use of ChatGPT for HIFI

To be clear...  I was not blindly following anything.  I thought my buddy’s urging at least deserved an experiment.  I came up with something I consider very obscure, even among audio enthusiasts...  Also happened to be a question I’ve been chasing answers for from within "our community" and gotten nothing concrete.  I'd get a direction to explore, procure a couple tubes, and make an incremental improvement on occasion.  I also never got anything like a complete analysis of my amp with my WE300Bs from sources through speakers with very specific tube recommendations.  Sounded compelling, but we've all become aware of the BS potential of AI.

Given the relatively cheap experiment to see if Chat’s recommendations were worth considering, I bought the tubes and ran the test.  I was skeptical, but for a few hundred bucks I’d rather take the next step and have an answer for my buddy when he asked about my AI experience next time.  The amazing part for me is I’m not sure how long it would have taken or even if I would have ever landed on the recommended tubes.  I was considering an upgrade to the latest "R" version of my amp, chasing the few remaining veils...  a $15K adventure... but think I’m going to be happy for a very long time with this tube mix.

Anyway, enjoy the ride and use AI if it can help you achieve that goal!

@fburkeen 

Thank you for sharing your experience. I've often found it valuable on audio topics. 

AI is an incredible tool and is great fun learning its strengths and weaknesses. I have been employing it in more philosophy / forest and trees thoughts where it is simply incredible. While it isn’t usually good as the final word, it often is, provided you check its answers.

Everyone should question the veracity of AI answers. 

Blind obedience is not just a danger to the world, but can also skew your own purchasing and/or life priorities. If you solely trust one source - on any topic - you are subscribing to self-sabotage. (Maybe it's why we have two parents).

AI, like browsers, are equipped to appeal to the makers who are looking to capitalize on their investment. There is a reason Internet Explorer and now Google have been found guilty of anti-trust violations. The former web browser was ruled to be in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act which was put into law to prevent monopolies, conspiracy creation, price fixing, etc. The latter browser was found to have illegally monopolized markets.

Basically, if you like what AI is saying, you are a tool. In America, there are plenty of them, so I see how Wall Street is gambling by dumping record breaking amounts money into this technology; because it changes minds and that creates a plethora of possible financial windfalls. To suggest that American companies (think Big 7) are not chasing the almighty dollar in their AI schemes is just a bad case of ignorance - which apparently is trending up!

@fburkeen 

I still prefer to form my own opinions based on research I do, but in some cases AI seems able to summarize all the crap out there and come up with some great conclusions. 

What AI helped you achieve (recommend tubes) could have been just as easily achieved by calling Brent Jessee. In fact, why don't you call him and tell him about your adventures with AI and ask him his opinion on what you have gotten?

What AI is doing now is simply scouring the internet, and the dearth of information (good and bad) in it, and providing an answer. It does not care about your purchase, or the validity of it, as it has no skin in the game. What you are forfeiting is the human guarantee - or the knowledge that someone has from years of experience - and thus, you are beholden to AI in it's most primitive sense - the accumulation of crap as you have stated.

It's as if AI should just open a store - one that has everything! - and just lead all those inquiries to a price on a product that is in stock and ready to ship. Would you like me to ship that product to you for free? Why yes, thank you, Hal.

Brent Jessee was one of the reputable sources listed by Chat and highly recommended as a knowledgeable and hands on guy...  he was on vacation, so I didn’t talk to or buy from him in this case...  and I agree I might have gotten similar advice, but I’ve been on this particular quest for all of the 3-5 years I’ve run WE 300Bs and with limited and very incremental improvements from some hard to source tubes.  For me it was easy enough to find/buy the recommended tubes and just try them out...  I like to hear it for myself.  My system’s transparency lets you know pretty much after a few familiar songs whether you’ve stepped the right or wrong direction...  and I have a box full of wrongs.  Now I’ve experienced a pretty convincing leap in the right direction and am done buying tubes for a bit I believe, other than backups for the current setup.

I’m not trying to cause any contention here...  I’m too old to imagine letting AI make my choices, but the question was restricted to HiFi and so was my answer.  I was only expanding the playing field beyond asking AI Component level questions.  If this is valuable experience for you to hear about, you’re welcome...  Otherwise, nothing to see here folks...

bye now.

@fburkeen

No contention. Topic is how AI can be used for purchasing the correct (satisfying) product. Sounds like it worked for you! 

While it is easy to understand what tube AI recommended (used variables you entered to match up with a tube product that was indexed) but you did not say where it advised you to purchase? Just wanted to point out that the company that indexed the product, was likely the company to get the sale.

Today a story was printed in the WSJ about the company Unilever (not related to audio). It provided insight on how AI search results come to fruition and are met hand-in-hand with AI influencing. Not to boor you, as it may be more about AI than Tubes, but the point is that AI is manipulated by humans in order to garner dollars, which is akin to a web browser, but is likely immune to federal oversight (ie; the law).

That, in and of itself, puts the user at a disadvantage of being used like a tool. It is as if you Ask Jeeves and he provided you a product you did not mention, and then prompted you to buy the item from the list provided from sponsors. Same as it ever was. Someone is rubbing someone else's back behind the scenes of your purchase.

AI is ready for input and everyone selling anything should be taking notice, or be left behind. Perhaps even Brent Jessee!

Earlier this year, Unilever started using Nvidia’s Omniverse platform to create digital twins of all its products, encapsulating a given product’s variants, labels, packaging and language formats within a single file for the purpose of generating product imagery faster and cheaper. 

The digital twins are fed into Unilever’s AI content-generation platform, Gen AI Content Studios, a prompt-based system launched in 2023 that can churn out still images and copy.

Using the platform, Unilever can not only produce an exponentially larger number of personalized brand assets to give influencers, but it can quickly repurpose influencer content for its own social posts, as was the case with a collaboration last year between Dove body care and the popular cookie brand Crumbl.

Dove back then released a limited-edition collection of soaps, scrubs and deodorants inspired by the trend of infusing bath products with food aromas. Unilever said 52% of the overall purchases came from people who hadn’t bought Dove before, and credited the more than 3.5 billion earned social impressions with the sales success. 

AI was critical to getting those impressions, said Ryu Yokoi, chief media and marketing capability officer, Unilever North America. The company took over 100 discrete pieces of influencer content such as stills and short clips and used generative AI to remix them into different sizes, formats and lengths to tailor it to different audiences on different social-media platforms, he said.

Unilever is seeing proven value in working with human influencers, but one day AI-generated influencers might play a role, according to Yokoi.