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Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

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Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#161

Post by darkerside »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #56
kkzz99 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every tool that makes it easier to create art is good in my book. In years past you had to actually have the instruments and had to know how to work them. Now you can much easier learn to use simpler tools to get even better results, which just increases the amount of people that can actually realize their creativity.

But part of the whole point of listening to music is enjoying the expression of the people playing the instrument. Music is much more than just the final output of a machine, it's an expression of the soul. You may be able to create music more easily with this tool, but I guarantee it will be soulless, just like Google. The results certainly will not be better. They will be a hideous amalgam from a computer. Just lis…

Is a photograph soulless?

If people love paintings, they won't be replaced. But they will go to places photographs can't.

We're going to find out who loves music, and who loves manufactured crap. Wait, I think we already know.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#162

Post by genman »

jacquesm wrote: post #94
bambax wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that pure formal perfection is not the only component in art; art has to mean something. But quality has always been a very important aspect of popularity in art as well as in music (see: Renaissance sculptors & painters, Baroque and Classical composers, etc.) Great art is when a unique, profound emotion or insight is expressed with great execution. AI helps with the last part; real artists should still…

But effort itself is also a quality. The fact that a human took out a substantial fraction of their time on planet earth to create something is already a sign that at least one individual cared about the work: the creator. If art is like vomit then that initial round of validation is absent.

I think there are two kind of AI uses.

I as an artist can come up with an idea want to archive and then use AI tools to reach it or an artist is completely cut out of the loop.

I don't believe that the later can be called an art or even a creation. It is just a patterned noise and more of it is produced the more noisy our environment becomes.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#163

Post by Davidzheng »

chpatrick wrote: post #101
jillesvangurp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not being deprived of any rights. You just don't have them exclusively. Make music, or don't. Up to you. Either way, there will be machines also making music. So, what?

How are people going to become professional musicians if it stops being a career?

Strange question. Tautology they can't. But AI will be better than humans everywhere so why is this one different

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#164

Post by Davidzheng »

chpatrick wrote: post #101
jillesvangurp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not being deprived of any rights. You just don't have them exclusively. Make music, or don't. Up to you. Either way, there will be machines also making music. So, what?

How are people going to become professional musicians if it stops being a career?

But the question is if this is your passion why is being a hobbyist not enough. If there are no limitations of what you can be/do as a hobbyist

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#165

Post by phatskat »

sesm wrote: post #127
tchaffee wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like playing video games with a computer. I also like playing music with a computer. I've learned far quicker playing chess against an AI than I would have playing against humans. And yet I still really enjoy playing against humans too. In fact the experience playing against humans is richer thanks to a deeper understanding of the game that came from AI. Your argument is along the same lines as arguing electric gui…

I have hard time believing that you can learn quicker playing chess against AI. Humans can explain ideas behind their moves, their long term plans and their position evaluation. That what chess coaches will explain you and that's what you can read in chess books. Computer has hard time explaining his moves, has no notion of long-term plan and it's position evaluation is often useless for beginner or intermediate ches…

> I have hard time believing that you can learn quicker playing chess against AI.

I’d be more inclined to agree if everyone learned the same way, but we don’t. What works for you may not work as well for others.

For me and music, for example, I learn best by hearing and playing by ear. If I want to learn a song, it’s usually a good bit of time with me playing and rewinding, pausing, playing, pausing, rewinding, etc. I can read sheet music, but the process is woefully slow and not fun for my brain. I could watch someone teach me each part, but that also sounds boring, and I feel I learn better through my own method of trial and error because my brain has to work out the nuances - “was that a hammer-on? Was there a slide transition there? That sounds like a permutation of an earlier chord instead of a direct reuse of it! Etc”

Being able to play against AI may be just as valuable for person A to learn as playing against a human would be for person B. To suggest one is strictly superior to the other, in all cases, is very black and white thinking that doesn’t fit how people work.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#166

Post by bambax »

jacquesm wrote: post #94
bambax wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that pure formal perfection is not the only component in art; art has to mean something. But quality has always been a very important aspect of popularity in art as well as in music (see: Renaissance sculptors & painters, Baroque and Classical composers, etc.) Great art is when a unique, profound emotion or insight is expressed with great execution. AI helps with the last part; real artists should still…

But effort itself is also a quality. The fact that a human took out a substantial fraction of their time on planet earth to create something is already a sign that at least one individual cared about the work: the creator. If art is like vomit then that initial round of validation is absent.

