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Laurie Anderson on making an AI chatbot of Lou Reed

theguardian.com

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Re: Laurie Anderson on making an AI chatbot of Lou Reed

#31

Post by unrevelant »

A friend of mine called this back in 2019. Even wrote a short story about it; https://www.ectoplus.com/shorts/replacement/ - apparently I was the only person among the beta readers that figured it as a horror piece.

It'll be a damned seductive business model. Reach out to people in their moment of greatest grief, offer a customized service with a subscription attached, and they never have to let go. Receive photos, videos, phone calls with an AI model of their partner. Why grieve at all? It's just like switching to a long distance relationship. Worse, unsubscribing would be like letting your loved one die all over again. The potential for abuse is... astronomical.

Re: Laurie Anderson on making an AI chatbot of Lou Reed

#32

Post by browningstreet »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #18

I love Laurie Anderson. The wife used to be afraid of her, ha ha. When we saw her put on a show with some material she was working on it didn't seem to make my wife (girlfriend then) feel any warmer toward her. But after the show Laurie sat on the edge of the stage and just chatted with the audience and my wife saw the "non performer" side of her and she was no longer scary . Artists....

Back in 2000 I was in Central Park for an afternoon summer stage event. The turn-out was low. Laurie Anderson and a friend sat on the grass next to me. We ended up doing that casual intermittent chat-about-the-show-and-crowd thing. I never acknowledged who she was but I knew who she was. It was like an afternoon of coffee shop bullshit, and it never got personal or meta-referential. She was a nice normal chatty person.

Re: Laurie Anderson on making an AI chatbot of Lou Reed

#33

Post by cfr2023 »

unrevelant wrote: post #31

A friend of mine called this back in 2019. Even wrote a short story about it; https://www.ectoplus.com/shorts/replacement/ - apparently I was the only person among the beta readers that figured it as a horror piece. It'll be a damned seductive business model. Reach out to people in their moment of greatest grief, offer a customized service with a subscription attached, and they never have to let go. Receive photos, v…

My god, this (very insightful) vision just gets more horrific with each line.

Re: Laurie Anderson on making an AI chatbot of Lou Reed

#34

Post by cfr2023 »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #23
jzemeocala wrote: post #10

I thought for a second that the virtual Lou Reed was hooked on heroin.....lol

Could you even have a persuasive simulated Lou Reed without his struggles with substance abuse being in there somewhere? That might sound facetious, but I'm serious. It might not be explicitly stated, but IMO it'd have to be at least tacitly present. If you took out the drug/alcohol abuse, the result would be a simulation of a different person, not Lou Reed as we know him (same with, say, Keith Richards, or any numbe…

I don't think this sounds facetious. People and their life experiences are essentially inextricable. Nature vs. nurture stuff.

Separating/abstracting person from their experiences is as you say, a representation of a different, non-existent person - a mutant. Or worse still, some kind of dissection.

Disliking peanuts and being allergic to them each motivate abstaining from eating peanuts, an imitation of that person that abstained from eating peanuts without insight into why would be a rather pale imitation indeed.

Re: Laurie Anderson on making an AI chatbot of Lou Reed

#35

Post by InSteady »

freejazz wrote: post #30
nonrandomstring wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess I'm talking about an "industry" that when they're "done" sticks a fork in the young lives it burns through for its banquet. FWIW I don't think Lou Reed ever set out to glamorise addiction. He lost a lot of good people along the way too. He wrote the reality he saw. Maybe making it to 71... there's a bit of survivor's bias. But when someone talks about "addiction", however folksy and cute their art project, they…

Heroin is one of his best songs. What the hell are you talking about already?!?

Have you listened closely to the lyrics? The song most definitely does not glamorize heroin use. And by all accounts, Lou and the Underground were rather bemused when the media would imply that it did. Also, little known fact, Lou didn't particularly like heroin and didn't use it much at all. He was mostly a speed freak and alcoholic.

I won't claim to know what the rest of GPs point is though :)

Re: Laurie Anderson on making an AI chatbot of Lou Reed

#36

Post by flir »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #9
SharkySharky wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know plenty of self-loathing and nihilistic individuals and if they made music it would probably reflect that attitude. Therefore I'd be interested to learn why you think it's the "industry speaking" here instead of, let's say, sappy songs.

Because nothing sells quite like the spectacle of self-immolation. Ever heard of the 27 club [0]? On the night Amy Winehouse died, within an hour of her passing the media was inundated with wailing retrospectives. All of them had obviously been produced months or years in advance as often is done for Royals in expectation of a "celebrity death". Amy's career always had the last chapter already written. I watched the…

Advance obits.

"We currently have nearly 1,700 advances on file" - https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/times-insider/20...

Re: Laurie Anderson on making an AI chatbot of Lou Reed

#37

Post by freejazz »

InSteady wrote: post #35
freejazz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heroin is one of his best songs. What the hell are you talking about already?!?

Have you listened closely to the lyrics? The song most definitely does not glamorize heroin use. And by all accounts, Lou and the Underground were rather bemused when the media would imply that it did. Also, little known fact, Lou didn't particularly like heroin and didn't use it much at all. He was mostly a speed freak and alcoholic. I won't claim to know what the rest of GPs point is though :)

I have. Yet its a popular and beautiful song called... Heroin. You'd be foolish if you think Lou wasn't aware that it got plenty of people into it and did have an ultimate effect of glamorizing it in some individuals' eyes. "I'm waiting for the man" is another.

Re: Laurie Anderson on making an AI chatbot of Lou Reed

#38

Post by hyperdimension »

unrevelant wrote: post #31

A friend of mine called this back in 2019. Even wrote a short story about it; https://www.ectoplus.com/shorts/replacement/ - apparently I was the only person among the beta readers that figured it as a horror piece. It'll be a damned seductive business model. Reach out to people in their moment of greatest grief, offer a customized service with a subscription attached, and they never have to let go. Receive photos, v…

Black Mirror keeps getting things depressingly correct. :/

Re: Laurie Anderson on making an AI chatbot of Lou Reed

#39

Post by nonrandomstring »

freejazz wrote: post #37
InSteady wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you listened closely to the lyrics? The song most definitely does not glamorize heroin use. And by all accounts, Lou and the Underground were rather bemused when the media would imply that it did. Also, little known fact, Lou didn't particularly like heroin and didn't use it much at all. He was mostly a speed freak and alcoholic. I won't claim to know what the rest of GPs point is though :)

I have. Yet its a popular and beautiful song called... Heroin. You'd be foolish if you think Lou wasn't aware that it got plenty of people into it and did have an ultimate effect of glamorizing it in some individuals' eyes. "I'm waiting for the man" is another.

> a popular and beautiful song

Also "Perfect Day", some might say is a lullaby to drugs.

(Can't believe some comments are just sooooooo tone deaf thanking I'm expressing dislike for these amazing artists rather than criticising the industry that feeds on them).

Re: Laurie Anderson on making an AI chatbot of Lou Reed

#40

Post by hyperdimension »

InSteady wrote: post #35
freejazz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heroin is one of his best songs. What the hell are you talking about already?!?

Have you listened closely to the lyrics? The song most definitely does not glamorize heroin use. And by all accounts, Lou and the Underground were rather bemused when the media would imply that it did. Also, little known fact, Lou didn't particularly like heroin and didn't use it much at all. He was mostly a speed freak and alcoholic. I won't claim to know what the rest of GPs point is though :)

What I'm curious about is Perfect Day. I want to say I read him denying it being about heroin, but it just sounds too close to the feeling to me. Maybe I just see in it what I want to see; I'm not sure.
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