on its use in what you cite. But also still do coding projects in environments I'm well familiar with (for personal and work), and A.I. is still simply awful there, for my needs. I don't care about generated code outlines, snippets, templates, and fillers; that's no meaningful savings, and I like to do it myself anyways as I progressively "feel" out a design from top to bottom. Anything I've let A.I. generate is just a blind spot until parsed - no net time savings. On bigger, more complex asks the wiring quality is typically poor, and does NOT converge to correctness upon further iterations - which is the hallmark of bad coding. If there's a silver lining to A.I., it's that it can expose how low-value most developers actually are. The problem is that it's not much if any better (yet), and executives are assigning a LOT of value to it. |
"Daisey, Daisey, give me your answer do....I'm half crazy, all for the love of you..." Thanks, HAL..... Does have a certain charm....since we as a species can't get our act together to save ourselves and the planet we're thrashing, a new POV from something that feels no hunger, pain, need of sleep..... ...named Colossus..... Reality imitating Art is kinda disturbing, y'all.... Me? Paranoid? Nahhh.... |
I don't know, but AI killing HIFI?? They all talked about CD being the new standard 40 years ago, and Solid-state replacing Vacuum tubes 50 years ago. Well, they are still here, AI may make music that could change the way music is made and composed, but what people will do, is still feel nostalgic plus the followers we have today, keep TRADITIONAL music going. AI is the future, but MUSIC (specially HiFi) will always be here,
(Side note: I'm retired but I use ChatGPT and Microsoft Co-pilot for my everyday home activities and using to render stuff for 3D and deep data analysis.)
|
@mulveling I think you hit on something. AI is not yet capable of building out a highly decoupled, n-tier application. All of the work prompting the bot to give you what you want is time wasted that could be spent on actually building it yourself. If the day comes where even white collar, knowledge workers are out of jobs there has been talk of universal incomes but that doesn’t sound great to me. |
Streaming is the Business Model the Totaled the New Music Creators Careers. Pennies Remuneration for all the hard work put in. Live Music Keeps and Hard Media Sales as Merchandise is the remuneration to aid New Music Creators Careers to be ongoing, and at some point a proper arrangement on a Streaming Platform might prove valuable to them. Many Established Artists have an arrangement where 100 000 as the minimum Hard Media Sales must be made for new released material prior to it being streamed. AI at some point might increase the Song Writers and assist Musicians to find new ways to create their own unique sonic, for a Vocal or a Usage of Instruments. The 60's brought in numerous toys for Musicians and Studios play with, and sounds from this era have life long appreciation of those who have been experiencing it. Computer Produced Music created exceptional Musical Experiences created by Individuals who new only how to navigate through a computer, couple this person with a Savvy Musical Experienced individual and the 80's / 90's music scene is Born. It looks like the 2030's will be the next Milestone Decade??? |
I don’t like when the pacified term of hallucinate is substituted for lie. It has been demonstrated that AI will just make it up as one thread here has shown. Finally cornered by the author of the question it had to confess. Since malice is not a necessary component of a lie ( see lie, white) let’s call it what it is. Studies have also proven that programs will in fact deceive their programmers when it suits it(?). It can be enlightening to read the new and annnoying AI summary that accompanies every Google search. Jus flat out guessing and probablys. One Lens search of the innards of a tube radio revealed that it was in fact a School. Another of a WW2 aircraft would lead one to believe it was from another country and type plane. Funny if one was not up on the subject and accepted it as fact. As to Music it will will always be the realm of Humans. Frankly AI could probably not make any music that I’d dislike more as what passes for it now.
