Submitted 11 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://musictech.com/news/industry/barack-obama-ai-music-elevator-music/
Barack Obama: “For elevator music, AI is going to work fine. Music like Bob Dylan or Stevie Wonder, that’s different”::Barack Obama has weighed in on AI’s impact on music creation in a new interview, saying, “For elevator music, AI is going to work fine”.
…so I’ve been on a shit load of elevators, and I don’t recall a single one of them having music. For as common a trope as it is, you’d think elevator music would be more common in actual elevators.
It’s like porn, they all used to have music, and now people still make jokes about how bad it was but it’s just gone now
It’s not as common as it used to be, but I think the point was kind of that you’re not supposed to notice it?
Look into “muzak” (the style of music. Apparently it’s also a brand according to Google), and some of Brian Eno’s ambient albums like “Music for Airplanes.”
I don’t like to think I’m that old, and I 100% remember elevator music.
I love Eno’s ambient music but it’s really distinct from the cheesy musak you’re referring to.
I’ve been in a few that played music (or more recently, ads) in them. But, yeah, it’s like quicksand in that I was led to believe it would be pretty uniquitous.
or more recently, ads
Try this one trick ti get me to take the stairs every single time.
Yeah they always go with awkward silence
The quiet fart is king.
I don’t think I can actually recall one either.
Maybe in a department store or mall in the 80s. It was just so deliberately bland I never noticed when it became less common.
Some hotel elevators have it.
But yeah, I don’t recall the last time I heard music in a residential elevator.
I worked in an office that installed music in the bathrooms. It wasn’t there for a long time, and then they added it. An email went out at one point instructing people to stop turning off the music (someone figured out where the Sonos controls were I guess). Someone decided it was IMPERATIVE to have something to listen to other than the coworker grunting next to you.
There is no way this ages well.
I think the statement was more about the impact, which will depend on each person’s subjective experience
Personally I agree. Even if AI could produce identical work, the impact would be lessened. Art is more meaningful when you know it took time and was an expression by another person. Combine that with the volume of AI content that’s produced, and the impact of any particular song/art piece is even more limited
I’d say art is more meaningful when it’s a unique experience. It’s like those myths about glassmakers being killed after the cathedral is finnished so that no one can replicate the glass color… without the killing.
People are social, if enough people feel the same way about one thing it’ll succeed. It doesn’t matter where it came from or how it was made, like how people can still admire and appreciate nature. Or maybe the impact will be that it reduces all impacts. Every group and subgroup might be able to have their own thing.
As someone who is doing software engineering and my company jumped on AI bandwagon and got us GitHub Copilot. After using it for a while I think overall experience is actually net negative. Yes, sometimes it gets things right, sometimes it provides a correct solution, but often I can write much more concise code. Many times it provides code that looks like it is correct, but after looking in more detail it actually is wrong. So now I’m need to be in guard what code it inserts, which kills all the time that it supposedly saved me. It makes things harder because the code does look like it might work.
It is like pair programming with a complete moron that is very good at picking patterns and trying to use them in following code. So if you do a lot of copy and paste I think it will help.
I think this technology can make bad programmers suck less at programming. I think the LLM problem is that it was trained with existing works and the way it works is that its goal is to convince other human that the result was created by another one, but it isn’t capable to do any actual reasoning.
Wow, my experience has been pretty much the exact opposite of this. Copilot is amazing and I’d rather not go without it ever again
I don’t know. I think you kind of nailed it. AI can create boring and mediocre. Crap just fine. But for the truly special and original? I could never.
At this point I want a calendar of at what date people say “AI could never” - like “AI could never explain why a joke it’s never seen before is funny” (such as March 2019) - and at what date it happens (in that case April 2022).
(That “explaining the joke” bit is actually what prompted Hinton to quit and switch to worrying about AGI sooner than expected.)
I’d be wary of betting against neural networks, especially if you only have a casual understanding of them.
