Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]
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Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]
#2Very good letter. I'm struck by Nick Cave's comment about the making of beautiful things being the meaning of life.
It always struck me as bittersweet that we should be birthed on this world with a mind capable of imagining oblivion, futility, our own certain death, but we were also given the tools (our creativity) to express both our fears and pain as well as our joys and our love for life.
Were we to evolve to some point where we could live forever, knew no fear or want ... it seems like it would be an artless world then. They might look back on us and our culture with only a mere curiosity and have no understanding of what it was like to be "human".
But back to the point, I question whether AI can every truly make "art" if (and perhaps I put too fine a point on what art is) they can never feel human pain.
Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]
#3Very good letter. I'm struck by Nick Cave's comment about the making of beautiful things being the meaning of life. It always struck me as bittersweet that we should be birthed on this world with a mind capable of imagining oblivion, futility, our own certain death, but we were also given the tools (our creativity) to express both our fears and pain as well as our joys and our love for life. Were we to evolve to some…
To me, meaning requires effort.
Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]
#4 As Cave’s letter articulates how foregoing the struggle of creation risks destroying the ‘collective, essential and unconscious human spirit’, his characteristically masterful writing combined with Fry’s powerful reading serve as a reminder of the value and vitality of human creativity.
Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]
#5AI has no effect on singer-songwriters.
People that are into someone playing an instrument and singing their own poetry in a live setting will keep the form alive.
People that listen to expensively produced hot-100-esque music are already not that interested in watching live music.
What does Nick Cave need to worry about? When he tours people go to listen to his music and poetry, not someone else’s!
Do you think live music is going to suffer that much more since the ultimate dagger, the phonograph?
Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]
#6AI has no effect on singer-songwriters. People that are into someone playing an instrument and singing their own poetry in a live setting will keep the form alive. People that listen to expensively produced hot-100-esque music are already not that interested in watching live music. What does Nick Cave need to worry about? When he tours people go to listen to his music and poetry, not someone else’s! Do you think live…
> Do you think live music is going to suffer that much more since the ultimate dagger, the phonograph?
Well, you can also have AI band playing AI music live. Cue vocaloids.
Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]
#7AI has no effect on singer-songwriters. People that are into someone playing an instrument and singing their own poetry in a live setting will keep the form alive. People that listen to expensively produced hot-100-esque music are already not that interested in watching live music. What does Nick Cave need to worry about? When he tours people go to listen to his music and poetry, not someone else’s! Do you think live…
> Do you think live music is going to suffer that much more since the ultimate dagger, the phonograph? Well, you can also have AI band playing AI music live. Cue vocaloids.
Yeah. How quickly we forget the hologram Tupac and Gorillaz concerts as well as a the virtual live concerts from Fortnite.
Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]
#8AI has no effect on singer-songwriters. People that are into someone playing an instrument and singing their own poetry in a live setting will keep the form alive. People that listen to expensively produced hot-100-esque music are already not that interested in watching live music. What does Nick Cave need to worry about? When he tours people go to listen to his music and poetry, not someone else’s! Do you think live…
> Do you think live music is going to suffer that much more since the ultimate dagger, the phonograph? Well, you can also have AI band playing AI music live. Cue vocaloids.
I don’t think that people into artists like John Prine are going to be into what’s akin to showing up with a record and pressing play! They already want a human expression.
Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]
#9Nick Cave is expressing a personal loss, and I believe that he truly feels that loss. But to me, this letter reads roughly like: "if I were the server or the bouncer instead of the performer or the writer, all of humanity would cease to have meaning". Which is perhaps true, for Nick Cave. But it also betrays something grotesque and profoundly wrong about his view on the relationship between paid labor and the human soul.
It's a wonderful thing to find meaning in one's work, and for the things in which one finds meaning to be well-compensated. But it is no birthright. Contrary to Nick Cave's view, I can absolutely assure you that non-artists in HR departments and nursing stations and factory floors and classrooms often live full happy human inner lives. Those lives are of their own making and do not derive from the artiste class's output.
Manual production of high-quality clothes, tables, and glassware used to be the norm. Generations of people found meaning in these crafts before the industrial revolution changed the economics. People still do these things, only in rare cases as their primary way of making a living. Most art does not sustain developed world middle class existence. Most art is hobby. And that's okay.
The creation of software and AI systems is itself a form of craft-work and soul-work, which many engineers and scientists relate to the same way that Nick Cave relates to music. It is unclear to me why Nick Cave's striving is more important than the striving of engineers and scientists, or why his feeling of what humanity is, is more important than theirs.
Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]
#10As Cave’s letter articulates how foregoing the struggle of creation risks destroying the ‘collective, essential and unconscious human spirit’, his characteristically masterful writing combined with Fry’s powerful reading serve as a reminder of the value and vitality of human creativity. Art is what comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable. It appears that Mr. Cave is very comfortable and wishes to keep pro…
This line is absolutely madness when you look at who is behind the current AI push.