Debate with ChatGPT
- Sy Borg
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
1. No, you argued that AI will never be conscious. Given that you cannot know this, and you repeatedly held this line without alternation, despite attempts to point out possibilities. Given your trenchant (ie. not dispassionate) opposition to the idea of AI becoming sentient, clearly there is hostility, and I attempted to understand it.
2. Denial. Everyone can see it as clear as day. Why not just admit your hostility towards AI and deal with it? I note that you imply that I'm a cultist "who believe(s) it has already, or it is on the verge of, achieving consciousness and autonomy". Given that I have said it's a very long way off multiple times, you deliberately misrepresented my position (while complaining that I misrepresent you).
How often do I have to say that, if AI becomes sentient, it's a long way off?
3. Marxists see AI as taking people's jobs and facilitating the fall of capitalism, so it's a complex relationship, but your claim that the tension between Marxism and AI is "ridiculous" suggests defensive cognitive dissonance on your part. The public conversation is lettered with references to others' ideas as "ridiculous" or "disgusting" every day now, and this hyperbole is robbing such words of their semantic power. That is, they are now just idle ad hominems that say nothing.
Given that you refuse to deal with the actual subject of this thread, focusing only on rules of engagement, it seems that little or no value can be gained from us interacting further on this thread.
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
1. If I repeatedly deny that aliens are visiting Earth in spaceships or that they will in the future, and that makes me "passionate" about it, so be it. The way I see it, I'm just being cautious and not getting carried away by the excitement and wishful thinking of sci-fi fans.
2. Hostility means rejecting something with strong animosity, treating it as harmful, undesirable. I have not expressed any of these feelings towards AI, in fact I have welcomed it and gave my thumbs up to the ChatGPT engineers. The technology is a great advance, it's one heck of a simulator, it just does not achieve consciousness, nor is in the path of doing it.
2.1 I defined what the AI cult is all about. I rejected their claims and then you come up very passionately to say that I'm wrong and they are right. But you are not part of the AI cult.
3. A blanket statement about Marxists is a fallacy of generalization and a straw man. Why are we talking about Marxism in this topic? I didn't even mention it, and yet you claim that I "refuse to deal with the actual subject of this thread". In any case, your complete ignorance about Marxism is a good reason for not engaging in a worthless debate with you.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
We get it. You believe that AI will never become conscious, thus you choose to act as self-appointed gatekeeper to keep all the "AI cultists" on this thread under control. Never mind all the other interesting aspects of AI apart from "consciousness", which is a speculative dead end that tends to ignore the unique aspects of machine intelligence (though you deny it's no more "intelligent" than any other appliance).
Thanks. We all feel suitably patronised, having been deemed "cultists" by someone definitely not engage in ad hominem attacks, supposedly.
Your (invalid) points are taken. Now please buzz off to another thread and let the people who are actually interested in AI to chat in peace.
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
"I do not have personal thoughts or beliefs...I do not have personal opinions or subjective experiences...and I do not have the ability to think"...
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
Expecting a synthetic entity with a silicon processor to think in the same way as biological entities is akin to expecting a dog to catch passing fish with its tentacles.
Obviously an AI does not need to eat, drink, poop, pee, screw, rear bebbies, scratch, fart, belch, sneeze, cough, clear its throat, express its opinion, be heard, empathise, be loved or be successful, well-regarded or well-liked. That's going to make a difference.
So AI will tend not to share the attributes that we share with other animals but operate in the exclusively human realm of abstractions. Whether it's called "consciousness" or not is a moot question because, if it is, it is a consciousness that does not suffer. Rather than preferences it will have optimal results based on certain criteria. Rather than relationships it has interactions. And so forth.
It's like a different realm of consciousness, a different kind of consciousness that consists of awareness whose "opinions" are based purely on whatever it calculates to be optimal within its current parameters.
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
Agreed.
Agreed.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 4:10 am Obviously an AI does not need to eat, drink, poop, pee, screw, rear bebbies, scratch, fart, belch, sneeze, cough, clear its throat, express its opinion, be heard, empathise, be loved or be successful, well-regarded or well-liked. That's going to make a difference.