I think, it will eventually become obsolete, because we keep changing what ‘AI’ means, but current AI largely just regurgitates patterns, it doesn’t yet have a way of ‘listening’ to a song and actually judging whether it’s good or bad.
So, it may expertly regurgitate the pattern that makes up a good song, but humans spend a lot of time listening to perfect every little aspect before something becomes an excellent song, and I feel like that will be lost on the pattern regurgitating machine, if it’s forced to deviate from what a human composed.
I have seen a couple successful artists in different genres admit to using AI to help them write some of their most popular songs. You hit the nail on the head with AI not being able to tell if something is good or bad. It takes a human ear for that.
AI is good at coming up with random melodies, chord progressions, and motifs, but it is not nearly as good at co.posing and producing as humans are, yet.
But do we really need AI to generate art?
Why can’t AI be used to automate useful work nobody wants to do, instead of being a way for capital to automate skilled labor out of high-paying jobs?
Because AI is unpredictable. Which is not a big issue for art, because you can immediately see any flaws and if you can’t, it doesn’t matter.
But for actually useful work, you don’t want to find out that the AI programmer completely made up a few lines of code that are only causing problems when the airplane is flying with a 32° bank angle on a saturday with a prime number for a date.
We currently have the same problem with human programmers. That’s why good companies always test the shit out of their code.
Was that the Boeing 737 Max issue?
It’s virtually guaranteed that at some point, robots and/or AI will be capable of doing almost every human job. And then there will be a time when they can do every job better than any human.
I wonder how people will react. Will they become lazy? Depressed? Just have sex all the time? Just have sex with robots all the time?
The last one
It depends if the government introduces universal basic income or not. If they do I couldn’t care less if I don’t have a job. Any reason I have a job is so that I have money. I don’t do it so I have some kind of fulfillment in my life because it isn’t a fulfilling job.
Just have sex all the time?
I’m confused about how this one tracks. Is the AI going to make me more attractive or is it just going to lower everyone else’s standards?
AI is an enabler. I have not patience for sitting and drawing for hours on end to make extremely detailed art but I’m a creative individual and would love to have the power to bring my ideas into reality. That’s what AI art does.
The problem with that, of course is it means that if I’m really serious about an idea I won’t be paying some artist(s) to make it happen. I’ll just whip open an AI art prompt (e.g.Stable Diffusion or any online AI art generators) and go to town.
It often takes a lot of iteration and messing with the prompt but eventually you’ll get what you want (90% of the time). Right now your need a decent PC to run Stable Diffusion (got 8GB of VRAM? You too can generate all the AI images you want 👍) but eventually people’s cell phones in their pockets will be even better at it.
Civitai is having a contest to make a new 404 error page graphic using AI. Go have a look at some of the entries:
civitai.com/collections/104601
I made one that’s supposed to be like the Scroll of Truth meme:
Scroll of Truth meme 404 error page
I made that on my own PC with my limited art skills using nothing but automatic1111 stable diffusion web UI and Krita. It took me like an hour of trying out various prompts and models before I had all the images I wanted then just a few minutes in Krita to put them into a 4-panel comic format.
If I wanted to make something like that without AI it just would never have happened.
Not that it really matters in this case, but AI art just seems inconsistent in silly ways. That girls shirt changes each frame, her hair gets more braided, and the 3rd frame has 2 left hands. I guess at first glance you don’t really notice, but it’s not hard to spot and it hurts my brain once I do.
Why should we stifle technological progress so people can still do jobs that can be done with a machine?
If they still want to create art, nobody is stopping them. If they want to get paid, then they need to do something useful for society.
Nobody’s calling to stifle technology or progress here. We could develop AI to do anything. The question is what should that be?
There’s a distinction to be drawn between ‘things that are profitable to do and thus there isn’t any shortage of’ and ‘things that aren’t profitable and so there’s a shortage of it’ here. Today, the de facto measure of ‘is it useful for society?’ seems to be the former, and that informs my thinking about how to most-ethically use AI.
Fundamentally, there isn’t a shortage of art, or copy writers, or software developers, or the things they do- what there is, that AI promises to change, is the inconvenient need to deal with (and pay) artisans or laborers to do it.
