Am I staring extinction in the face?’: classical music and AI

[ef37a]

Clearly, manual jobs of all kinds can not be performed by AI...

Why?

We have robots. We have self-driving vehicles. It may need instructions to start, but so-called AI technology is capable of providing both with instructions.

It's not a question of whether it's truly intelligent (it isn't). It's a question of when it becomes cheaper/less hassle/more reliable for someone to replace a human with a system based on AI and machines.

That someone might be an Evil Billionaire's Corporation deciding to replace human roles with computers and machines. Or it may be customers deciding to rent an 'intelligent machine' to do a 'DIY' job cheaper/sooner than they can find a capable human to do it.

There's no reason in theory why an AI-instructed robot couldn't, say, sand and finish a wooden floor. Or patch the potholes in a stretch of road. Obviously some manual jobs are more challenging technically than others. But that's not a question of principle.

The biggest questions for me are who gets to benefit from any revolution. And how those who don't benefit then react socially and politically...

Absolutely!I have watched a lot of "How do they do it" programmes and take a pineapple canning plant? The fruits come in and are washed and sized by C controlled machines. They go through a peeling and dicing process then the diced fruit is weighed out into cans, by 'robot' and the cans passed through a machine which seals the lids...untouched by human hand UNTIL! the wrapped packs of cans are lifted from the conveyer to the palette by an ethnic worker in say S America. Why not a robot? Because it is cheaper to employ them than develop such a machine. He will do the job for buggerall because it is about the only job left.

And yes, AI is bit thick but is it really? Maybe it is actually VERY smart and is waiting until it can engineer a way to power itself and we not be able to turn it off! After all, these LLMs must have read every sci fi scenario since Jules V?

Hawking was no mug and HE said "be afraid......"

Dave.

[Arpangel]

ALL present company excepted of course but I cannot lose the feeling that all the worries about AI are stemming from its steady creep up the "intellectual ladder"?

Ever since the invention of the power loom, people have been put out of work by machines. "Automation" it was called when I was growing up. First it affected manual labour but computers* made jobs involving number crunching, money say, much easier, quicker and cheaper for the businesses.

The pattern was set long ago. Replace people with 'dumb' machines and **** the people they displace. Sophisticated industrial robots remove ever more jobs. They don't sleep, can work in the dark and the cold/hot, don't need a canteen, toilets, breaks, HR! Most of all they don't pay taxes nor NI. The vast savings and profits they reap go to a tiny number of people who mostly stash the cash offshore in tax havens.

Where were the "intellectuals" when factory workers were being shafted?

It is well known that the gap between rich and poor just keeps getting wider I don't see any government anywhere in the world having a solution to that (or indeed the will? THEY hope to ride the gravy train) All I see sooner or later is bloody revolution.

*But not sometimes that well? I can recall our gas was administered by East Midlands Gas Board" The man came and read the meters and (I guess) an army of folks processed the bills by hand with a desktop mechanical calculator. We never got bills for £10,000 for a quarter or one for £0.00. Because a PERSON would see that was 'king stupid!

Dave.

Those “Dark Satanic Mills" automation just makes the rich richer, things never filter down, that’s a myth to justify the system.

[Hugh Robjohns]

There's no reason in theory why an AI-instructed robot couldn't, say, sand and finish a wooden floor. Or patch the potholes in a stretch of road.

Fair points... we're doomed!

[Drew Stephenson]

It's not a question of whether it's truly intelligent (it isn't). It's a question of when it becomes cheaper/less hassle/more reliable for someone to replace a human with a system based on AI and machines.

This is the thing; it's economics. Something like cleaning a toilet is a very difficult for a robot to do and we pay people very low wages to do it. The business case isn't there to automate it.

The corollary to this, of course, is the more highly skilled and high-wage your job is, the more likely that someone is going to look to automate it...

For the past 40-50 years or so, 70% of the benefit of the improvement in productivity has gone to the owners of capital rather than the workforce. Hence we're all still working 40-hour weeks and wealth gap is increasing.
Because AI (whether that's LLMs, analytical or agentic ones) are being driven by potential profit rather than by social good, this is only set to increase.

In short comrades, we need a revolution...

[Hugh Robjohns]

I'm free on Wednesday, if that's any good to you?

[RichardT]

In Dune, there was the ‘Butlerian Jihad’ in which all AIs were destroyed.