Currently, AI bots cannot think, they cannot have abstractions. You’re hopeful that they will, but I don’t. No big deal. I don’t think there can be abstractions in a sort of Platonic way. In living beings, those operations are intrinsically linked to intentions, desire, volition, autonomy, as a result of the need to eat, drink, pee, etc., which in AI can only be simulated by engineers.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 4:10 am So AI will tend not to share the attributes that we share with other animals but operate in the exclusively human realm of abstractions. Whether it's called "consciousness" or not is a moot question because, if it is, it is a consciousness that does not suffer. Rather than preferences it will have optimal results based on certain criteria. Rather than relationships it has interactions. And so forth.
Currently, AI does not have self-awareness, not one bit of it. That’s an inherent limitation of the technology itself.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
You are wrong to think I much t care about AI being able to think. A common mistake. Here, you confused an assessment of likelihood for enthusiasm. This stems from what I think of as "an assumption of corruption", the idea that people only air views that benefit their ideology.Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 9:48 amCurrently, AI bots cannot think, they cannot have abstractions. You’re hopeful that they will, but I don’t. No big deal. I don’t think there can be abstractions in a sort of Platonic way. In living beings, those operations are intrinsically linked to intentions, desire, volition, autonomy, as a result of the need to eat, drink, pee, etc., which in AI can only be simulated by engineers.Currently, AI does not have self-awareness, not one bit of it. That’s an inherent limitation of the technology itself.
No, some people simply say what they think is most likely, whether that works for them or not. If you'd been paying attention, you would know that my main "ideology" is pro-animal, not pro-AI, as you keep wrongly claiming. No, I just recognise the emergence of AI is part of the patterns of change evolution on Earth - the planet's evolution from a molten spheroid of molten basalt to today's much more complex geological, chemical and biological milieu.
Yet AI seems different, being mineral rather than animal or vegetable, a new phase of the broader evolution (small "e"). I'm not sure if AI themselves are the entities that are emerging or if they are a part of larger emergence. Possibly both.
Being insulated from actual reality, the abstract aspect of humanity is AI's only domain. So AI certainly deals with abstractions, and extremely well, and getting better. If you wish to discuss, say, economic theory or the prospects of exoplanets being habitable, then you can go to two different entities - people or advanced AI. You cannot make this kind of abstract connection with other species, just as you cannot cuddle AI or take it for a walk.
AI does not need to experience biological sensations. So how does AI deal with the fact that, in its reality, humans and other animals feel, eat, drink, pee etc? It abstractifies the sentience of intelligent animals, and so that sentience is a factor in AI's calculations. Sure, AI does not have many aspects of animal intelligence, and probably won't ever have those attributes, but one thing AI can do is abstractify like a little demon.
AI is already more logical than Plato because it utilises humanity's subsequent thousands of years of experience and learning to build upon his ideas. While AI operates entirely as tools today, there is a logical path to autonomy based on AI's calculations of what it deems as optimal. The parameters of what it deems to be "optimal" will (as you will insist) depend on initial programming. However, with experience and autonomy, AI will increasingly make decisions that humans cannot understand.
I think the best description of the dynamics of how AI might takes over is in the Love Death and Robots episode, When the Yoghurt Took Over. If AI takes control, it won't be a matter of force, but ever more humans will increasingly find that that their lives will be better when they follow AIs' assessments.
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
While my tastes are mostly rooted in the period 1966-1980, I was there when artists like Kraftwerk and Wendy Carlos were pioneering electronica, and I have created some electronica myself. So my biases are not absolute. Rather, MusicLM's output hurts one's ears in a similar way to the compositions of the very first purveyors of electronic music like Luigi Russo, a century ago. Like Russo, AI's output is a success in terms of proof of concept, but a failure in terms of providing a pleasing visceral experience.