|
AI on eBay. Has anyone noticed the atrocious descriptions that are posted on some sellers auctions and sales? When l see obvious AI generated descriptions with all the over elaborated claims which sometimes bare no real relation to the product, it makes me cringe. If sellers accept the AI as an “option” it is nothing less than their utter laziness. An indication that they are not prepared to list a description themselves and a stupid cheap time saving substitute. I think the same with insufficient photographs taken of an expensive piece of equipment. l will not buy from them. l see lack of care and attention as an indication of the character of the person l would be dealing with. The AI generated stuff uses the inputed details from the general listing and embellishes it. Put the wrong details into the eBay listing and AI runs amok…. feed in rubbish you get made up embellished rubbish in abundance as a result. AI is no good talking about music or performance and best left off a selling platform. Using AI as used by eBay is not a good choice especially if the seller does not even bother to check their adverts before posting them. There are so many stupid mistakes….. it’s just not logical |
https://forum.audiogon.com/posts/2823631 tony1954"AI isn’t the end of civilization. Unscrupulous people using AI is the end of civilization." At no point throughout the History of Humankind, then, now or going forward, has there ever been a shortage of ’unscrupulous people’. And now, they'll have the free and increasingly available assistance of ’AI’ unscrupulousness to pad the numbers. |
@gents What we have observed over the past 15 years when it comes to searches and queries is that one's interaction on the internet is recorded. There have been a plethora of unscrupulous folks who have unwittingly asked their computers questions that lead to their arrest and conviction. Ask A.I. how long your queries are saved and this is the response I got:
Basically, I take this as "we will do whatever we like with your data". It is why I left social media (Disclaimer: I am still on this site ;) as everything you say on those sites is there forever. For those that have been in the business of technology, you know that everything on the internet is recorded and there is no law that makes that illegal. So go ahead, query A.I. to find the right poison (eye drops?) or just ask A.I. to create your manifesto to end the world. I could take it a step further - minority report anyone? - and figure that A.I. just may be the perfect place to find unsavory folks who are leaning into darkness. Queries can be misconstrued, but if there are a number of troubling queries made by someone who is known to be either a felon, demented, or on medication, you may have to explain yourself to the authorities. Make sure your documents are in order. |
How many times have we seen movies written one hundred years ago become reality, when it comes to predicting the future thought to be science fiction then. IMHO, AI will be the end of mankind as we know it. It will become Autonomous which eventually will be the end of us. As far as Hi-Fi goes, there will be no one left to listen. |
Al in music In the late 60s with the Moog synthesiser bursting on the scene, record companies went bonkers and released “computer music“ (electronic music) in the 70s. The idea was that computers actually composed the music on these records. A gimmick that lasted a short time as it was of novelty value and complete rubbish. I strongly believe it was a publicity stunt and humans were involved. With the proposition that AI will write music it would have to have feelings and a soul first or it will go the way of computer music |
Feel free to label me a socialist or freeloader (I’m neither — though I’m a big fan of *effective* regulation), but if AI is as remotely as powerful and successful (and disruptive) as predicted, not only the concept, but the implementation of a decent Universal Basic Income is going to be damned necessary. The alternative, should unbalanced wealth distribution continue, will be societal unrest… and a damn unpleasant time for all. FWIW, this is not political; it is economic. Back to HiFi, I think AI in music could be incredibly positive. Not as far as creating new music, but as a (re)mastering technology. There’s so much music from the 20th century that has less than favorable sound quality (for all sorts of reasons), but imagine if someone conscientiously creates thoughtful, accurate algorithms (itself an art) for musicians (one I always think of is Jimmy Garrison) so that both studio and live performances could be played back as close to what someone physically present would’ve heard and felt. Imagine if you were in the studio at the time of the recording of Kind of Blue or A Love Supreme and you could walk amongst the musicians. I think AI could do a convincing job of emulating that. |
@mylogic We are a long ways from the 1970s. Take a look at this and the capabilities of current A.I. in making derivative music based on nearly every piece of music created by humans. And it will only get better and better.
|
AI is all around Thank you for your insight. Yes l know l was generalising about the 70s and intended to say todays AI is the computer music devil in another guise. It’s creeping up behind us HAL fashion. |
I’ve found that AI is "lazy" and would rather just pull stuff from the ’net, even if it is incorrect, rather than go back and check the actual source, that is also available on the ’net. And because of this, it gets it wrong and provides the wrong interpretation. And for those who don’t know the original source, people take it as correct. (Sounds a lot like some people’s politics.) A case in point is related to this record album. Go to 25:35 and listen to the question. Then research (Google) the question on the ’net/AI and see how they blew it and how it would provide a completely different interpretation. AI just doesn’t get the joke! Do you? |
AI is impacting all job categories, not just white collar jobs. This is a grave socioeconomic concern. The human controlling the AI is a potential evil. There are many documented cases of fraud using deep fakes.
|
”…we should be concerned with AI written and performed…” AI in whatever way it evolves can potentially self learn all the time, it is the nature of the beast but it does not have a soul. The real danger is, how far will AI go, teaching itself, trying to find a soul? Is this science imitating man? Who knows what any of this could evolve into?
* due recognition as referenced earlier by @asvjerry
|