But do we really need AI to generate art?
No, but we want it to. It’s probably only a matter of time untill AI can do better anything that humans can, including art. Now if there’s an option to view great art done by humans or amazing art done by AI I’ll go with the latter. It can already generate better photographs than I can capture with my camera but I couldn’t care less. Takes zero joy out of my photography hobby. I’m not doing it for money.
You talk like AI I’d a singular entity that can only do one thing?
We don’t need it. It’s just cool tech. I’ve messed around with stable diffusion a lot and it’s a cool tool.
I don’t think it’s really helpful to group a bunch of different technologies under the banner of A.I. but most people aren’t knowledgeable enough to make the distinction between software that can analyze a medical scan to tell me if I have cancer and a fancy chat bot.
Do people actually care what Obama has to say about AI? I’m just having a hard time seeing where his skillset overlaps with this topic.
Probably as much as I care about most other people’s thoughts on AI. As someone that works in AI, 99% of the people making noise about it know fuck all about it, and are probably just as qualified as Barack Obama to have an opinion on it.
Tbf everyone is entitled to have an opinion, including Obama
I know this was once said about the automobile, but I am confident in the knowledge that AI is just a passing fad
What do you do exactly in AI? I’m a software engineer interested in getting involved.
Absolutely not. We need to learn the difference between intelligence and expertise. Is Obama an intelligent person? Of course. Is he allowed to have and voice an opinion? Does that mean that his opinion is informed by expertise and should dictate peoples actions and therefore the direction of an industry? No.
This is the same logic that allows right wing ideologues to become legitimate sources of information. A causal interest in a topic is NOT the same as being an industry expert, and the opinions of industry experts should be weighted far heaver that people who “talk nice” and “sound like they know what they’re talking about”.
I’m just a dude who does general labor and have lots of insights about AI just because I’m interested and smart. People tend to come to me just to hear what I have to say.
Now look at Obama. He’s all of that and much more in the eyes of a society that’s put Obama in the spotlight. He can talk about totally boring stuff and people will still respect his opinion.
Wow, a word from a global expert on AI, Barrack Obama. I hope he’s a bit more fluent in it than in world peace!
Why would people think he knows anything about AI?
Because we often look up to public figures for stuff they are not qualified to comment on.
If he’s an unqualified bystander, then what the fuck are you?
I’m always surprised that the people with all the answers only share them with thirty other assholes on the Internet.
I’m confident a 14 year old can write their own AI, maybe even a smart 10 year old.
Here’s instructions for kids:
youtu.be/XJ7HLz9VYz0?si=1QN3fqT03HSMufib
You think Obama can’t wrap his head around a little algebra?
Why, when speaking intelligently and thoughtfully in the subject, is he so wrong in his assessment, when you, in one lazy sentence, are so right?
I’m really worried about would-be wise people just throwing in the towel cause they don’t know how much better they could be with a little discipline, and settle for being clever here and there.
Can we get a second opinion from Dre?
Because you can teach a teen to do it in two weeks. He was a constitutional law professor, as well as the first elected African-American president in the United States. I learned LLMs in a couple months and I never used a comp until 2021. Why are you gatekeeping?
Why are you acting like it’s at all difficult to understand?
Because he’s a world leader and AI programs are answering search engine queries with what you want to hear now, not actual answers. Ain;t no way hes unaware that.
Young people think all this AI stuff is great and older folks are suspicious. I think older folks are right this time.
Eh. Hard to take people’s opinion on art seriously considering what’s popular.
This is an interesting crossroads where greedy creators have to fight against greedy owners.