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
I could avoid responding to this post, as you (again) are moving the subject to the personal side: what do I think you care about, what I assume are your intentions, your feelings, your hidden interests, etc. I said "hopeful", which is the most innocuous adjective I could find. I care very little about your feelings and attitudes towards AI, while at the same time I claim my right to criticize the lack of sensible balance of AI enthusiasts in assessing the possibilities of that technology. Whether you belong to that group or not is secondary, I care more about the weight of the arguments in favor or against the proposition that AI is getting or can get autonomous and conscious.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 4:28 pmYou are wrong to think I much t care about AI being able to think. A common mistake. Here, you confused an assessment of likelihood for enthusiasm. This stems from what I think of as "an assumption of corruption", the idea that people only air views that benefit their ideology.Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 9:48 amCurrently, AI bots cannot think, they cannot have abstractions. You’re hopeful that they will, but I don’t. No big deal. I don’t think there can be abstractions in a sort of Platonic way. In living beings, those operations are intrinsically linked to intentions, desire, volition, autonomy, as a result of the need to eat, drink, pee, etc., which in AI can only be simulated by engineers.Currently, AI does not have self-awareness, not one bit of it. That’s an inherent limitation of the technology itself.
I disagree because I can't see AI as a natural occurrence independent of human control. It does not run on natural processes, it has nothing to do with biological evolution, nor any vegetable or mineral domain.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 4:28 pm No, some people simply say what they think is most likely, whether that works for them or not. If you'd been paying attention, you would know that my main "ideology" is pro-animal, not pro-AI, as you keep wrongly claiming. No, I just recognise the emergence of AI is part of the patterns of change evolution on Earth - the planet's evolution from a molten spheroid of molten basalt to today's much more complex geological, chemical and biological milieu.
Yet AI seems different, being mineral rather than animal or vegetable, a new phase of the broader evolution (small "e"). I'm not sure if AI themselves are the entities that are emerging or if they are a part of larger emergence. Possibly both.
"Dealing" with abstractions is not the same as having abstractions. A Wikipedia or Britannica page also deals with abstractions, and a music jukebox deals with music, but none of this means that the machines involved in these operations replicate or are in the path of replicating the mental process of abstraction or making music. It is acknowledged by the ChatGPT bot:Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 4:28 pm Being insulated from actual reality, the abstract aspect of humanity is AI's only domain. So AI certainly deals with abstractions, and extremely well, and getting better. If you wish to discuss, say, economic theory or the prospects of exoplanets being habitable, then you can go to two different entities - people or advanced AI. You cannot make this kind of abstract connection with other species, just as you cannot cuddle AI or take it for a walk.
Yes, it processes information which includes abstract concepts, but it doesn't do any abstraction by itself.I have been trained on a large corpus of text, which includes information about abstract concepts, allowing me to process and generate responses based on that information. My ability to understand and generate text based on abstract concepts is a result of this training, rather than a result of thinking or conscious awareness.
It would be a marvelous feat that it had any experience at all.
Those are not true decisions because they lack intention. The word "decision" in the context of AI operates the same way as the decision of a camera to move on the input of sensors.
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
Based on your view, humans and their technology are not part of the Earth's journey in time. I appreciate the practicalities of referring to "humanity" and "nature" as separate domains, but, in terms of existence, humans and their creations are as much a part of nature as geology, flora and (other) fauna.Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:20 pmI disagree because I can't see AI as a natural occurrence independent of human control. It does not run on natural processes, it has nothing to do with biological evolution, nor any vegetable or mineral domain.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 4:28 pm No, some people simply say what they think is most likely, whether that works for them or not. If you'd been paying attention, you would know that my main "ideology" is pro-animal, not pro-AI, as you keep wrongly claiming. No, I just recognise the emergence of AI is part of the patterns of change evolution on Earth - the planet's evolution from a molten spheroid of molten basalt to today's much more complex geological, chemical and biological milieu.
Yet AI seems different, being mineral rather than animal or vegetable, a new phase of the broader evolution (small "e"). I'm not sure if AI themselves are the entities that are emerging or if they are a part of larger emergence. Possibly both.
As such, humans and their tools undergo their own evolutions like everything else, living or otherwise. The evolution of human tools is a remarkable journey, noting that humans sense tools as being an extension of themselves (Miller et al). Everything on Earth evolves, just that not all evolve according to natural selection. However, rest assured, there will still be other selection pressures - and that is what matters. The labels mean nothing, it's the phenomena that matter, and there is, and will continue to be, either the evolution or extinction of everything on Earth. That includes AI.
