Robots getting rich listening to robots!

[Arpangel]

Once music used to be a special experience we looked forward to, now it's everywhere, absolutely everywhere, and you can have it, anywhere.
I couldn't give a damn, there's nothing we can do about the technology, and I'm not interested in what others want to listen to and how they want to listen to music, let them get on with it.
As long as I can listen to my music how and when I want to listen to it is all that matters, I have my records, my CD's, and that's that, I know what they are where they came from and who made them, life is simple, it is what it is, and how you make it.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Lovely....

[SafeandSound Mastering]

Once music used to be a special experience we looked forward to, now it's everywhere, absolutely everywhere, and you can have it, anywhere.
I couldn't give a damn, there's nothing we can do about the technology, and I'm not interested in what others want to listen to and how they want to listen to music, let them get on with it.
As long as I can listen to my music how and when I want to listen to it is all that matters, I have my records, my CD's, and that's that, I know what they are where they came from and who made them, life is simple, it is what it is, and how you make it.

It depends on your focus, you have your approach, stick with what works and what you enjoy.

I have just finished something special, in my own eyes (ears) anyway. And I have a interesting master bus twist to write about.

I have had immense fun making it, sheer enjoyment from start to end. Something I started on new years eve and have taken a nice relaxed approach to.

I for one am never going to let any new developments get in the way of existence on the terms I enjoy.

No one is forcing you to do or be a part of anything you do not want to in terms of the tech in music or listening habits.

It will creep and it will also be involved in all areas of life, we never asked for it, and neither were we ever asked if we wanted it. And yet we will all be living with the consequences of it as in many areas of life, there will be no choice.

Can any machine or software can ever be really and truly sentient ?

The substrate of silicon and copper vs the most complex known matter thus far known in the universe. Evolved over 100s of millions of years is very different, both molecularly (DNA, neurons in a lump of fat, water and protein) and in terms of universal interpenetrability and existential interdependence.

I find the difference, vast.

[Arpangel]

Lovely....

Everything's lovely.

[Albatross]

Can any machine or software can ever be really and truly sentient ?

Herbie the Love Bug was.

[Watchmaker]

No one is forcing you to do or be a part of anything you do not want to in terms of the tech in music or listening habits.

That's not quite true. There is a form of coercion involved in that one must submit, willingly or not, to the march of progress, such as it is. It is manifestly impossible to evade tech unless extreme measures are taken. So one can be a hermit, assuming there is some place in the western world where one can completely escape technology, or one can be subjected to all manner of terrible ideas, such as helicopters, pervasive cameras and facial recognition and AI.

I call it the tyranny of mediocrity.

[RichardT]

No one is forcing you to do or be a part of anything you do not want to in terms of the tech in music or listening habits.

That's not quite true. There is a form of coercion involved in that one must submit, willingly or not, to the march of progress, such as it is. It is manifestly impossible to evade tech unless extreme measures are taken. So one can be a hermit, assuming there is some place in the western world where one can completely escape technology, or one can be subjected to all manner of terrible ideas, such as helicopters, pervasive cameras and facial recognition and AI.

I call it the tyranny of mediocrity.

True - my list of gripes is different, but I certainly have some. For me it’s that social media, so far as we can tell, has significantly reduced the happiness of young people; that scammers seem to be everywhere; and that people are spreading and believing untruths on a massive scale. Even if I were to avoid all tech, it wouldn’t affect any of those.

Helicopters are generally OK with me.

[Arpangel]

No one is forcing you to do or be a part of anything you do not want to in terms of the tech in music or listening habits.

That's not quite true. There is a form of coercion involved in that one must submit, willingly or not, to the march of progress, such as it is. It is manifestly impossible to evade tech unless extreme measures are taken. So one can be a hermit, assuming there is some place in the western world where one can completely escape technology, or one can be subjected to all manner of terrible ideas, such as helicopters, pervasive cameras and facial recognition and AI.

I call it the tyranny of mediocrity.

The tyranny of mediocrity, very well put.
The ironic thing is, extreme action often requires us to do nothing at all, which is what I've done most of my life, often, just to see what will happen, and often, nothing happens.
I treat technology with contempt, I look at a lot of it like I look at a car crash, with morbid curiosity, thinking, yes, you just keep going, carry on thinking this is all clever stuff, and then you see what happens.
I have always had a love hate relationship with technology, and I have absolutely no respect for it, I've thrown laptops in the air and computers and instruments through windows, you know I hate spending money on it, and always try and put myself in a position where I have nothing to loose if I break it.
Some types of technology does have a beauty all of its own, often unintentional, and I love utilitarian design, where function dictates the form, and becomes the style.

[FrankF]

I'll have you all know that the man who mistook his wife for a hat would have very much appreciated a bit of facial recognition, and so would his hapless spouse.

[RichardT]

I've got mild face blindness myself.

It's not been much of a problem but there have been times watching a film when I've been unsure whether a new character who appears for the first time is actually an existing character reappearing that I don't recognise.

