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Comment by ddmichael | Hacker News Reader

I may as a composer be biased but AI "generating" music is just sad. The hypocrisy is that musicians have been suing each other for intellectual property reasons, while this thing is being trained on everyone's music. The law should catch up on this. I get that it's going to improve but for now it's also just elevator/supermarket music.

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It's an artform so its natural for a composer to have the same reaction as a painter would to Stable Diffusion for example.

That being said - it's happening, and nothings going to stop it regardless of which side of the fence people sit on.

You make it sound like some force of nature is causing this to occur. These things exist because people are making them, despite there no longer being a healthy reason for doing so.

(I’m not saying there’s reason for AI development in general to stop, but these generative things that are designed to slot neatly into the role of human artists specifically have no reason to be developed further beyond proving it was possible, and that happened a while ago.)

The force of nature is that our society will utilize any technology before even considering its ramifications. "Touchscreens in cars? Let's do it!"

I think you might enjoy Neil Postman's book "Technopoly", which discusses the subject of weighing the pros and cons of a subject instead of just diving in headfirst every time some new technology is developed. His YouTube talks are also great.

I think that’s more of an emergent behavior, not a force of nature. But I agree that enough people might do stupid stuff to create this kind of emergent behavior, which seems to be happening now. Like maybe 90% or more of people think these art AIs are distasteful, but enough people can’t stop themselves from filling in the blank square where something is possible to create but hasn’t been created yet, so people keep trying to make it. Even though there doesn’t seem to be any upside or goal, since I’ve never gotten an explanation of one.

And I think if you’re going to create something that has a little bit of potential to harm at least a few people, you should at least have a decent goal or reason for creating it.

Humans creating and sharing new technologies (and ideas, and works of art, etc.) across societies _is_ a force of nature.

“Force of nature” generally means some phenomenon of physics or some natural disaster outside of human control, which is what I meant.

“A big and powerful cool thing” is not what I meant, and not what force of nature usually means.

Life is a force of nature. Evolution is a force of nature. The development of society (across species, not just human) is a force of nature. The development of technology is an aspect of that. In other words, macro-economic trends such as the development of automation ARE in fact an aspect of evolution, aka, a force of nature.

Doesn't matter if that's not the sense in which the phrase is used, these things are arising out of the collective unconscious, not as the result of mere individual will.

You just made that up. That's not what the phrase "force of nature" means.

"That being said - it's happening, and nothings going to stop it"

Well, the European Union is already working on a legal framework for AI. It happened with GDPR and it will happen again.

Sure, but that's not going to stop it.

I don't see why not

Most people don't live in the European Union, and I doubt EU regulations will actually put an end to anything anyway.

GDPR has a severely muted effect because Americans are still doing the same things they were before. It'll be even more ineffectual for AI. Nearly all AI research you hear about is being done in the United States. European regulations will only stop Europeans from using it, but you won't be able to escape it anyway because of how much American culture is continuously imported into Europe. Meanwhile, the reverse is almost completely not true; very little European culture makes it into American culture. This will just kneecap European creators and companies. I wish Europe the best of luck with this.

Since we are talking about music, maybe I'm living in a European bubble but last time I was in the U.S. people were listening to classical music (basically OG Euro music), Beatles, ABBA, Elton John or newer stuff like anything involving David Guetta whatever. Plenty of European music being listened to in my niche (metal) as well. Music knows no borders.

That's implementation details. It could be the case that no art produced in the EU can be used as training data (or similar), not necessarily that EU AI models are forbidden from being trained on art. I find the former case the most probable.

"very little European culture makes it into American culture"

LOL, I love Americans and America but seriously? Like what is already there is not enough :D

I don't necessarily disagree that laws should be updated, but I don't get why you used the term 'hypocrisy'?

Surely the musicians suing each other aren't the ones that are now planning on training an AI on other people's music?

It can be sad, happy, energetic and all. It's no beethoven but there is a market for elevator music.lots of it

Elevator music was indeed what came to my mind when listening to the examples.

As someone deep into elevator music, I am very excited to try this model.

> while this thing is being trained on everyone's music.

haha, did you conceptualize music ex nihilo?

We don't need IP cases in courts people, nyolfen resolved them all with his unbeatable argument

how is this fundamentally different than what humans do?

because its a computer not a human

perhaps you had difficulty understanding the question -- how is what the computer is doing, different from what a human does?

Musicians are trained on everyone's music too

But they have tastes and preferences in a way that the models lack — unless, possibly, if you have them retrained sufficiently long by a single individual or small group, I guess.

Computers aren’t human. Software isn’t people.

Define people. Or more specifically, define what make them special.

This isn’t about specialness, it’s about the foundations of civil society. People are meat and guts humans.

We’re autonomous entities capable of higher reasoning, limited in time, attention and talent and eventually die allowing new people time to flourish.

We also pay taxes and make silly arguments about software and humans being no different from each other because it justifies our ability to play with cool toys without considering the impact on other people. Corporations aren’t people though because they aren’t cool like AI.

Take your PC to the courthouse and tell the judge it’s liable for damages, not you.

As a music writer, I welcome ai. It gives me more ideas to steal.

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