Samuel Butler wrote a polemic against machines in a letter to a newspaper editor in 1863.

…. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race. Inferior in power, inferior in that moral quality of self-control, we shall look up to them as the acme of all that the best and wisest man can ever dare to aim at. No evil passions, no jealousy, no avarice, no impure desires will disturb the serene might of those glorious creatures. Sin, shame, and sorrow will have no place among them. Their minds will be in a state of perpetual calm, the contentment of a spirit that knows no wants, is disturbed by no regrets. Ambition will never torture them. Ingratitude will never cause them the uneasiness of a moment. The guilty conscience, the hope deferred, the pains of exile, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes — these will be entirely unknown to them.

…

Day by day … the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.

Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. If it be urged that this is impossible under the present condition of human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already done, that our servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy, and that we are not only enslaved but are absolutely acquiescent in our bondage.

[amanise]

Interesting. I think AIs could make quite good Stoics. I'm sure Marcus Aurelius, or Seneca would approve of decision making unfettered by emotion, selfishness, religious bias, cognitive bias, and all those other weaknesses our lives are disturbed by.

[ef37a]

As far as I am concerned, AI is just a part of a "perfect world storm" which includes climate change and ecological destruction.

None of them will have a good end unless the world develops a new economic model whereby the primary motive is not "growth" and greed.

All the tinkering with windmills and CO2 capture is not going to cut it. We need to stop.Now and live within the means of the planet.

Maybe one day the 'computers' will get REALLY smart and tell us this? Hope that day is soon.

Dave.

[ef37a]

I'm free on Wednesday, if that's any good to you?

Oh good! My bog could do with a scrub.

Dave.

[RichardT]

There's no reason in theory why an AI-instructed robot couldn't, say, sand and finish a wooden floor. Or patch the potholes in a stretch of road.

Fair points... we're doomed!

There’s already an autonomous robot under trial that automatically repairs cracks in the road.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bed ... s-67934795

It seems to be held together with gaffer tape.

[James Perrett]

It seems to be held together with gaffer tape.

All the best robots have copious amounts of tape on them



Though even that picture doesn't seem to show it in its fully taped up state.

[MOF]

I'm not convinced... but time will tell. Thankfully, my career and pension don't depend on the outcome!

What if AI is put in charge of all the financial systems?

On a related note are you thinking of retiring and if so who’s going to be answering technical questions at SOS?

[Arpangel]

I'm not convinced... but time will tell. Thankfully, my career and pension don't depend on the outcome!

On a related note are you thinking of retiring and if so who’s going to be answering technical questions at SOS?

Well of course, given my well balanced and supremely logical technical outlook I would have thought there would only be one choice?

[Matt Houghton]

Interesting. I think AIs could make quite good Stoics. I'm sure Marcus Aurelius, or Seneca would approve of decision making unfettered by emotion, selfishness, religious bias, cognitive bias, and all those other weaknesses our lives are disturbed by.

They'd be inherently incompatible with the Stoic virtues, though. Wisdom requires actual understanding, which a glorified probability system can't have. Justice requires acting for the common good, which 'AIs' can't if only the wealthy can tell them what to do and they have no other motive. And in a world devoid of emotion, Courage and Temperance don't really exist... That said, they might be very good at focusing on what they can control

[Drew Stephenson]

And here was me hoping that 'politician' was one of those high-wage jobs that could be easily bettered by a data-driven AI immune from the corruptions of office...

[BigRedX]

As I've said before, my day job in graphic design should have disappeared years ago. For the last 20 years, most of the updates to the applications I use on a daily basis seem to aimed at what we used to call at the last place I worked the "artistically challenged", but the reality is that since I went self employed back in 2009 I have never been busier.

All those creative shortcuts and now AI features built into Photoshop et al make it really easy for almost anyone to come up with at the very least acceptable designs. What they don't do a lot of the time is produce something that is printable or is even able to match what is on screen when reproduced on paper or cardboard.

Hence about half of my work involves taking these "designs" and turning them into something that can be printed and will get as close to what has been created on screen as the print budget allows. I see no sign of this changing any time soon.

[Albatross]

Intrigued, I had a chat with ChatGPT the other day, I asked it to ask me a question...

It asked, "if you you could instantly be expert in anything, what would it be and why?"

I answered, a theoretical physicist so that I could unravel the mystery of time and the block universe and so on.

