Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by chpatrick » Thu, Nov 16, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #240

chpatrick wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is different though, because the end game of AI music isn't better music technology for musicians, but replacing musicians. I'm worried we're going to go into a dark age where society forgets how to make truly creative new art due to lack of incentives, and the AIs won't make anything new due to lack of anything creative to train on. We'll just regurgitate the pre-AI stuff forever.

Why is it different? I don't see how any of the incentives go away here.

Because previously if you honed your skills as a musician there was a chance that you could do it for a living, so there was another incentive to get better. Electronic tools just facilitated human creativity, but the random listener couldn't sit down with a synth or a DAW and just press a button to get music out. But if all the money drops out of the music industry because the consumers can auto-generate unlimited music, how will that work?

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

#252

Post by chimprich » Thu, Nov 16, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #231

lesuorac wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it'll mostly go the other way where UBI really means just shelter and food. UBI [1] is a pre-industrial era concept. The world inflation-adjusted GDP has grown from basically 500B to 100T [2]; like it's a pretty hard sell that you can't get UBI (as envisioned pre-telephones) to work with a 200x increase. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income#16th_ce... [2]: https://ourworldindata.org/gra…

Sadly, I think UBI covering shelter and food is optimistic. If the past is any indicator UBI just means a rent increase and we hand over our UBI to the landlords.

Would we still have landlords in a post-scarcity future? Surely if all wealth is being generated by AIs, it's the end of capitalism.

Even if we introduced UBI today, this doesn't make much sense. It wouldn't mean everyone just gets more cash because tax would have to rise to compensate.

I think you're imagining that landlords would think, "oh everyone is getting an extra 100 zorkmids a month, so I can raise rents by 100 zorkmids". But it couldn't work like that because the cash has to come from somewhere; what would actually happen is that someone receiving 100 zorkmids in benefits now gets 100 zorkmids in UBI, and someone who was paying 100 zorkmids in tax now pays 200 zorkmids in tax and gets 100 zorkmids in UBI.

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

#253

Post by lc9er » Thu, Nov 16, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

hurryer wrote: post #189

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…

Most of today's popular music is heavily computer based. Previous musicians said the same things, electric guitars are not musical instruments, synthesizers have no soul, music made on computer DAWs is artificial and of no value, .... The kids will embrace 100% AI generated music, the parents will be "they don't make music like they used to", forgetting that their parents said the same things about their music.

Maybe. I don’t think technology in music is a bad thing. I enjoy pushing limits and non-transitional elements. I love music that upends expectations and may even be grating to listen to for most people. I enjoy music made with synths, plugins, and effects (analog and digital).

But more and more, I’m finding I don’t enjoy newer music, not because it scares me or I find it to be racket, like earlier generations said of mine.

Instead, I find newer music to be boring and devoid of life. Zero dynamics. Hearing the same few guitar and drum plugins. Rigidly mechanical tempos and tone correction. It’s just dull and boring.

A lot of this is poor execution. Maybe some of it is changes in how we listen to music. A lot, not all, of new music feels like content instead of art, mashed through a template for ease of production. Yes - that’s something that’s been done through the history of recorded music. But the uniformity gives everything a generic feel that used to be reserved for the most bubblegum of pop music.

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

#254

Post by maherbeg » Thu, Nov 16, 2023, 5:47 PM UTC

ethbr1 wrote: post #199

phatskat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”…

I wish to subscribe to your Post-Scarcity Party newsletter. It also makes me wonder about agriculture. It's difficult to envision a post-scarcity future where food production is still manual-intensive. Mandatory picking service, as a civic obligation? And there are a lot of food types that require manual picking. UBI would therefore effectively end production of those types of food. (E.g. more grain, less fruit) Also…

Food production being manually intensive today isn't going to be the case forever. There are lots of innovations happening in ag-tech that continue to reduce the need for humans in the loop * laser precise weeding * drone flyovers + image detection for keeping tabs on the land without going out there * purpose built harvesters that could eventually be driven by an autonomous agent

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

#255

Post by Jasper_ » Thu, Nov 16, 2023, 5:57 PM UTC

wisty wrote: post #210

hurryer wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of today's popular music is heavily computer based. Previous musicians said the same things, electric guitars are not musical instruments, synthesizers have no soul, music made on computer DAWs is artificial and of no value, .... The kids will embrace 100% AI generated music, the parents will be "they don't make music like they used to", forgetting that their parents said the same things about their music.