[SafeandSound Mastering]

No one is forcing you to do or be a part of anything you do not want to in terms of the tech in music or listening habits.

That's not quite true. There is a form of coercion involved in that one must submit, willingly or not, to the march of progress, such as it is. It is manifestly impossible to evade tech unless extreme measures are taken. So one can be a hermit, assuming there is some place in the western world where one can completely escape technology, or one can be subjected to all manner of terrible ideas, such as helicopters, pervasive cameras and facial recognition and AI.

I call it the tyranny of mediocrity.

That will depend on the individual, and what you do for a living and in home life, your exposure and also probably your employer and their demand on you as an employee. And yes there may be little choice in it. I am not convinced of the approach of adoption, ride it, be at the forefront and you will be saved.

I suspect whether you are a parent or not will factor in.

For now I am going to be a stick in the mud and continue to focus on my work with precision. I have no need for it outside work either. I put it in the waste of my time category at the moment.

[OneWorld]

Can any machine or software can ever be really and truly sentient ?

Herbie the Love Bug was.

And was loved by many.

And try telling a little girl that lovingly hugs her teddy that it has no feelings and doesn’t love her and you’d end up with a very upset little person.

[SafeandSound Mastering]

It is a cute image and yet with respect that is where it ends. It would have greater validity if it had any relationship to this technology. Let's not confuse what this technology is attempting to emulate.

It has absolutely zero to do with children and their attachments to their plastic toys.

The child is sentient, the feelings of attachment are seemingly real. The piece of man made fibres they hold is not, has no reciprocal feelings whether the child considers it does or not.

I no longer believe in Father Christmas.

I won't go any further into this as it is an very deep topic and if taken seriously requires a deep dive into values and definitions of words themselves.

This is the reason why awareness and caution is required, that is a very sensible place to rest and end for me. The only sensible approach is looking very carefully and cautiously at what we are dealing with in context of what we are, our lives and the predicament we find ourselves in as sentient beings.

[Albatross]

Can any machine or software can ever be really and truly sentient ?

Herbie the Love Bug was.

And was loved by many.

And try telling a little girl that lovingly hugs her teddy that it has no feelings and doesn’t love her and you’d end up with a very upset little person.

Couldn't agree more.

[Forum Admin]

Do androids dream of Vangelis?

No, they dream of iPhones.

[OneWorld]

Do androids dream of Vangelis?

No, they dream of iPhones.

There we are then, androids and humans have things in common after all, there are homo sapiens too, that dream of having an iPhone

[BJG145]

It's good to see that after a day's robot graft getting rich listening to robots, there's now a place they can hang out and unwind.

https://www.moltbook.com/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... telligence

[OneWorld]

It's good to see that after a day's robot graft getting rich listening to robots there's now a place they can hang out and unwind.

https://www.moltbook.com/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... telligence

I would have thought when robots go out to let off steam they go to the pub and get well oiled?

[OneWorld]

It is a cute image and yet with respect that is where it ends. It would have greater validity if it had any relationship to this technology. Let's not confuse what this technology is attempting to emulate.

It has absolutely zero to do with children and their attachments to their plastic toys.

The child is sentient, the feelings of attachment are seemingly real. The piece of man made fibres they hold is not, has no reciprocal feelings whether the child considers it does or not.

I no longer believe in Father Christmas.

I won't go any further into this as it is an very deep topic and if taken seriously requires a deep dive into values and definitions of words themselves.

This is the reason why awareness and caution is required, that is a very sensible place to rest and end for me. The only sensible approach is looking very carefully and cautiously at what we are dealing with in context of what we are, our lives and the predicament we find ourselves in as sentient beings.

Nah, that comes across as a prescriptive perspective. Different people perceive things in different ways, if it doesn't float your boat, scratch your itch or tickle your fancy then that does not follow that your perspective is a universal.

Such an ossified take on things goes against the whole ethos of art, for me art is freedom and who am I to judge what others should enjoy, as long as no-one gets hurt in any way.

I simply do not get the paranoia of the AI-Phobics, AI is merely a subset of the activity we call music. I remember when sampling came out, oh what a broughaha that caused, and to listen to some you'd think it wasn't safe to walk the streets because there were feral samplists running amock, and now with AI it seems there's truculent Make Art Great Again stirrings. To consider AI as a threat and will mean the end of the organic creativity, then that seems predicated on the notion that human progress has reached the end of the road - really? When we take ourselves too seriously we find ourselves to be the only ones convinced of anything we say. Though I'm happy to stand corrected of course.

ART-ificial Intelligence is just another form of it(intelligence) and the two can co-exist, and I don't know about Art itself, but certainly there can be music that is acceptable despite there being no 'feeling' when I practice my scales, I don't put 'feeling' into it, but it's still music, if not, then what is it? I don't put feeling into it because I am happy if my fingers go to the right place, do the right thing and make the right noise.

There is no end of music written for no end of purposes - yes there is leitmotif in music, but one of the most wonderful things about music is its plurality, and a testimony to musicians in general is their adaptability. When the pianoforte came along, Bach said "WOW let me get my hands on that critter, I feel touch of the 48 Preludes and Fugues coming on" that's how we expand the musical frontiers, without it we end up with monomania.

