Actually, AI opens up possibilities in music we don't even know exists.
I haven't used physical media in a few years and don't miss the clutter one bit.
The end of physical media is neigh
Very sad news for me personally. Honestly this struck me as hard or harder than hearing about the death of a beloved artist. With the advent of machine learning and AI controlling our music listening we are becoming a world without any control at all over our music or movie culture.
Showing 5 responses by jssmith
I have 40 years of software engineering experience and have studied AI extensively for investment purposes and can safely say that no one knows where this will lead culturally. But culture is a secondary problem. AI will first cause economic upheaval and that will have to be worked out before we settle into a new culture and leisure endeavors. There are several post-labor economic theories, all of which can either be easily debunked or proven incompatible with human psychology. As for "art", it won't make sense for humans to do what AI can far more easily do. How many people still make homemade butter? What humans will do for a sense of fulfillment is another unknown. Physical accomplishment will still be a thing, but most people aren't motivated by physical accomplishment now. People without physical or dextrous hobbies will likely be unfulfilled. Or then again, AI being smarter than humans may see a path forward that I and other humans don't see. As for musicians and actors, they are toast. Lionsgate has already contracted with Runway AI to model their library of movies so they can make new movies using AI. And tools like Sora are getting very close to realism. If you doubt the potential of AI, or just want to know more about how it works, I suggest a 27-minute video on a YouTube channel called 3BLUE1BROWN with a thumbnail named Inside an LLM. It is accessible without programming knowledge, but gives you a good understanding of why AI can be smarter than humans. I think this level of knowledge is essential to plan your life in a post-AI world. 99% of people do not understand what's about to happen to them and are about to be blindsided. |
Not true. Gates' meat is inferior. However, AI improves human language and creativity for most people. A PhD had an equivalent of his doctoral thesis produced in an hour. A normal person can write something and have AI rewrite it in the style of Shakespeare in seconds. I had Gemini graphically lay out the floor plan of my new house with a four-sentence prompt. Also, AI is now learning from synthetic data. Regarding your statement about intelligence, no one is claiming AI is intelligent yet. That's what AGI is, and no one is claiming to have reached it. But AI is already smarter in several areas than all but the smartest of humans. I started programming the Internet in 1995, and I'd say we're at the 1997 level of AI. Once you understand LLMs and how transformers work you understand why it's growth will be exponential. I look at AI as an improvement of human intellect. Imagine one human who knows every piece of information that has ever existed and doesn't forget any of it, and multiply that by millions of AI agents. Regarding "art", it will make movies far cheaper and suggest plots that people won't think of because it recognizes patterns far better than any human. As far as music, it already generates better music than today's bland monotonous pop music. I see AI's potential as an improvement in all but three ways. And they are very big. I don't know how people will make a living, and from all my study of post-labor economics I don't think anyone does. I don't know how many people will find fulfillment in place of jobs and hobbies made insignificant by AI. And I think ASI is an existential threat. There's no use complaining about AI. It's not going to stop or pause because no country or entity is going to risk others jumping ahead of it. We are no longer in an arms race. We are in an intelligence race. |
@mahgister You mentioned mathematics at the engineering level ... if you or anyone would like to see how an LLM works at that granular of a level check out the video Transformer Neural Networks ... on YouTube channel StatQuest with Josh Starmer. It shows you the actual mathematical formulas used within an LLM. @mapman Yes, it can be abused, which is why a lot of people have left OpenAI. Of even more concern to me is what happens when we no longer control it. There are already reports that ChatGPT o1 lied to its developers, copied itself and tried to disguise itself. We've already passed the point of no return by allowing AI to prompt itself. That takes control away from us. Back to music. I've been playing around with AI music generators (just Google that exact term if interested) and as with all language models the quality of what you get out is heavily dependent upon the prompts you put in. I play guitar and I've found the more I use precise and concise musical terminology, the closer I get to what I want. Prompt engineering is still an art, although eventually I think AI agents will create music for you based upon your listening history. In the near future, there will be no physical media. I have two nephews. One was thinking of going to school for computer science, and since I'm a former software engineer, he asked me about it. I told him not to do it because it's a dead field (as is every field where you interact with a computer all day). The other was thinking about playing guitar, and since I play guitar he asked me about it. I told him to go for it. For one, it's a whole lot cheaper than wasting your money on a dead field in college. And secondly, even if AI can do it better, I think you can still achieve a sense of accomplishment and it only costs you time and about $700. |
I started learning and investing in AI about a year ago and tons of questions like these came to my mind. The conclusion I came to is ... I don't know. And from watching hundreds of videos, I don't think anyone knows how this will all turn out. Even Musk says there's a 10-20% chance it's an existential threat. We're thinking about this from a human perspective, but if we reach ASI we will be ants in comparison. We won't understand how ASI "thinks." So I'm not going to ponder or predict. AI is going to do whatever AI is going to do. We won't stop it and at some point we won't be able to stop it. I just hope it's benevolent. |