I don't think I agree with that. "A for effort"? Who cares if someone spent time on something, if the result isn't good? They wasted their time, which is their problem; but they shouldn't waste mine as well to compensate for that.

There are even artists who don't actually make anything: they formulate an idea and then commission craftsmen to produce what they imagined. While the resulting oeuvre involves some degree of effort by someone, that someone isn't the artist themselves; this is quite similar to AI.

Now, there's something to be said for scarcity. If producing something becomes so easy that anyone can output anything, then sure it may become a problem.

Yet the history of the arts is in many ways a history of explosion, and the number of things produced did not kill art. Often, it invented new art forms.

Baudelaire had this to say about photography in 1865:

> As the photographic industry was the refuge of every would-be painter, every painter too ill-endowed or too lazy to complete his studies, this universal infatuation bore not only the mark of a blindness, an imbecility, but had also the air of a vengeance. (…) it is nonetheless obvious that this industry, by invading the territories of art, has become art’s most mortal enemy, and that the confusion of their several functions prevents any of them from being properly fulfilled. Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place. If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether, thanks to the stupidity of the multitude which is its natural ally.

I think he was dead wrong.

Photography may have influenced painting and force it into non-figurative territories (or it may have gone there by itself), but 1/ painting in general, even figurative painting, survived, 2/ photography became a new art form, and 3/ if abundance of photography did in fact, eventually, devalue the work of professional photographers, it didn't block the existence of great photographic art.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#167

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #8

The moment quality in art becomes commodified, what is popular will select on something other than quality. Look what happened to visual art in the earliest 20th century. Any art academy graduate could give you a beautiful painting, but nobody remembers any artists from the 20th century who simply made "beautiful paintings"

We are already there- take a gander at the latest Grammy nominees. It's about to get a whole lot worse.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#168

Post by Supernaut »

datpiff wrote: post #135
wildrhythms wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately for many people music is nothing more than 'something to play in the background'.

I'm sure this reads as very cynical, but a lot of the replies here seem to be written by people who do not like music, or don't place much value in it.

I think you're correct. I also think that they're envisioning this tool's potential in terms of the kind of derivative, trite rubbish that makes up 95% of what is played on pop radio stations nowadays.

I don't doubt that's achievable. What I do very much doubt is that software will ever capable of auto-generating something with the beauty, passion and originality of a Beethoven symphony, as performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of von Karajan. I don't believe that an algorithm will ever be able to compose and render a new song in the style of Nick Drake, that has even 1% of his soulfulness.

Machines can be programmed to imitate patterns of musical notes, or even the timbre of a voice. That's nothing. Lived experience and human emotion are prerequisites for the creation of great art.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#169

Post by voidhorse »

wildrhythms wrote: post #119
jamesdhutton wrote: post #80

In "Brave New World," all the music is made by machines. We are approaching that dystopia. For me, much of the pleasure in listening to music lies in appreciating the virtuosity of the musicians. It's like watching a great tennis player or a great dancer. You admire their skill and grace and technical mastery. For me, listening to music made by machines would be like watching robots playing tennis, or robots dancing.…

Unfortunately for many people music is nothing more than 'something to play in the background'.

Yep and this is a key and major point driving the whole AI craze. The hyper capitalist consumer society in which all sense of value has been strictly translated to "what's the immediate output" is prerequisite to the love of these tools. If all you care about is the destination, not the journey, if you are nothing but a consumer, generative AI is fantastic. Infinite monkeys are just as good as Shakespeare if they can produce the output of Shakespeare. What this perspective misses is that, at least historically, the things we value as human beings are actually not just outputs but something much richer and deeper than that. The crazed embrace of AI is just a marked shift toward an even deeper philosophical bankruptcy and pure focus on materialism.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#170

Post by phatskat »

KaiserPro wrote: post #134

To quote from 1984: > The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound. He could hea…

> I also frankly worry about how my kids are going to make money.

Then seriously start thinking about which politicians are going to support a future where fewer and fewer jobs are being done by humans. UBI, healthcare for everyone, access to housing etc are all things that can and should be done already. The more that work is automated away, the more crucial these become.

We should be striving for a “Jetsons future” where complaining about a long work day means being in the office for two hours.

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