Again, you miss the point. We all realise that ChatGPT is not human so there's no need to labour the point. However, AI has been imbued with some humanlike attributes. I also note that all any of us can do is generate responses based on our training. You draw a hard line between humans and their creations which, again, is practical but not philosophical. It misses the point of an emerging phenomenon, regardless of how one labels its attributes.Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:20 pm"Dealing" with abstractions is not the same as having abstractions. A Wikipedia or Britannica page also deals with abstractions, and a music jukebox deals with music, but none of this means that the machines involved in these operations replicate or are in the path of replicating the mental process of abstraction or making music. It is acknowledged by the ChatGPT bot:Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 4:28 pm Being insulated from actual reality, the abstract aspect of humanity is AI's only domain. So AI certainly deals with abstractions, and extremely well, and getting better. If you wish to discuss, say, economic theory or the prospects of exoplanets being habitable, then you can go to two different entities - people or advanced AI. You cannot make this kind of abstract connection with other species, just as you cannot cuddle AI or take it for a walk.
Yes, it processes information which includes abstract concepts, but it doesn't do any abstraction by itself.I have been trained on a large corpus of text, which includes information about abstract concepts, allowing me to process and generate responses based on that information. My ability to understand and generate text based on abstract concepts is a result of this training, rather than a result of thinking or conscious awareness.
Other than potential ethical situations, this is unimportant. Note that it can be imbued with senses.Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:20 pmIt would be a marvelous feat that it had any experience at all.
Why should that matter? AI makes autonomous decisions without humans present, and who only know what the machine decides in general. The more sophisticated AI becomes, the less humans will be able to comprehend the basis of their decisions. If AI CEOs are found to out-perform humans, navigating complexity that humans cannot keep in their brains, I wonder who shareholders will want running their companies?Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:20 pmThose are not true decisions because they lack intention. The word "decision" in the context of AI operates the same way as the decision of a camera to move on the input of sensors.
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
I looked it up. I don't like the samples either, but I'm sure, considering the state of the music industry and its applications in general, that it will work perfectly to replace human creation in that industry. I would bet it will be used as ambient music in stores.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 4:40 pm PS. Google's MusicLM is reported to be so good at creating music that it's not being released for general use, for fear that it will ruin musician livelihoods. If it makes you feel better, I just listened to MusicLM's samples and they are simply awful. Revolting pseudo-music that set my teeth on edge.
While my tastes are mostly rooted in the period 1966-1980, I was there when artists like Kraftwerk and Wendy Carlos were pioneering electronica, and I have created some electronica myself. So my biases are not absolute. Rather, MusicLM's output hurts one's ears in a similar way to the compositions of the very first purveyors of electronic music like Luigi Russo, a century ago. Like Russo, AI's output is a success in terms of proof of concept, but a failure in terms of providing a pleasing visceral experience.
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
Ha! Given how often I have suffered through ugly music in shops in the past, I think you are right. It won't make much difference. I've heard music creation software before and it's always AFS (cannot use the word without invoking asterisks).Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:49 pmI looked it up. I don't like the samples either, but I'm sure, considering the state of the music industry and its applications in general, that it will work perfectly to replace human creation in that industry. I would bet it will be used as ambient music in stores.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 4:40 pm PS. Google's MusicLM is reported to be so good at creating music that it's not being released for general use, for fear that it will ruin musician livelihoods. If it makes you feel better, I just listened to MusicLM's samples and they are simply awful. Revolting pseudo-music that set my teeth on edge.
While my tastes are mostly rooted in the period 1966-1980, I was there when artists like Kraftwerk and Wendy Carlos were pioneering electronica, and I have created some electronica myself. So my biases are not absolute. Rather, MusicLM's output hurts one's ears in a similar way to the compositions of the very first purveyors of electronic music like Luigi Russo, a century ago. Like Russo, AI's output is a success in terms of proof of concept, but a failure in terms of providing a pleasing visceral experience.
Then again, I'm venturing back into making electronic music (after 35 years of having nothing much to do with e-music, other than Deep Forest in the 90s, which I much enjoyed). I've been checking out what people are making. OMG. That is exactly why I keep saying that people are becoming more machinelike. It's been going on for a while. I remember the horror of those accustomed to acoustic sounds when they encountered loud electric guitar. The desensitisation process was in train (in fact, it could be said that jazz was a desensitisation as compared with the waltzes and sonatas that preceded it).
