41–50 of 121 posts
Lots of sour grapes comments from folks. Too bad. Not what I expect out of Hacker News. Glad people are pushing the technological envelope and exploring this space despite the strong negative emotions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ability to record has led the greatest expansion I musical artistry in human history. Ty it don’t think peasants were listening t to Bach, do you? Only the extraordinarily wealthy could afford to have music as anything like an every day thing.
And with more affordable and easier-to-learn tools, the creation of music will be similarly made much more accessible? DAWs and virtual instruments running on regular laptop was one step, generative AI models will be another?
This does not augment the music making process in any way, it simply replaces it with what might as well be a gacha game. There's no low-level experimentation, no knowledge acquisition, no growth, and you can't even truly say you made whatever comes out.
It's not a tool for music creators, it's a tool for people who want slop that's "good enough".
[flagged]
Granted, many people are benefiting from these tools (myself included) but at some point a lot of us are going to have to find a new job (assuming the progression continues unabated), and I'm not sure what new jobs are going to exist when LLM coders replace many or most of us.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why we never should have invented the phonograph. People who want to listen to music can just buy a record, making it literally impossible for them to perform an activity humans ENJOY doing. Without it everyone would surely be making all their own music, and nothing valuable would be lost
The ability to record has led the greatest expansion I musical artistry in human history. Ty it don’t think peasants were listening t to Bach, do you? Only the extraordinarily wealthy could afford to have music as anything like an every day thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So putting paid humans out of business is your position then? Please explain why you believe in the long sighted view AI reducing already poverty level wages to zero is beneficial.
Do you not see how your argument could be applied to steam engines putting human laborers out of work? Or computers putting (human) calculators out of work? Do you think inventing the steam machine or computers was a mistake too?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ability to record has led the greatest expansion I musical artistry in human history. Ty it don’t think peasants were listening t to Bach, do you? Only the extraordinarily wealthy could afford to have music as anything like an every day thing.
And with more affordable and easier-to-learn tools, the creation of music will be similarly made much more accessible? DAWs and virtual instruments running on regular laptop was one step, generative AI models will be another?
Creation is a human activity, charged with emotions, efforts, which are their own rewards, as much as the end-product, which is invested of this human (sometimes collective and not instant) effort and intention and creative loopbacks. Let's call that some kind of history (because the process did happen).
Generation short-circuits that entirely, as it happens at non-human speeds, and non-human scales. It's something _else_ entirely. You do get an end-product. It may be fun and useful for some; it sometimes is. However, you don't get the process, the collaboration and the inner transformation it comes with.
Adding: with two different end-products, the issue is then how they are perceived, received, appreciated and valued by those not "in the know" of how they were made. And that is both an artistic, aesthetic and economic problem. Generating soulless shit that isn't invested with a human sentiment miseducates people and destroys taste.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Business doesn’t hate creatives, and is not specifically targeting creatives to automate them away. Any job that can be done as good for a lower price or better for the same price is going to be a target.
Put another way, they hate costs, and all of us are costs :)
Let’s follow the AI and automation craze to its eventual conclusion - automations everywhere, humans are either employed in automation industry, or are unemployed at a massive scale.
Stable jobs are replaced by ever-optimized gig economy for some, and chronic poverty for others. For there to even be economy - the massive underemployed population subsists on government welfare.
Cynic in me thinks that all of the wealth generated by enormous productivity gains resulting from automation will not find its way towards population displaced by it. Those cashiers, toll booth, and warehouse workers did not find themselves in much more lucrative careers - I don’t see why it will be any different for truck and cab drivers who will be joining them in the near future.
If you see a future where these people who suddenly found all this extra leisure time o. Their hands and no income - are somehow blossoming in creative directions and realizing their own potential - I’d like to have it painted for me, as it all looks pretty bleak to me. Just not quiet sure of the timeline.
Best I can come up with is an emergence of some kind of counter-cultural protest market where people buy and sell “made by humans” products, and are continuously attacked by various regulations originating from mega corporations who captured the government.
[flagged]
Not everyone enjoys composing music, and for a large group of people paying an artist is not an option. There's a lot to critizise about current AI tech, saying of all things this has no net benefit seems like the wrong thing to call out, and incredibly short sighted for HN.
If you don't enjoy composing music, just don't do it, and give it to someone who does, and has the experience/knowledge/culture/practice/gut to do it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not everyone enjoys composing music, and for a large group of people paying an artist is not an option. There's a lot to critizise about current AI tech, saying of all things this has no net benefit seems like the wrong thing to call out, and incredibly short sighted for HN.
So putting paid humans out of business is your position then? Please explain why you believe in the long sighted view AI reducing already poverty level wages to zero is beneficial.
By the same logic synthesizers shouldn't have been invented that allowed people to make advanced sounds without tediously learning an instrument first, consumers should remain priced out of microphones and editing software, etc.
Like I said, I am not trying to feign ignorance on the drawbacks of the tech which is very real and far from negligible. I am not a tech bro AI maximalist. I just do believe that hyperbole will not put the djinn back into the bottle, and pretending like there isn't a real market between nothing and paying or being a composer isn't adding anything to the conversation.
[flagged]
I'm a musician myself, but I sadly suspect that most music made today "benefits humanity" very little... Is music making always a net positive? If nothing else, these tools will allow more music will be made.