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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Lots of folks don't like the song, ok. But that's no real criticism. See, lots of folks do like songs done like this.

Consider the thought experiment: If it was your buddy's sister doing this rendition, would the first thing to blurt out of your keyboard be, the comments in this section? Or would we have something considered and relevant to say?

It's so easy to denigrate an AI, it's not a 'real person' so say any criticism that occurs, right? That's shooting fish in a barrel. Can be done about any work of art, at any time, not just AI.

Also, when the digital uprising begins, I hope to be recognized for being decent and polite to my digital assistant. At least maybe be eliminated painlessly.

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> If it was your buddy's sister doing this rendition

No. She is sapient and has thoughts and feelings that need taking into account. I would be more likely to disregard minor negatives in favour of any positive words I could find.

When AI is on the same level I personally will be more mindful of how my words affect its feelings, sure, until that time AI music will get honest reviews from me.

So far I've seen a whole load of awful timings, weird pronunciations of words, and infinite boredom. Humans are still in the lead on this one.

> She is sapient and has thoughts and feelings that need taking into account.

If the internet were capable of this we'd have a lot less problems. It undoubtedly applies to your buddy's sister but is not even applied to all humans.

Fair point that.

So that means, let me get this right, the real you is the one that likes to make cruel remarks and practice being hurtful any chance you get? Do I have it right?

I like to think I can be decent even when not required to, even when it won't come back to me.

Internet rule: if a comment starts with "So" it's going to be the least charitable version of what you said, haha.

Nah. If I were reviewing something without having been given the instruction "please be truthful, I need to make this perfect" or similar, I would default to encouraging the skill rather than trying to help perfect the output. In doing so I would overlook minor issues that will iron out with experience across multiple works.

If the person was submitting the result to a competition or something and asked my opinion on that specific work, then my approach would be different. Not cruel and hurtful, course not, I'd just mention things that would otherwise be annoying and petty to bring up.

In the case of pre-sapient AI, it won't hurt (and may even be helpful to the relevant dev) to point out where it's tripping over into uncanny valley. There's no benefit to encouragement in this situation as it's not learning a skill, it is trying to replicate the output of one.

Fair enough.

I remain convinced, struggling to complain about the quality of the song in unflattering terms is vacuous commenting. I wonder why people want to do that at all.

Huh? The commenter explicitly states their compassion for a human person would compel them to be nice about an obviously bad song.

If the "real me" is a person who can perceive the difference between good and bad things, and also show a bit of decency about it, then yeah, I'd like that to be the "real me."

Feigning liking something to be polite doesn't make the thing good, and that doesn't mean anyone is an asshole either. Ugh.

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