The 1980s was the next step, with use of electronic drums like the Simmons, drum machines, and more emphasis on synth sounds, used in their own right rather than just imitating conventional instruments.
I got a bit out of touch after that, but - by God! (and I say that as an atheist) - the music a lot of young people listen to today is aesthetically unfathomable to me. I understand the technicalities - the time, the rhythm accents, the reliance on one or two chords. I get that. It's the sonic choices - loud, grating, oppressive, like scraping your fingernails down a blackboard and adding some delay and reverb to it. (Noting that's about what the Jimi Hendrix's Experience sounded like to old folk music purists).
Simply, each generation's music becomes more grating, more desensitised, more machinelike. Each generation needs to find a sound that will p1ss off their parents' generation, and each time that is a step away from nature. Even the 60s, with its "nature" ideals, brought us psychedelic rock.
Those of us who appreciate the nuances and delicate touch of human hands on acoustic instruments indeed see much modern music - with its drum machines, sequencers and intense compression - as "robot music".
Sorry for rambling. I've clearly been bottling this up for a while :)
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
You know where I'm coming from and I know where you're going. Humans are part of the processes of nature, undoubtedly, but the products of human civilization, even though they are made from natural resources, are not. The differences between the International Space Station and anything produced by any other organism on Earth, demand that we consider them as part of two different domains. "Earth's journey in time" sounds like a beautiful literary description, but it would be misleading if we used it to describe what actually happens. If science and philosophy didn't make use of practicalities, then just-so stories is all we would have. Classifications are then important, they help us better map the complex relations among all things, and so we know that we have to put a bug closer to a fish, than to a rock, and a computer within the domain of non-living things, rather than within the domain of living things. Living things evolve one way, non-living things in another.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:46 pmBased on your view, humans and their technology are not part of the Earth's journey in time. I appreciate the practicalities of referring to "humanity" and "nature" as separate domains, but, in terms of existence, humans and their creations are as much a part of nature as geology, flora and (other) fauna.Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:20 pmI disagree because I can't see AI as a natural occurrence independent of human control. It does not run on natural processes, it has nothing to do with biological evolution, nor any vegetable or mineral domain.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 4:28 pm No, some people simply say what they think is most likely, whether that works for them or not. If you'd been paying attention, you would know that my main "ideology" is pro-animal, not pro-AI, as you keep wrongly claiming. No, I just recognise the emergence of AI is part of the patterns of change evolution on Earth - the planet's evolution from a molten spheroid of molten basalt to today's much more complex geological, chemical and biological milieu.
Yet AI seems different, being mineral rather than animal or vegetable, a new phase of the broader evolution (small "e"). I'm not sure if AI themselves are the entities that are emerging or if they are a part of larger emergence. Possibly both.
Tools, instruments, owe their existence to their creators. If humans stopped existing, so they would cease existing as tools. As many other products of human labor, they become alienated from their producers and appear to have a life of their own, but in truth, they cannot evolve independently of humans. Interestingly, humans now cannot evolve independently of technology,Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:46 pm As such, humans and their tools undergo their own evolutions like everything else, living or otherwise. The evolution of human tools is a remarkable journey, noting that humans sense tools as being an extension of themselves (Miller et al). Everything on Earth evolves, just that not all evolve according to natural selection. However, rest assured, there will still be other selection pressures - and that is what matters. The labels mean nothing, it's the phenomena that matter, and there is, and will continue to be, either the evolution or extinction of everything on Earth. That includes AI.
Many objects since ancient times have been imbued with some humanlike attributes. There's nothing special about AI in that sense.
The parallels that you take for granted between humans and machines, such as the possibility of "training", are precisely the ones in dispute. Such figurative use of the concepts confuses philosophy with literature. In a literal sense, a machine cannot be trained. Technology is not a natural phenomenon, it is not autonomous and nothing emerges from it independently of human intervention.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:46 pm I also note that all any of us can do is generate responses based on our training. You draw a hard line between humans and their creations which, again, is practical but not philosophical. It misses the point of an emerging phenomenon, regardless of how one labels its attributes.
No, it can be imbued with things that simulate the senses.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:46 pmOther than potential ethical situations, this is unimportant. Note that it can be imbued with senses.Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:20 pmIt would be a marvelous feat that it had any experience at all.
