I’m a huge fan of this person if they’re behind the ocarina app (God, what nostalgia!) but I found this piece somewhat philosophically empty. They acknowledge that they don’t have any answers on broader philosophy of aesthetics questions (which is good, very few do), but give in to cynical rejection regardless. Namely:
…they purport to be tools for creating art, but by making every effort to dismiss and eradicate the process of learning to expressive ourselves, what they are actually creating is a new generation of consumers…
I am not philosophically in opposition to generative AI, even for artistic creation. For one, I don’t know what “AI making art” evens means at this point; I barely, if at all, understand “humans making art”. I am inclined to say, therefore, “there should be room for that, too”. At the same time, I am committed to preserving and protecting the room for humans to labor profusely, unenjoyably, illogically to creatively express themselves… “There should be room for that, too” should apply both ways.
This cynicism ultimately shows a lack of imagination, IMHO. If use of generative AI is just consumption, then why are there people held in high regard in those communities for producing particularly great stuff? Why is some output more popular than the rest?
The simple answer is that humans are far from being out of the loop in art creation. AI can clearly generate aesthetic material based on some inputs, reason about the meaning of a piece given a description, and maybe take some intuitive guesses on overall aesthetic “quality” or “appeal” — but all of that is a) piecemeal and b) not nearly as sophisticated as human engagement with aesthetic value. Some would say it’s one of our most fundamental talents, and I would say it’s at the core of morality, happiness, etc! The robots are not replacing human artists any time soon in my opinion, and I think it’s a plain fact that Suno alone is not up to the task.
As more of a side note, I don’t love how they engage with effort and aesthetics (/value more generally, as in mountain climbing). Yes, some people like some activities that inherently have arbitrary amounts of effort attached — the people who beat dark souls using a drum kit or a banana as their controller come to mind! But that kind of leisure activity is neither exhaustive nor universally-appealing.
I guess no one wants to do things that are so trivial that they are instant, but beyond that there’s a huge range. Musicians in particular employ a plethora of newfangled tools, both to increase output (eg virtual instruments, autotune, smart composition software) and to enable entirely new modes of production (eg loop pedals).
As they so poignantly say: there should be room for both ;)