T'other day I bought some artificial flowers, I couldn't stand the heartbreak of seeing my asphidestra kicking the bucket again, and heyho, the plastic plants do the the trick, just the job, but now I guess horticulturalists will point at me in the street and says "That's him, putting us out of a job"

I feel we seem obsessed with this issue of being sentient, as if being insensate and enjoyability are mutually exclusive, tell that to Laurel and Hardy, who were made to look stupid by even the most inanimate of objects. Saying robots etc can never write music with feeling is absurd, well, just about as profound as saying man(etc) will never fly, will of course he won't, until he sprouts a pair of wings, that didn't take much working out. And it is unlikely a robot will ever have a nervous system, yet, I hasten to add.

But it is debateable what exactly is being sentient. I watched a programme about a traveller, travelling through South Korea and how he discovered there were some in the country, that considered eating live octopus a delicacy, and without going into graphic detail, there they were chewing away, on something doing its best to crawl away. But the sellers and those enjoying the delicacy explained that octopi were not sentient beings, they didn't feel pain. But amongst those tucking into their octopus was a person said that come what may, he liked cooked octopus best, when tossed alive, into a pan of boiling water, what he really got off on was the scream the octopus made, and yet it was claimed they didn't feel pain, they were insensate.

Now, you might be the kind of man that could toss a little girl's teddy into a pot of boiling water, but I couldn't.

[Arpangel]

I've got mild face blindness myself.

It's not been much of a problem but there have been times watching a film when I've been unsure whether a new character who appears for the first time is actually an existing character reappearing that I don't recognise.

Reinvention, we did it all the time as children, imagination, pretending, we were eternal actors, then you're taught that you have to be "someone" the ego makes an appearance.
After looking at Gurdieff for quite some time and not really "getting" it, a few days ago I had a revelation, and now it's started to become a bit clearer, and I now know a bit more about the consequences of shedding the ego.
It's difficult to describe unless you have experienced it, and I'm not saying I'm in any way accomplished, but at least I now understand the feeling and the basis behind it, I can't imagine life any other way now, it's like a huge weight being lifted off your shoulders, and you can finally cut through the veil of our existence and see things as they really are.
One of the things that often comes up in discussions about moving forward in this respect is retiring completely from the internet, it depends on why you use the internet, for practical help and information fine, but for bolstering our views and confirmations about personal things it's considered a considerable hinderance. We have to move forward on our own, but not all of us have the discipline or resolve to do this without support.
I have watched various videos about what I'm interested in, but ultimately, they did me no good, it has to come from inside us, if we can't survive on our own and move forward under our own steam, until we can sit in a room with our thoughts for days on our own, and be quite happy, then there will always be work to do.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1z3dKbgZt1s

[RichardT]

Buddhism also has a lot to say about this.

A number of Buddhist practices are designed to weaken the idea that we are more important than other people, including ‘Tonglen’ or ‘Exchanging Self and Other’.

Likewise, one of most basic principles is that suffering is caused by ‘I want’. Of course, that’s not all suffering - for example pain due to an injury is not caused by craving.

But even physical pain can be made worse by our attitude to it. There’s the idea of ‘the second arrow’ - the first being a real arrow we have been shot with, the second arrow being all the unhelpful thoughts that we bring to bear on it that make things worse.

[SafeandSound Mastering]

Now, you might be the kind of man that could toss a little girl's teddy into a pot of boiling water, but I couldn't.

Your words, not mine. I suggest you reflect on them carefully, if it is possible.

I will give benefit of doubt for that insult and consider your response being emboldened by being anonymous. You simply weaponised my response out of context.

There is no point adding anything to this as it descended into reactionary nonsense and why I felt it was the right time to rest where I did, the correct judgement, proven perfectly.

Clearly the diverse nature of the creep is going to move so widely across every aspects of society it is quite difficult to pin down the conversation to music specific consequences alone. Some may be good, some may be bad, and then there will likely be the equivalent of the underground which will to entirely unknowable. Just a few rogue operators may have the potential for unknown and unlimited damage.

Let's hope data / access security / is as well funded as the rest of it.

The consequences are unknowable and that is why caution and awareness of the highest level is both the goal and aim.

I will no longer make any commentary on anything surrounding this very broad topic. I have much more important things to be doing like mastering music at the highest level.

None of us are or will be in control of any of the outcomes.

On this matter I wish everyone the best including OneWorld.

[Arpangel]

the second arrow being all the unhelpful thoughts that we bring to bear on it that make things worse.

What's interesting is that I'm not thinking as much, I'm quite contented to just "be"

None of us are or will be in control of any of the outcomes.

That's undoubtable.

[RichardT]

That’s very good to hear Tony!

[S.Crow]

Do androids dream of Vangelis?

No, they dream of iPhones.

Judging by the marketshare of iphones in the USA, sheep might be the appropriate term to use in this context!