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Aiva - Artificial Intelligence Composition: beta starting today

Bad analogy!

I respect your opinion however I think that you're wrong. It's the perfect analogy.

This is to innovation what the atom bomb is to the hammer and chisel.

Eliminating human beings from the soul of humanity is anything but music technology.

Humans are not eliminated with the use of Aiva as a tool, in fact the human element is more important than ever, to express the work that Aiva can help you compose.

It's interesting hearing all of the different opinions on this emerging technology, some people are horrified, some people are embracing it eagerly, opinions are wide ranging.

Deep learning is here, there are many examples of deep learning being used in music, one of the most high profile was Taryn Southern's album "I AM AI" which might not be to everyone's taste but provides a glimpse of the future which excites me.
 
I respect your opinion however I think that you're wrong. It's the perfect analogy.

Bob Moog invented a new instrument. This is being sold as a thing that writes the music for your productions so you don't have to pay royalties; you can use preset algorithms to create your own cliché shite music! Yay!

I see just a slight difference between the two.

And the fact that people react negatively to something else is irrelevant. Some people hated The Rite of Spring at first, some people got mad at Dylan when he used electric instruments instead of acoustic ones only... nothing to do with whether a tool that writes music for you is perverse.
 
Bob Moog invented a new instrument. This is being sold as a thing that writes the music for your productions so you don't have to pay royalties; you can use preset algorithms to create your own cliché shite music! Yay!

I see just a slight difference between the two.

And the fact that people react negatively to something else is irrelevant. Some people hated The Rite of Spring at first, some people got mad at Dylan when he used electric instruments instead of acoustic ones only... nothing to do with whether a tool that writes music for you is perverse.

the relevancy is in the fear of technology and the lack of respect for new technology. People outside of the realm of synth technology thought it was noise at first, and had no musical relevancy until it became the norm and people's skills became appreciated for it. Just look at sound design in pop music today. Its a skill, and many stuck in tradition think that its not. Its actually ironic since we seem to praise sound design in trailer music and film, but not in pop.

Using a computer to simulate acoustic instruments was also the same case. People think its cheap, or cutting corners, or cutting humans out of something necessary for music. It's human ego that believes humans are necessary for artistic expression, and we're finding algorithms that may someday prove we're not needed. The reason we're not needed is because AI learns to do what we do with music. It learns from us, how to do what we do, but quicker and with better accuracy...we learn from other sources, we take those influences and mix them and turn them into something new. As AI learns what melody and harmony do to represent emotion, it will be able to do what we do. Still, even if it gets to that point, it doesnt mean we need to lie down and die. We can find ways to turn AI into a tool to help us push the boundaries even further. For the time being, AI still isn't creating absolutely new things. We have to keep feeding it things from our experience and knowledge. That may not always be the case, but it is for now, and thats where we can have fun seeing what our computer assistants are capable of with our guidance.

Me, I'm all for it. Imagining something new is far greater than hearing a bunch of stuck up people talking about how beethoven was the best there ever was and will be....of course I acknowledge the greatness. I respect it and cherish it...but I refuse to accept that we'll never be better than something so far in our past.
 
Bob Moog invented a new instrument. This is being sold as a thing that writes the music for your productions so you don't have to pay royalties; you can use preset algorithms to create your own cliché shite music! Yay!

I see just a slight difference between the two.

And the fact that people react negatively to something else is irrelevant. Some people hated The Rite of Spring at first, some people got mad at Dylan when he used electric instruments instead of acoustic ones only... nothing to do with whether a tool that writes music for you is perverse.

If it's "shite" and "perverse" then it's not going to affect purists is it?

Just like being able to score orchestrations on a computer, have a virtual instrument play for a section because one hasn't mastered that particular instrument or sequence MIDI to a set of synthesizers or draw notes because one can re-arrange them and make them more musical. The purists will sit there with their paper scores and pianos, avoiding all use of technological tools that help them be more creative.

I am embracing the new tools. That's my choice. It's also a perfectly acceptable choice to dismiss it as "shite" or "perverse".
 
If it's "shite" and "perverse" then it's not going to affect purists is it?

Just like being able to score orchestrations on a computer, have a virtual instrument play for a section because one hasn't mastered that particular instrument or sequence MIDI to a set of synthesizers or draw notes because one can re-arrange them and make them more musical. The purists will sit there with their paper scores and pianos, avoiding all use of technological tools that help them be more creative.

I am embracing the new tools. That's my choice. It's also a perfectly acceptable choice to dismiss it as "shite" or "perverse".
You’re a modern guy. That’s not necessarily a compliment, but it’s not necessarily a criticism. It just draws a line between you and I.

Do you embrace every part of modernity? Better ways to kill, a lessening of human empathy as the world grows more tribal? The widening of the income gap? Hysterical social media leading to the celebration of self and personal bubbles, hate groups?

Or...do you look at some pieces of modernity and think “hmmm. This might not be good, though it’s clearly the Next Big Thing”?

Though I’m semi-retired now (I write music practically every day anyway) I’ve been a professional musician since 1973, living on income produced only by playing, performing, writing, arranging, singing and recording music. Is that your only career as well, or do you have other options?
 
You’re a modern guy. That’s not necessarily a compliment, but it’s not necessarily a criticism. It just draws a line between you and I.

Do you embrace every part of modernity? Better ways to kill, a lessening of human empathy as the world grows more tribal? The widening of the income gap? Hysterical social media leading to the celebration of self and personal bubbles, hate groups?

