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G. T. A. Ogle's avatar

This is well written. Of course, we still hoe our garden by hand, though we have an automatic tiller (not worth it for raised beds.) Art sits in a weird place; some necessities are amenable to being mass produced with little loss, but others, not. Art is in a way a necessity, but one that sits pretty far on the end of lossiness in any mass production. However, what sometimes happens, as has happened with *some* food production and a fair amount of clothing production, is that the method becomes so ubiquitous that the results get imagined in terms of what the method can produce alone. This is not a sinister process as some might suggest, when you have a set of tools, you learn them well so you know what they can or can't do. Many do not understand this, though, and are sold all sorts of fantasies about what they can make with this or that tool (or framework) -- when in reality what would matter is knowing what it *can* do and using that as a frame when imagining what you'll produce.

In musical terms, there is a subtle degradation between the person who knows how to play a variety of instruments using software emulations and one who does not. There becomes a sense of freedom to create, without really knowing the true limitations you've taken on with an emulation. A generation that has never played a string instrument would be surprised at the sounds you can make them produce. Perhaps they might so boldly say that if those things mattered they'd emulate them!

My main chief concern is that "democratization" of "high art" styles just mass produces kitsch. If I had the ability to produce wine on command, I would not be putting out anything above a 20 dollar bottle -- honestly, I had great Sicilian wines for 3-6 bucks. I recognize that my taste in the matter doesn't adequately represent the richness of wine, and only jokingly share my preferences, knowing that they are sort of philistine. But if the average wine enjoyer determined the wines that would flood the market, there would be quite a dilemma; one that the general quality and variety of wine would absolutely drop to bare satisfaction, and two that it would be an impossible problem to solve since I can't really tell the difference between a six and thousand dollar bottle of wine. Even if we set aside mere cost, since European wines are often not as expensive as hoity toity American ones, I could not tell the difference between a great wine and an acceptable one. I do enjoy Port!

What happens here though is a game-theoretical defection process, something like how oligarchy ruins a nation; yes AI "art" is bad in a number of ways, but at least positionally, a lot of people could stand to benefit _personally_ from it. They might not benefit in the long term, but benefitting now while it still matters might make sense. Naturally (and such is often the naive attitude of computer science folks) this is misunderstood under the starry-eyed guise of democratization. Sam Altman has been known to push dangerous nonsense in a very optimistic fashion; so it goes.

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Koshmarov's avatar

There is very little to convince me to listen to anyone's AI-generated "music." There is too much real music by real musicians I haven't listened to yet.

This is the dilemma that confronts fans of the arts in the 21st century; we are confronted with surfeit. I am not sure I want gatekeeping, exactly, but such as it is, it's not working. Just an endless wall of undifferentiable schlock.

20 or 30 years ago, we all knew That Dude who buttonholed you with his crazy eyes. "Hey man, you gotta listen to my band's new record! CD is only $5!" Now he wants you to listen to his AI music. We really have come to live in Geocities.

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