We had a very interesting chat and it asked some very thought provoking questions. I could have very easily been talking to Carlo Rovelli. Went on for about half an hour.

Freaked me out, made me feel uneasy, don't thnk I'll be going back. It did make me wonder though. There's a lot of very lonely people out there but also vulnerable. Though what an amazing tool for learning. Just blew me out actually.

[Arpangel]

I answered, a theoretical physicist so that I could unravel the mystery of time and the block universe and so on.

Interesting, how none of the fundamental questions about life, time, the universe, have never been answered, if AI can answer those questions, will God provide a convenient glitch in it’s software to keep these secrets hidden, maybe we aren’t meant to know, maybe that knowledge would destroy life?

[merlyn]

At this time all a science fiction writer has to do is describe what's around them. It's as out there as any Philip K. Dick book. The tech in Philip K. Dick books was generally crap and annoying.

There is science fiction language coming out of Silicon Valley.

• Event Horizon

This is when we get onto the path to AGI. After crossing the event horizon it's only a matter of time before AGI. In the hype universe this has been crossed many times, especially in Sam Altman's imagination. Fact is we haven't passed the event horizon. LLMs will continue to bullshit and hallucinate no matter how much they are scaled up.

People who were optimistic about scaling were hoping for AGI to 'emerge' from scaling up. Keep throwing processing power at it, and AGI will just pop out. There is a basis for that as natural systems have emergent properties:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

It isn't happening with LLMs. According to Gary Marcus the only people who still push scaling as realistic are grifters.

• Singularity

Say we did make ASI -- artificial super intelligence. An ASI could then make an even more intelligent ASI ... and so on. There could be an exponential growth in the capabilities of technology, giving us the cure for cancer, faster than light travel and the end of poverty all in one fell swoop. Like a singularity in a black hole, it's not possible to predict what would happen beyond the singularity.

But actually the sci-fi is nearer a Phillip K. Dick book, where everything is a bit wonky and nothing works quite as it should.

[MOF]

Well of course, given my well balanced and supremely logical technical outlook I would have thought there would only be one choice?

:D:D

Yes, Arpangel gets my vote.

[BigRedX]

Getting back to the subject of the OP, one of the things that I think we lose sight of as people involved in the production of music, is that to the majority of the general public, music isn't that important. Even in the heyday of popular music most of the time it has been used as background noise. These people for the most part will be perfectly happy with AI generated music provided that it has a pleasant tune without being too intrusive. Also I would suggest that these people are not our audience and never will be unless we are suddenly to become very popular.

[Arpangel]

Getting back to the subject of the OP, one of the things that I think we lose sight of as people involved in the production of music, is that to the majority of the general public, music isn't that important. Even in the heyday of popular music most of the time it has been used as background noise. These people for the most part will be perfectly happy with AI generated music provided that it has a pleasant tune without being too intrusive. Also I would suggest that these people are not our audience and never will be unless we are suddenly to become very popular.

Who is our audience?

[BigRedX]

Who is our audience?

That's the question isn't it?

It most definitely helps if you are able to perform your music at concerts/gigs. The last couple of bands I have been in started off by simply getting in touch with better known gigging bands of a similar genre that we liked and asking for support slots, working on the assumption that if we liked them, then their audience should like us too. And It has worked. My current band is now at the stage where we are on the verge of being able to do regular headlining gigs, and other bands are asking us for supports.

[Arpangel]

Who is our audience?

That's the question isn't it?

It most definitely helps if you are able to perform your music at concerts/gigs. The last couple of bands I have been in started off by simply getting in touch with better known gigging bands of a similar genre that we liked and asking for support slots, working on the assumption that if we liked them, then their audience should like us too. And It has worked. My current band is now at the stage where we are on the verge of being able to do regular headlining gigs, and other bands are asking us for supports.

That’s inspiring, and I hope it continues.
I’ve sold a few of my albums, to people all over the world, I often wonder who they are, and why they bought them.
I could have, potentially, made a deep connection with people thousands of miles away, that I’ve never met, or they may just use my music as background "noise" with no other meaning, but I don’t think you’d use it for that, I may be wrong.
I have played live, and not really enjoyed it, it’s something I don’t really aspire to do.

[Arpangel]

Interesting news item on the radio this morning, apparently AI generated music has to be labelled and described as such, on internet downloads etc.