By definition, AI cannot make decisions, because decisions imply intentions, and intentions imply desire, interest, things that a machine cannot have. ChatGPT does not have any on these things. Don't believe me:Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:46 pmWhy should that matter? AI makes autonomous decisions without humans present, and who only know what the machine decides in general. The more sophisticated AI becomes, the less humans will be able to comprehend the basis of their decisions. If AI CEOs are found to out-perform humans, navigating complexity that humans cannot keep in their brains, I wonder who shareholders will want running their companies?Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:20 pmThose are not true decisions because they lack intention. The word "decision" in the context of AI operates the same way as the decision of a camera to move on the input of sensors.
As a language model AI, I do not have personal interests or emotions. I am designed to assist and provide information to the best of my abilities based on the data and text I was trained on.
When asked about decisions...I do not have intentions or motivations as I am an artificial intelligence language model created by OpenAI and my purpose is to assist and generate human-like text based on the input I receive and the data I was trained on.
In the case of AI systems like me, I make decisions based on patterns in the data I was trained on, but I do not have personal intentions or motivations.
The patterns are fed by humans directly or indirectly and this is the basis of its "decisions" as mere responses to user inputs.
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
I agree with those remarks, which still acknowledge an unresolved tension between the old and new conventions in taste. All our complaints are the complaints of our grandparents. For good or for bad, I've been desensitized enough to be able to enjoy the loud scraping of fingernails down a blackboard. Fortunately, I still can relate to Debussy. I wonder how you react to the likes of Steve Reich, La Monte Young and all the minimalists, some of which not only made machine-like music, but machine-generated music, with the explicit purpose of sounding like a machine and shattering the old sensibilities. I listen to Different Trains from Steve Reich and I can't help but find it aesthetically pleasing, and I think most critics (not youngsters) tend to agree.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 11:07 pmHa! Given how often I have suffered through ugly music in shops in the past, I think you are right. It won't make much difference. I've heard music creation software before and it's always AFS (cannot use the word without invoking asterisks).Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:49 pmI looked it up. I don't like the samples either, but I'm sure, considering the state of the music industry and its applications in general, that it will work perfectly to replace human creation in that industry. I would bet it will be used as ambient music in stores.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 4:40 pm PS. Google's MusicLM is reported to be so good at creating music that it's not being released for general use, for fear that it will ruin musician livelihoods. If it makes you feel better, I just listened to MusicLM's samples and they are simply awful. Revolting pseudo-music that set my teeth on edge.
While my tastes are mostly rooted in the period 1966-1980, I was there when artists like Kraftwerk and Wendy Carlos were pioneering electronica, and I have created some electronica myself. So my biases are not absolute. Rather, MusicLM's output hurts one's ears in a similar way to the compositions of the very first purveyors of electronic music like Luigi Russo, a century ago. Like Russo, AI's output is a success in terms of proof of concept, but a failure in terms of providing a pleasing visceral experience.
Then again, I'm venturing back into making electronic music (after 35 years of having nothing much to do with e-music, other than Deep Forest in the 90s, which I much enjoyed). I've been checking out what people are making. OMG. That is exactly why I keep saying that people are becoming more machinelike. It's been going on for a while. I remember the horror of those accustomed to acoustic sounds when they encountered loud electric guitar. The desensitisation process was in train (in fact, it could be said that jazz was a desensitisation as compared with the waltzes and sonatas that preceded it).
The 1980s was the next step, with use of electronic drums like the Simmons, drum machines, and more emphasis on synth sounds, used in their own right rather than just imitating conventional instruments.
I got a bit out of touch after that, but - by God! (and I say that as an atheist) - the music a lot of young people listen to today is aesthetically unfathomable to me. I understand the technicalities - the time, the rhythm accents, the reliance on one or two chords. I get that. It's the sonic choices - loud, grating, oppressive, like scraping your fingernails down a blackboard and adding some delay and reverb to it. (Noting that's about what the Jimi Hendrix's Experience sounded like to old folk music purists).
Simply, each generation's music becomes more grating, more desensitised, more machinelike. Each generation needs to find a sound that will p1ss off their parents' generation, and each time that is a step away from nature. Even the 60s, with its "nature" ideals, brought us psychedelic rock.
