D&D and the rising pandemic

[Dannyalcatraz]

And that's a big point. The approach to post-scarcity is driven by simple profit motive... but that motive disappears once you've achieved the goal, by definition. Today, you'd build a songwriting robot because it would free you from having to pay a songwriter. But... post-scarcity, you already don't have to pay the songwriter. There is no need for the robot to exist!

I agree with this...

BUT...

There are reasons to create songwriting AIs beyond the motive of replacing living songwriters. The most obvious one is to create tools to assist living songwriters.

And of course, genies DON‘T go willingly back into bottles. Even before we reach post-scarcity- asuming that we do, and that’s not a guarantee- creative professions will be endangered by automation as well. Tools that CAN replace humans WILL.

Because music, art, and all of that is subjective, most of the audience won’t care whether something was produced by human hands, as long as they find it enjoyable.

Exhibit 1a- AI created music:


Exhibit 1b- Brian Eno’s Reflection, available in multiple formats including an app that generates the music infinitely:

Brian Eno's next album does not end

Brian Eno's next album will be available as a generative app, allowing listeners to hear it as an endless, constantly changing stream of sound.

www.factmag.com

Exhibit 2- Christian Seidler’s Matricism:

To explain- Christian Seidler created an evolution of pointilism in which the paint is applied in 3 dimensions. Dots of colored paint are not just applied side to side on the canvas, but on top of each other. It is very labor intensive, and he only did about 30 canvasses by hand. With the help of the UT Austin robotics program (as I recall), he designed a machine which applies the paint for him. While he still programs the machine on what to paint, there is no reason why an AI couldn’t do something “in his style” once it was taught to do so.

 

[tomBitonti]

Remember this site with the projected deaths in the USA at 60k (now 69k)?

France COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

France Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

They give a range of possible death rates that is very large and yet there are results that are still happening outside of that range.

France was predicted to have its highest death toll 11 days ago at 941.

Today was predicted to be 355 with a range of 129-929.

The actual total was 1438. 50% more than their highest guess.

1438 isn't just an anomaly brought about by a lag of reporting. This is the 6th day they've had above 1k deaths. The site only had 3 days total that had a range of deaths as high as 1k+.

I don't remember seeing projections on worldometer. The projections were here:

IHME | COVID-19 Projections

Explore forecasts of COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospital resource use.

covid19.healthdata.org

Be Safe, Be Well,
Tom Bitonti

 

[Morrus]

Now, imagine a world where all of those skills are done more competently by a robot.

A robot can make better tasting food (like, literally -- let them look at a human making food or the result, and they make stuff that looks better and tastes better in any kind of "blind" taste test). Similar for engineering and writing songs.

But it becomes about the people not the tasks.

Machines can outperform Olympians. We still want to know who’s the fastest or strongest. It’s about a cultural shift to people being great at what they do.

 

[Umbran]

There are reasons to create songwriting AIs beyond the motive of replacing living songwriters. The most obvious one is to create tools to assist living songwriters.

That's only if you view "assistant" in the sense of the unpaid intern that just does all the work while the boss gets the credit.

Because music, art, and all of that is subjective, most of the audience won’t care whether something was produced by human hands, as long as they find it enjoyable.

Art is ultimately about communication, not merely esthetics. A non-sentient machine cannot intend to communicate anything.

Examples of a coupe of current attempts to make a machine to do a human task is not really an argument that machines WILL replace humans at all tasks. Currently, making machines to ape human art is really more about learning how to make machines than it is learning how to replace humans.

 

[NotAYakk]

"Real" AI is defined as the AI we cannot yet make.

This means that "Real" AI retreats constantly.

Labeling things as something that can only be done by "Real" AI is hilarious, a joke 50 years old.

 

[generic]

"Real" AI is defined as the AI we cannot yet make.

This means that "Real" AI retreats constantly.

Labeling things as something that can only be done by "Real" AI is hilarious, a joke 50 years old.

The whole idea of organic intellect as in any terms "real" is a human construct.

 

[MoonSong]

That's only if you view "assistant" in the sense of the unpaid intern that just does all the work while the boss gets the credit.



Art is ultimately about communication, not merely esthetics. A non-sentient machine cannot intend to communicate anything.

Examples of a coupe of current attempts to make a machine to do a human task is not really an argument that machines WILL replace humans at all tasks. Currently, making machines to ape human art is really more about learning how to make machines than it is learning how to replace humans.

I would love to have an AI that I could train to draw better than me. I would only have to feed it character designs and scripts, and it would draw them all faster than I could. At the very least I would love an AI that applied flat color to line art. (Ok, if it also shaded, that would be better). Anything that would help me produce faster....

A bit on topic, in my country they have announced that we'll be under quarantine until May 17th and May 30th, depending on whether you live on low contagion or high contagion zones. Guess which one I live in?

On more global news

Coronavirus can survive long exposure to high temperature, a threat to lab staff around world: paper | South China Morning Post

It seems that summer will do nothing to stop this thing from spreading... (Ok, take it with a grain of salt, because you know... But still, it is possible this will last more than H1N1 did)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That's only if you view "assistant" in the sense of the unpaid intern that just does all the work while the boss gets the credit.

In that BBC clip- which I found out is having playback issues- at least one of the artists featured saw the AI as actually pushing her to create things she normally wouldn’t.

So, in a sense, it IS an unpaid assistant...or more accurately, an unpaid collaborator for her.

Art is ultimately about communication, not merely esthetics. A non-sentient machine cannot intend to communicate anything.

While true from a philosophical standpoint, that’s not how a huge section of humanity actually consume/engage with art in the real world. As a practical matter, they only care if it is enjoyable for them to perceive. All they need is the surface, the deeper, more cerebral level of engagement is superfluous to them. My paternal grandfather was one of those- the man had a PhD in education and changed lives, but made no distinction between the work of the old masters and things he could buy for under $50.

Spend any time talking to musicians, and you’ll find the same dynamic as they push back against the assertion some people make that recordings with mass appeal (going multiple platinum) are somehow objectively better than recordings that fail to sell even 100k copies. $$$ has nothing to do with the inherent value of music, they correctly insist, but that is nonetheless how some feel.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

On more global news

Coronavirus can survive long exposure to high temperature, a threat to lab staff around world: paper | South China Morning Post

It seems that summer will do nothing to stop this thing from spreading... (Ok, take it with a grain of salt, because you know... But still, it is possible this will last more than H1N1 did)

Considering places like Iran, Australia and the like were seeing significant spreading during hot weather, it was not likely that the seasons were going to offer us any significant respite.

 

[Umbran]

While true from a philosophical standpoint, that’s not how a huge section of humanity actually consume/engage with art in the real world. As a practical matter, they only care if it is enjoyable for them to perceive.

shrug. An unspecified "huge section" of humanity? We are now in the realm of speculation, and that probably should have been, "I think enough of humanity doesn't care..."

And we can speculate more - noting that how we engage with art would likely change if we had vastly more time to study and appreciate it.