I agree with the conclusions of the boomers, but for very different I think long-term AI will produce vastly more harm than good. Just this week we got a headline about google, which is a serious and grown company which already makes billions was up to some fuckery against firefox, facebook has been fined a million times for not respecting privacy and amazon workers have to pee in bottles. To my sadness, all movement against the integration of AI in weapons basically to “kill people” will be very noble but won’t do jackshit. Do we think china/rusia are going to give a single fuck about this? Even the US will start selling AI-drones when it becomes normalized. And that’s just AI in war, but there’s another trillion things where AI will fuck things up, artists will be devalued, misinformation will reach a new all-time high, capchas are long dead making the internet a more polluted place, surveillance will be more toxic, the list goes on
Old man doesn’t understand how technology progresses. Tonight at 10pm.
Obama must not have heard There I Ruined It.
This thread is as much evidence of our failed educational system as is the entire state of Mississippi
While reassuring for many to hear, that’s only going to be true for so long. Eventually it’s going to be real fucking good at making “real” music. We need to be preparing for those advancements rather than acting like they’ll never come.
Definitely need more people to tell me about ai and what it will be capable of. Make a daily show so that every shitty celebrity can tell us about ai, there might still be plenty of word combinations that haven’t been used!
One of my jobs involved updating blogs for small businesses. I had a Shutterstock subscription for the images that goes along with these blog posts. For this task, I think AI generated images work a lot better than stock photography.
Elevator music as well as the mainstream music that majority of people listen to like pop etc.
That music is already very formulaic and almost as if it is generated by Ai.
Already likely to be untrue, but honestly I’d happily sign up for a world wear “hold music” isn’t the same 20sec loop of shit jazz
Okay, I love the elevator music idea as a gag in media.
But I’ve never been in an elevator that has ever played music, and I can completely understand why. Elevator music sounds obnoxious.
That actually might make elevator and phone hold music survivable - continual compositions that never repeat
Can’t imagine good art coming from something that’s incapable of giving a shit about things.
In before obligatory republican outrage and 24x7 media coverage explaining how this comment will doom democrats in 2024
Where are they getting the training data from for AI music models? I guess it’s the same issue as art and language models, but wouldn’t they need to only use royalty free music?
It’s reassuring that this opinion is based on many years of experience reading scientific papers, implementing these models and following the trends closely!
We need a Boomer Music AI then I guess.
I’ve never understood why people think so highly of Bob Dylan and/or his music
AI: the new boogie man.
Can’t believe Obama dropped Eminem’s verse 😭💀
Everything is always a matter of time
And now human music.
AI is new and already performing in office to a second year law student level.
That’s what I got from this.
Also the Secret Invasion intro looked really cool and I hate it but it did. When it comes to depth and meaning it may be a while yet before AI can simulate or bullshit it’s way through that but for now it can definitely create interesting and noteworthy pieces.
_number8_@lemmy.world 11 months ago
why do i care what obama feels about either of these
ISometimesAdmin@the.coolest.zone 11 months ago
I very rarely care for what most 62 year olds have to say about the capabilities about the theoretical limits of computation.
This isn't much different.
sir_reginald@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If the 62 year old had studied computer science and had specialized in AI, I would listen closely to them.
But I definitely not care about a politician that has no idea about technology.
phoneymouse@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I mean — he’s defending human creativity and he’s kind of right. AI can recreate variations of the things it is trained on, but it doesn’t create new paradigms.
MrMcGasion@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah, also I think there is something about the human connection and communicating personal ideas and feelings that just isn’t there with AI generated art. I could see a case for an argument that a lot of music today is recorded by artists who didn’t write that music, and that they are expressing their own feelings through their performance of someone else’s creation. And is it really all that different if an AI wrote something that resonated with an artist who ultimately performed it? Which for a good chunk of pop-culture regurgitations may be completely valid. But in my opinion, the best art, communicates emotion, which an experience unique to biology, AI might be able to approximate it, and sure there’s a human prompting the AI who might genuinely have those feelings, but there’s a hollowness to it that I struggle to ignore. But maybe I’m just getting older and will be yelling at clouds before long.
Texas_Hangover@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Ahh, kind of like the Chinese.
Kodemystic@lemmy.kodemystic.dev 11 months ago
Alphafold?
WashedOver@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
If he got super wild and crazy by wearing a tan suit again to work would you?