I think Max Tegmark said there's 3 main camps of people talking about AI: 1. The people who think AI won't really work (at least in some fundamental way - it might make some stochastic melody but it won't have any creative spark to it). 2. The people who think AI will be able to do everything better than humans (in every possible way, at least as far as a mere human can tell) and that this will be great. 3. The peopl…

4. The people who think that AI will be able to do everything worse than humans, but at an acceptable enough level for executives, and it's far cheaper than even outsourcing work to other countries.

The trajectory of the last 10 years has been that the quality of the human experience will go down so the people at the top can make more money, and AI fits perfectly into this narrative.

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

#256

Post by marssaxman » Thu, Nov 16, 2023, 6:00 PM UTC

ethbr1 wrote: post #199

phatskat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”…

I wish to subscribe to your Post-Scarcity Party newsletter. It also makes me wonder about agriculture. It's difficult to envision a post-scarcity future where food production is still manual-intensive. Mandatory picking service, as a civic obligation? And there are a lot of food types that require manual picking. UBI would therefore effectively end production of those types of food. (E.g. more grain, less fruit) Also…

Manual picking is not so bad if you're only trying to meet your own needs, rather than trying to make a living at it; my family used to visit "u-pick" farms when I was a kid, and we could easily collect all the fruit we would need for a year in a few hours of work. My mother spent far more time canning and preserving it all than we ever did picking it.

Perhaps this idyllic post-scarcity future would include networks of community orchards, akin to the "p-patch" garden system we have in Seattle.

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

#257

Post by opportune » Thu, Nov 16, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

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 love music and listen to it all the time, but frankly I do not care much about the artists, in the same way that I don’t care much about the person making my coffee or my house. Obviously I don’t wish harm on anyone out of pure malice, but if a robot could make better coffee or build a better (to my tastes) house I wouldn’t stay stuck in the past out of some sense of romanticism.

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

#258

Post by butlike » Thu, Nov 16, 2023, 6:06 PM UTC

RugnirViking wrote: post #228

phatskat wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the best case… Why is that the best case? In my “best case”, all of everyone’s needs are met, people pick and grow more intense crops because they want to, artists just enjoy making art, and “income” from work just isn’t really a thing anymore. My best case is everyone has what they need and can access what they want.

It would require a lot of strong social structres. Because a lot of important tasks (like maintaining the floor cleaning equipment in the robot-tractor tyre factory) just really isnt that interesting but still needs to be done. I can see ways motivation can come from others. I'd argue my motivation to persist in my work isn't (directly) because of the money I am paid but rather due to social effects of my colleagues,…

Some people do a job for the pride of it because it must be done. I wouldn't want to be a plumber, but that doesn't mean there aren't plumbers who take pride in doing it. Same with the floor cleaner at the robot-tractor tyre factory.

Though I suspect on a long enough timeline, that job will be automated too and UBI will become a "here's a [weekly|monthly] stipend to live life on, but it's not too much to act truly foolish with."

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

#259

Post by wilsonnb3 » Thu, Nov 16, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

tchaffee wrote: post #140

vouaobrasil wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The same arguments were made to dismiss rock music when compared to classical music. And a world without the Velvet Underground would be more soulless to me. I've heard soulless music performed by highly trained musicians playing on great instruments. And soulful music played on crappy instruments by untrained musicians. On average, the great music comes from the more trained musicians on the better tools. AI is just…

> The same arguments were made to dismiss rock music when compared to classical music

Just because people were wrong in the past doesn’t mean they are wrong now.

> AI is just another tool

Not all tools are the same. A tool that changes how sound is amplified (like an electric guitar) is vastly different than a tool that can theoretically replace the human in the loop entirely.

Someone playing a piano and someone playing an electric piano are much, much closer to each other than someone pressing the start button on a player piano is to either of them.

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

#260

Post by butlike » Thu, Nov 16, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

Jasper_ wrote: post #255

wisty wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Max Tegmark said there's 3 main camps of people talking about AI: 1. The people who think AI won't really work (at least in some fundamental way - it might make some stochastic melody but it won't have any creative spark to it). 2. The people who think AI will be able to do everything better than humans (in every possible way, at least as far as a mere human can tell) and that this will be great. 3. The peopl…

4. The people who think that AI will be able to do everything worse than humans, but at an acceptable enough level for executives, and it's far cheaper than even outsourcing work to other countries. The trajectory of the last 10 years has been that the quality of the human experience will go down so the people at the top can make more money, and AI fits perfectly into this narrative.

If any arbitrary job becomes trivially easy, what's the monetary value in the work?