Though not directed at me, I think I want to call into question the comparison.

Better modern ways to kill compared to atomic bombs? Chemical warfare? No matter which way mankind has chosen to kill, it's always awful. The technology is the method, and we decide how far it goes, and we've done TERRIBLE things in the past with stones, arrows, bombs, and drones. Some of the biggest massacres are still far far far in the past before modern warfare.

Less empathy compared to the days of segregation and slavery? We call them hate groups today, but in the past, they were just everyday people expressing their hate as the norm of the day. They weren't even considered wrong for expressing their hate. Just because people have new ways to express their hatred and vanity now doesn't mean its something new to this generation.

It's easy to say technology amplifies an appalling condition in people, but really those conditions have not changed, and we just have the tech to see them all now. We're burdened with the weight of billions of people in the world right in front of our eyes and its already overwhelming to us. Tech is just another way of coping. It won't fix anything or break anything. It is what we do with it.

Music will be no different. With new tech, some of us will make much better music, and some of us will make much worse music. Some people will consume 100% synthetic products, and some will demand authentic products made by people. If we try, we'll find out place in the mess.
 
Less empathy than in recent times.

It’s easy to say that social media amplifies things because it does, clearly, convincingly, appallingly. It also aggregates hateful people who would never have found each other and allows them to gather their shared bigotry, disinformation, confused and violent ideologies and ignorance and form into action-oriented units.

Then there’s the easily done group shaming and bullying.

Of course, none of this has to do with music technology. It’s just me off on a polemical rant on the InterWeb!

You embrace the new musical robot overlords. That’s fine, embrace, embrace. We have differing opinions. Makes the world go round, but you’re not right-nor am I. It’s subjective.
 
On balance I think we would be way better off if the internet had never been invented. But it was. You can't stop technological progress, but you can sure as hell stop progress.
 
I read Michael Lewis’s “The Undoing Project” about Kahneman and Tversky. Fascinating stuff.
Never heard of that one, but sounds interesting. I'll check it out, thanks for the recommendation!


On balance I think we would be way better off if the internet had never been invented. But it was. You can't stop technological progress, but you can sure as hell stop progress.
Impossible to quantify, but I don't think I'd go that far. I think there's a lot of good the internet has achieved, and much of the issues we're experiencing could have also been mitigated if advertisements were not used to monetize everything online, and if cameras were not easily accessible and affordable to everyone. You can still convey lots of knowledge with text only, but you'd have a hard time creating something like facebook or instagram without the "faces".
 
I’ve been a professional musician since 1973, living on income produced only by playing, performing, writing, arranging, singing and recording music. Is that your only career as well, or do you have other options?

I'm in my early fifties, been a professional (composing and in bands) since my late teens and make my living from music.
 
In the case of Consumer Law, unless you are representing that the work is original when it is not, or unless you represent that there are no royalties payable because they are, then this aspect of Australian law would also not affect the use of deep learning to create a novel composition.

The Men at Work case was decided based upon, in part, where a substantial portion of a work was appropriated. Kookaburra is 4 bars, Men at Work used 2 bars, it was substantial. It was also discernible to a non trained listener to be a copy of Kookaburra.

The work in the example provided by AIVA does not meet that threshold.

Let this be my Mea Culpa. I stuffed up and have edited my earlier post to that effect! Of course, it doesn't infringe. I stupidly had a file labeled wrong and was comparing the Aiva piece to (drum roll) another version of the Aiva piece I had been sent a little while ago.
People - LABEL things properly. (Or don't use copy/paste when changing file names!)

Anyway - nice to see these discussions continuing...
 
SUVs are big. That elephant is big. Therefore that elephant is an SUV.

Aah, I see what you’re doing. Oddly, in your analogy, if we were to just consider their mass, if you got hit by either the impact would probably feel the similar. So you might consider them quite the same there.

Anyways, it’s fine. None of us will ever agree on anything here completely. Some people will fear this tech. some people will dislike it. Some won’t care. It’s fine. My main point is that no matter how you feel about it, it’s inevitable. If technology continues to progress, AI is part of it. So rather than debate how it makes us feel, I’d rather we determine how we intend to work with/around this inevitable technology.
 
it’s inevitable

No more so than milking machines will inevitably replace sex with humans.

Art history, obviously including music history, is human history - an expression of the times. Even the most commercial crap is intended to communicate something. This bypasses what music is all about.

Oddly, in your analogy

The analogy is about faulty logic, not mass.
 
Music is a highly evolved artform that has been passed on for dozens of generations. It's the soul of humanity.

Well someone has been selling out the soul of humanity for about a century now for massive profits...I think this is the peak of arrogance in the music community, that we feel it is so pure and essential to the human experience. It wasn't always this big a thing for everyone, and we fool ourselves when we act as it means to humanity what it means to us as people in the art/business of music.

All art is being influenced by tech and AI. Most people don't care because if they're not passionate about it, they're just casual consumers of the product of art. doesn't matter how evolved or how long these things are passed down through the generations. The average consumer doesn't care. Your mum's favorite recipe is now in a box in the freezer section. Clothing made by hand to express culture and history is now easy to make with a machine. The stories written down by hand to be cherished for generations are now CG filled movies from Disney. Most people really don't know, and don't think its that bad.
 
I think this is the peak of arrogance in the music community

See, I believe it's *not recognizing that* that's the peak of arrogance.

Anticipating your response, I have absolutely nothing against commercial music - on the contrary, I like being as filthy a slut as possible.
 
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