wj - ...actors can play parts, with authentic appearing emotions, even about experiences they have never personally had — all it takes is having seen someone else experiencing it.
Agreed, but look at what I said: What you do need, however, is some life experience to connect it with. Note that I did not say that they need to have that precise experience, just enough to act as a bridge between their own experience and others'. As russell says, it takes empathy, or as they used to say "fellow feelings." An AI has no experiences, and isn't a person, so can have no personal perspective and cannot reflect. It has to be trained to extrapolate within very narrow ranges and cannot imagine or improvise or project. Even a sociopath has a better perspective for understanding. At least the sociopath is embodied and sensate and conscious. An AI is a database with a good costuming department.
4 weeks ago
russell is well on his way with this prompt.
And I don't think that one has to have written a song in order to understand and serve the emotions of the song. What you do need, however, is some life experience to connect it with.
And I'm not talking about a CGI/animated puppet for real performers (a la Gorillaz or Dethklok). That's just human musicians cosplaying something else. What Spotify, Sony, Warner, etc. are after is on-trend content generated by trained expert systems in response to prompts or to the other content listened to by users of their services.
4 weeks ago
If either of you want to brainstorm a thesis, I've got office hours on Zoom.
4 weeks ago
wj - you can have AI generate the name of your star and generate genre appropriate "photos" of them. You can then use Claude to generate all the lyrics for your song from a simple, one sentence prompt. You can then feed those lyrics into Suno and have it generate a genre-appropriate song based on the lyrics complete with a vocalist.
It's all just a stew of algorithmically generated near-plagiarism.
You can watch Rick Beato do just that here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKxNGFjyRv0
4 weeks ago
I'm prepping and making changes to my syllabus for the writing class I teach that centers around college music - writing reviews of "college radio" albums from the '80s and '90s, and then taking what they have learned from doing that to comment on the music that is a part of their college lives today.
I had been having them write an essay exploring the question "Does College Music Still Exist?," and digging into the social side of what defines the music of that moment and that community. Sadly, I've never been satisfied with the depth of their engagement with the topic and have been wanting to change it up for a few terms now in the hopes of finding something that gets them thinking more deeply and feeling like they have something that the want to say.
My current idea is to get them thinking more deeply about the ecology of their music media. If the music you listen to is chosen for you by an algorithm, what makes it yours? Should Spotify allow the uploading and monetizing of music produced by AI? Can an AI generated pop star understand your broken heart? Do you really listen to songs you don't buy and music you don't own, or is it just something to consume like fast food?
I keep making stabs at how to turn all that into a philosophical question that can provoke reflection and inspire many different responses - something like "What's Wrong With Listening To Spotify?" or the like, but I haven't found one with the right mojo and moxie. Any ideas?
wj - ...actors can play parts, with authentic appearing emotions, even about experiences they have never personally had — all it takes is having seen someone else experiencing it.
Agreed, but look at what I said: What you do need, however, is some life experience to connect it with. Note that I did not say that they need to have that precise experience, just enough to act as a bridge between their own experience and others'. As russell says, it takes empathy, or as they used to say "fellow feelings." An AI has no experiences, and isn't a person, so can have no personal perspective and cannot reflect. It has to be trained to extrapolate within very narrow ranges and cannot imagine or improvise or project. Even a sociopath has a better perspective for understanding. At least the sociopath is embodied and sensate and conscious. An AI is a database with a good costuming department.
russell is well on his way with this prompt.
And I don't think that one has to have written a song in order to understand and serve the emotions of the song. What you do need, however, is some life experience to connect it with.
And I'm not talking about a CGI/animated puppet for real performers (a la Gorillaz or Dethklok). That's just human musicians cosplaying something else. What Spotify, Sony, Warner, etc. are after is on-trend content generated by trained expert systems in response to prompts or to the other content listened to by users of their services.
If either of you want to brainstorm a thesis, I've got office hours on Zoom.
wj - you can have AI generate the name of your star and generate genre appropriate "photos" of them. You can then use Claude to generate all the lyrics for your song from a simple, one sentence prompt. You can then feed those lyrics into Suno and have it generate a genre-appropriate song based on the lyrics complete with a vocalist.
It's all just a stew of algorithmically generated near-plagiarism.
You can watch Rick Beato do just that here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKxNGFjyRv0
I'm prepping and making changes to my syllabus for the writing class I teach that centers around college music - writing reviews of "college radio" albums from the '80s and '90s, and then taking what they have learned from doing that to comment on the music that is a part of their college lives today.
I had been having them write an essay exploring the question "Does College Music Still Exist?," and digging into the social side of what defines the music of that moment and that community. Sadly, I've never been satisfied with the depth of their engagement with the topic and have been wanting to change it up for a few terms now in the hopes of finding something that gets them thinking more deeply and feeling like they have something that the want to say.
My current idea is to get them thinking more deeply about the ecology of their music media. If the music you listen to is chosen for you by an algorithm, what makes it yours? Should Spotify allow the uploading and monetizing of music produced by AI? Can an AI generated pop star understand your broken heart? Do you really listen to songs you don't buy and music you don't own, or is it just something to consume like fast food?
I keep making stabs at how to turn all that into a philosophical question that can provoke reflection and inspire many different responses - something like "What's Wrong With Listening To Spotify?" or the like, but I haven't found one with the right mojo and moxie. Any ideas?