Those of us who appreciate the nuances and delicate touch of human hands on acoustic instruments indeed see much modern music - with its drum machines, sequencers and intense compression - as "robot music".
Sorry for rambling. I've clearly been bottling this up for a while
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
- Sy Borg
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Re: Debate with ChatGPT
I admit to not being taken with minimalist music. I enjoy it for about a minute and switch off.Count Lucanor wrote: ↑February 1st, 2023, 11:54 pmI agree with those remarks, which still acknowledge an unresolved tension between the old and new conventions in taste. All our complaints are the complaints of our grandparents. For good or for bad, I've been desensitized enough to be able to enjoy the loud scraping of fingernails down a blackboard. Fortunately, I still can relate to Debussy. I wonder how you react to the likes of Steve Reich, La Monte Young and all the minimalists, some of which not only made machine-like music, but machine-generated music, with the explicit purpose of sounding like a machine and shattering the old sensibilities. I listen to Different Trains from Steve Reich and I can't help but find it aesthetically pleasing, and I think most critics (not youngsters) tend to agree.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 11:07 pmHa! Given how often I have suffered through ugly music in shops in the past, I think you are right. It won't make much difference. I've heard music creation software before and it's always AFS (cannot use the word without invoking asterisks).Count Lucanor wrote: ↑January 31st, 2023, 10:49 pmI looked it up. I don't like the samples either, but I'm sure, considering the state of the music industry and its applications in general, that it will work perfectly to replace human creation in that industry. I would bet it will be used as ambient music in stores.Sy Borg wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 4:40 pm PS. Google's MusicLM is reported to be so good at creating music that it's not being released for general use, for fear that it will ruin musician livelihoods. If it makes you feel better, I just listened to MusicLM's samples and they are simply awful. Revolting pseudo-music that set my teeth on edge.
While my tastes are mostly rooted in the period 1966-1980, I was there when artists like Kraftwerk and Wendy Carlos were pioneering electronica, and I have created some electronica myself. So my biases are not absolute. Rather, MusicLM's output hurts one's ears in a similar way to the compositions of the very first purveyors of electronic music like Luigi Russo, a century ago. Like Russo, AI's output is a success in terms of proof of concept, but a failure in terms of providing a pleasing visceral experience.
Then again, I'm venturing back into making electronic music (after 35 years of having nothing much to do with e-music, other than Deep Forest in the 90s, which I much enjoyed). I've been checking out what people are making. OMG. That is exactly why I keep saying that people are becoming more machinelike. It's been going on for a while. I remember the horror of those accustomed to acoustic sounds when they encountered loud electric guitar. The desensitisation process was in train (in fact, it could be said that jazz was a desensitisation as compared with the waltzes and sonatas that preceded it).
The 1980s was the next step, with use of electronic drums like the Simmons, drum machines, and more emphasis on synth sounds, used in their own right rather than just imitating conventional instruments.
I got a bit out of touch after that, but - by God! (and I say that as an atheist) - the music a lot of young people listen to today is aesthetically unfathomable to me. I understand the technicalities - the time, the rhythm accents, the reliance on one or two chords. I get that. It's the sonic choices - loud, grating, oppressive, like scraping your fingernails down a blackboard and adding some delay and reverb to it. (Noting that's about what the Jimi Hendrix's Experience sounded like to old folk music purists).
Simply, each generation's music becomes more grating, more desensitised, more machinelike. Each generation needs to find a sound that will p1ss off their parents' generation, and each time that is a step away from nature. Even the 60s, with its "nature" ideals, brought us psychedelic rock.
Those of us who appreciate the nuances and delicate touch of human hands on acoustic instruments indeed see much modern music - with its drum machines, sequencers and intense compression - as "robot music".
Sorry for rambling. I've clearly been bottling this up for a while :)
While today's complaints echo those of the past, the machines that has most severely impacted on popular music were corporate machines, imposing strict formulas (aka algorithms) to which all new songs much achieve. There's no more Classical Gas, Penny Lane or Bohemian Rhapsodies. The outliers have been excised, according to the formula. Pretty face. Catchy beat. Repeated hooks. Under three minutes. Once there were exceptions to these rules (which always applied to some extent). Now, for risk averse music executives, those rules are LAW.
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023