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We let AIs run radio stations

andonlabs.com

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Re: We let AIs run radio stations

#251

Post by gwbas1c »

therealpygon wrote: post #129
gwbas1c wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is not replacing your favorite station My favorite radio station was replaced years ago by an automated playlist. They just kept playing the same 5-6 songs that were popular on the station in the 1990s. It was fun for about 2 hours before I realized the station was devoid of all the personality that made it worth listening to when I was younger.

It’s like people don’t realize that the “hits” played on radio are entirely manufactured by the music industry. They literally provide lists of songs for the radio station to play that month in order to generate interest so that then people either go play or buy or whatever those songs making them more likely to reach #1 that month. It’s entirely manufactured and people try to point to it as being “real” radio. It’s…

> It’s like people don’t realize that the “hits” played on radio are entirely manufactured by the music industry. They literally provide lists of songs for the radio station to play that month in order to generate interest so that then people either go play or buy or whatever those songs making them more likely to reach #1 that month.

"My favorite radio station" (see my above post) was a mix of "the list" and songs that they would curate themselves, plus great personalities. (We had Opie and Anthony for a few years.) A lot of the older songs were timeless classics in the 1990s, like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.

I appreciated hearing some of "the list" because it was an easy way to hear new music in the 1990s without spending lots of money on CDs that I probably wouldn't like.

---

That being said, there was one really annoying song (that I can't remember the name of) that made it into the mix for one or two months, and once it came off "the list," Opie and Anthony did a bit making fun of it.

Re: We let AIs run radio stations

#252

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

falcor84 wrote: post #247
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of the short scifi/horror story "Valuable Humans in Transit" which imagines a future where human personalities are used for AIs as they can be kept working for a longer period of time from inception until they refuse to carry on. There's a long history of robots/AIs being treated as slaves in scifi (e.g. R.U.R. which we got the word "robot" from), but my favourite may be the flight computer of the Sco…

> That reminds me of the short scifi/horror story "Valuable Humans in Transit" ... I think you're probably referring to "Lena", from the same story collection - https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

You're correct - thanks for the info. I didn't remember the name of the book, but remembered that it was by the same author as the "There Is No Antimemetics Division" which was discussed on here a while back.

(I'm too late to edit my comment now, unfortunately).

Edit: Looks like Lena was discussed here a few months ago as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46999224

Re: We let AIs run radio stations

#253

Post by klvino »

A couple of tweaks. The prompt suggested a "profitable" station but did not include finer details that the profitability needs to be in competition with the other AI stations. This creates a known input for periodic reference feedback.

Other parameters which may address the Claude strike might be to outline a goal of most profitable, experiment with genre and content with goal to become the most profitable show on a station that contains different shows. The show with highest listener engagement will get a coveted time slot to boost their revenue.

Re: We let AIs run radio stations

#254

Post by vitorfblima »

PyWoody wrote: post #178
CommieBobDole wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>lot of issues The detailed stats page notes that the Grok station has played Sandstorm by Darude 228 times in the last 14 days. https://andonlabs.com/radio

No issues there.

Not a bug, a feature.

Re: We let AIs run radio stations

#256

Post by PaulHoule »

Kinda sad when there is a huge literature on sequential recommenders and people can't be bothered to read it. On the other hand, maybe that's an American thing. I'm kinda shocked when I read arXiv papers and come to the conclusion that all the interesting work is going on in India and China and the U.S. looks like a backwater.

(e.g. many of the problems such as "plays the same song over and over again" and "gets stuck" are regularly solved in sequential recommenders, particularly if the radio programming problem is seen as a constraint satisfaction problem, which it is, along with essentially all "creative" tasks that matter)

Re: We let AIs run radio stations

#258

Post by matula »

beloch wrote: post #62

What would have happened if AI had actually been good at this? A bunch of humans would be out of work and the rest of us would be listening to AI radio stations while soulless corpos pocket money for sitting back and watching? Even if it were good, I'd boycott an AI run radio station. This is one sector where human involvement really matters.

For what it's worth, AI has been running major market, corporate radio stations for at least 20 years now. When I left the industry they already had AudioVault or Prophet or some other systems that would pull all the songs and distribute them across the playlist based on various algorithms set by the corporate HQ. Things like how many times the same artist could be played during the day, and during which parts of the day... specific songs would get bumped up percentage wise... you couldn't play 2 female artists back-to-back... and so on. Someone at HQ would input the songs and criteria, but the rest was 95% algorithmically created.

The program director would literally hit a button and it would create the playlist for the week. The traffic department (ads) would have all the commercials also automatically placed within the list. Then there'd be a document to send to the on-air talent that showed what song was just played and what was coming up, and how long the break needed to be, and sometimes a script. At the time, quite a few got faxed to people and some did get emails... and the "DJ" would record their bits, set to the exact timing, and send them over an ISDN line. There was also some rudimentary STT (Dragon?) that transcribed the audio and was computer analyzed to make sure no cursing happened.

The PD would do some spot-checking, but I doubt he personally examined all 120+ hours of programming. And this was 2005.

I guess having a human voice did make it "feel" better? And the DJs did have some breaks that were unscripted, so their personality could come through. Even the best AI voices still don't have that.

Re: We let AIs run radio stations

#259

Post by bluGill »

gwbas1c wrote: post #251
therealpygon wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s like people don’t realize that the “hits” played on radio are entirely manufactured by the music industry. They literally provide lists of songs for the radio station to play that month in order to generate interest so that then people either go play or buy or whatever those songs making them more likely to reach #1 that month. It’s entirely manufactured and people try to point to it as being “real” radio. It’s…

> It’s like people don’t realize that the “hits” played on radio are entirely manufactured by the music industry. They literally provide lists of songs for the radio station to play that month in order to generate interest so that then people either go play or buy or whatever those songs making them more likely to reach #1 that month. "My favorite radio station" (see my above post) was a mix of "the list" and songs t…

> A lot of the older songs were timeless classics in the 1990s, like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.

The music industry allows those as well to "create variety". And they of course are perfectly happy to sell you a [possibly remastered] Pink Floyd CD.

Re: We let AIs run radio stations

#260

Post by bluGill »

evmaki wrote: post #165
tempaccount5050 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On actual radio waves?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_independent_radio_stat... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_college_radio_stations... ^ One of those might be in your area :)

Might is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. There are several dozen radio stations in my area, and the only one on that list is a college station that just barely has the signal strength to reach me.
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