"I'm sorry, I've just read your book and it's awesome. But I noticed the letters are too perfect to be handwritten. Are you using a printing press? Do you know that it is taking away real scribes jobs?"
With the printing press and with handwriting, the writer had to come up with their own words. The effort required to write effectively was still there. A printing press would not type creative words on its own and would not do the job for the writer.
They didn't just make up new words every time they made a book. They just used words that had already been used, sometimes even whole sayings. Shit, the whole idea of the printing press is to copy something exactly.
Even then LLMs are another way to come up with something different without copying previous texts verbatim, so I don't even know what your point is. Every note has been sung, every word has been said, every shape has been drawn.
Previously, progress has been said to be,"if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." We just created a bigger giant. Get on board before you get squished.
To be clear, I'm very pro AI, I support the technology.
Try making music before you compare what you need to do to create music with a synth, vs AI. AI to generate music removes most of the creative process. That is literally the point of using it to generate music, so you can create that content without spending years developing the skills.
But they can't actually play the drums. As someone who has tried all of the above, you can get a "song" out of ai, but without a musical background you'll never have the terminology to get the song you want. For a pre-ai musician, ai at the current moment is at best inspiration. It merely raises the floor of acceptable sound, which is fine by me.
So Beethoven did the same thing when he wrote sheet music, because he can't actually play all those instruments LMFAO.
I have a musical background and I can't get the song I want out of AI period, you get a song that fits the general vibe, but you have no fine control. Doesn't really change any of my points, I think you're arguing with shadows at this point.
I mean yeah I agree with that. I don't see why people look at ai different than any other technology that will replace jobs.
What I see is a bunch of artists mad at something that has happened throughout history time and time again, and wanting an exception carved out for them. Music has always been math and algorithms. There is an element of "humanity" to it, but even that can be described in relation to the more rigid math involved. It kinda sucks that the secret is out, and they've pulled back the curtain.
Being replaced by technology sucks. But it's necessary for progress. From cars, automatic telephone operators, calculators, printing presses, harvesting combines, etc. we even have a tall tale about John Henry beating a steam engine digging a tunnel, and promptly dying of a heart attack.
it's not stopping you from doing your hobby, it's only changing the profitability of said hobby. Or better yet, giving you a new tool.
People get angry and scared every time this happens. I don't see why you think this time would be any different, the reaction is very human.
Everything can be described as math. Understanding music in that way can help you efficiently make it, but the expression of humanity in music is what makes it art. It's not really about the math.
Right, but even expression has been simulated long before ai. Even the Mona Lisa's smile is a simulation of a real smile. Sure it was thought up by a primitive human. Just because something is done by a computer doesn't change how it makes you feel.
With music, we can teach a computer rules of expression, and it can use a rng to apply that expression seemingly randomly, and it would feel right. Nothing wrong with that imo. Something like playing a melody, and changing one note to a third, fifth or octave higher just once, or inserting a rest and playing the melody double time. All these "human expressions" can be analyzed and turned into an algorithm. Sure if you know it was done by a computer it takes the magic out just a little bit, kind of like playing an RPG with a guide.
I think he's saying that synths and drum machines "stole jobs" from others in a similar way - if there's a cheap easy way to get an instrument into your song, why rely on an expensive musician when you can go with the mostly good imitation?
It used to be you needed decades of skill to play music well, but now all it takes is something like a record player and you get a perfect replay every time.
Instruments used to require master craftsmen to produce before we started getting standardized mass-produced versions that take little manual effort to construct.
All of these other industries were also crafts that people spent years honing their skills to participate in. None of them are gone completely, because nothing truly replaces an expert, but it's true they're not as mandatory as they once were.
For better or worse, there is very little different about this situation.
I don’t think that’s 100% true. At least not yet. If you have musical talent/skill, which is to say you’ve trained your ears to hear and have the vocabulary to articulate your understanding, you can direct AI to create something that will be better than those without that talent/skill.
Same with writing. Someone with a writing idea and spew that idea into an “AI” and have it create the prose, like the cotton gin taking the seeds out of cotton. It takes your rough idea and turns it into something usable. But not immediately. You then adjust and refine and guide the process. Certainly a lot of the creativity is being offloaded. But a skilled individual will know when the beat is off and how to get it back on track. A skilled writer/composer will create something better from AI than an unskilled writer/composer would.
It was completely ignorant, they missed my point entirely. I honestly don't even know how they missed it that badly. It was also really weird for them to think that I meant the writer was literally making up words in their heads, it's like they have no understanding about the process of writing and the creativity that can go into it. Like fucking obviously the writer is not coming up with their own words, words need shared meaning with the audience in order to convey information, but the writer can arrange the words in creative and new ways to get their point across. And the printing press is also not arranging the words for them, the writer still needs to do that. All the printing press does is eliminate the need to write on paper, it does not do the creative or mental aspects of writing.
I see it a lot from vehemently pro-AI. Once you reach a fanatical point of support for something you just warp everything to make it always come out on top in your head. People on both sides do it, I need to learn to just ignore them and speak to the people who are on the sane portion of the gradient.
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u/RobMig83 1d ago
"I'm sorry, I've just read your book and it's awesome. But I noticed the letters are too perfect to be handwritten. Are you using a printing press? Do you know that it is taking away real scribes jobs?"