It doesn’t even have to be art. If someone told me they were a chef and cooked some food but in reality had ordered it I’d think they were a bit of a moron for equating these things or thinking that by giving someone money or a request for something they were a creator, not a consumer.
It may be nice for society that ordering food is possible, but it doesn’t make one a chef to have done so.
I enjoy this take. Funding something is not the same as creating it. The Medicis were not artists, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Raphael, etc were.
You might not be a creator, but you could make an argument for being an executive producer.
But then, if working with an artist is reduced to talking at a computer, people seem to forget that whatever output they get is equally obtainable to everyone and therefore immediately uninteresting, unless the art is engaging the audience only in what could already be described using language, rather than the medium itself. In other words, you might ask for something different, but that ask is all you are expressing, nothing is expressed through the medium, which is the job of the artist you have replaced. It is simply generated to literally match the words. Want to stand out? Well, looks like you’ll have to find somebody to put in the work…
That being said, you can always construct from parts. Building a set of sounds from suno asks and using them like samples doesn’t seem that different from crate digging, and I’d never say Madlib isn’t an artist.
Assuming that 1. food is free and instant to get, and 2. there are infinite possibilities for food - then yes, if you ordered such a food from an infinite catalog you would get the credit.
But if you ordered 100 dishes iterating between designing your order, tasting, refining your order, and so on - maybe you even discover something new that nobody has realized before.
The gen-AI process is a loop, not a prompt->output one step process.
The amount of times I've seen Twitch streamers say "I want this game for myself to play off-stream, but I will play it on stream once so I can write it off as a business expense".
I guess it’s similar to learning by watching masters on YouTube - I’m convinced that passively watching them causes the illusion in the viewer that they are also capable of the same, but if they were to actually try they miss all the little details and experience that makes their performance possible. Watching a chess GM play, for example, can make you feel like you understand what’s happening but if you don’t actually learn and get experience you’re still going to get beat all the time by people, even beginners, who did. But as long as you never test this, you get to live with the self-satisfaction of having “mastered” something yourself.
Of course, nothing wrong with watching and appreciating a master at work. It’s just when this is sold as the illusion of education passively absorbed through a screen that I think it can be harmful. Or at least a waste of time.
It gets very real very quickly with skateboarding. You can watch all the YouTube and Instagram you want about how to do an Ollie or a kickflip in 30s; now go out and try.
The learning is in the failing; the satisfaction of landing it is in the journey that put you there.
It’s really not. It’s like having interdimensional Spotify where you can describe any song and they will pull it up from whatever dimension made it and play it for you. It may empower you as a consumer but it does not make you a creator.
I dunno, based on Spotify's recommendation engine, AI is absolutely sufficient to make anyone a creator ;P
Almost all naturally-generated music is derivative to one degree or another. And new tools like AI provide new ways to produce music, just like all new instruments have done in the past.
Take drum and bass. Omni Trio made a few tracks in the early 90s. It was interesting at the time, but it wasn't suddenly a genre. It only became so because other artists copied them, then copied other copies, and more and more kept doing it because they all enjoyed doing so.
Suno ain't gonna invent drum and bass, just like drum machines didn't invent house music. But drum machines did expand the kinds of music we could make, which lead to house music, drum and bass, and many other new genres. Clever artists will use AI to make something fun and new, which will eventually grow into popular genres of music, because that's how it's always been done.
You can do exactly what you describe with interdimensional Spotify. People can describe all kinds of fun and interesting things that can be statistically generated for them, but they still didn’t make anything themselves unlike in your other examples of using new tools.
Japanese oldies became a trend for a while - the people who found and repopularised the music dont get to say they created it and how it’s so awesome to have mastered the musical instrument of describing or searching for things. Well, of course they can, but forgive me if I don’t buy it.
Maybe when there is actual AGI then the AI will get the creative credit, but that’s not what we have and I still wouldn’t transfer the creative credit to the person who asked the AGI to write a song.
> Maybe when there is actual AGI then the AI will get the creative credit, but that’s not what we have and I still wouldn’t transfer the creative credit to the person who asked the AGI to write a song.
When artists made trance, the creative credit didn't go to Roland for the JP-8000 and 909, even though Roland was directly responsible for the fundamental sounds. Instead, the trance artists were revered. That's good.
> Japanese oldies became a trend for a while - the people who found and repopularised the music dont get to say they created it and how it’s so awesome
I'd bet there are modern artists who sampled that music and edited it into very-common rhythm patterns, resulting in a few hit songs (i.e. The Manual by The KLF).
> Take drum and bass. Omni Trio made a few tracks in the early 90s. It was interesting at the time, but it wasn't suddenly a genre. It only became so because other artists copied them, then copied other copies, and more and more kept doing it because they all enjoyed doing so.
Musicians not just copy but everyone adds something new; it's like programmers taking some existing algorithm (like sorting) and improving it. The question is, can Suno user add something new to the drum-and-bass pattern? Or they can just copy? Also as it uses a text prompt, I cannot imagine how do you even edit anything? "Make note number 3 longer by a half"? It must be a pain to edit the melody this way.
> Musicians not just copy but everyone adds something new
Not everyone. I've followed electronic music for decades, and even in a paid-music store like Beatport, most artist reproduce what they've heard, and are often just a pale imitation because they have no idea of how to make something better. That's the fundamental struggle of most creatives, regardless of tool or instrument.
I haven't tried Suno, but I imagine it's doing something similar to modern software: start with a pre-made music kit and hit the "Randomize" button for the sequencer & arpeggiator. It just happens to be an "infinite" bundle kit.
Sampling is not just cutting a fragment from a song and calling it a day. Usually (if you look at Prodigy's tracks for example) it includes transformation so that the result doesn't sound much like the original. For example, you can sample a single note and make a melody from it. Or turn a soft violin note into a monster's roar.
As for DJ'ing I would say it is pretty limited form of art and it requires lot of skill to create something new this way.
Yes, that's what people are doing with AI music as well. Acting like there's some obvious "line" of what constitutes meaningful transformation is silly.
Well I made songs with my lyrics that brings tears and memories to my audience. Don’t know what other creator things you are talking about, but this to me is creating.
Well, at least you asked a computer over a series of requests to statistically generate a work based on it having previously ingested lots of works by actual creators and your audience liked it, and I won't take that from you.
With art and AI, people seem to enjoy the part where they say they made something and get credit for it, but didn’t actually have to bother. People used to find art of people on the internet and claim it as their own, now an AI can statistically generate it for you and it maybe feels a bit less icky. Though I have to agree it all seems sort of pointless, like buying trophies for sports you didn’t play.
He only said we should look into injecting disinfectants to cure Covid, not to actually do it. The full quote is a bit incoherent it’s hard to say what he was actually thinking - the one thing we can probably all agree on is it would do a tremendous number on your lungs if you injected disinfectant into them:
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you're totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that too. It sounds interesting.
ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN: We'll get to the right folks who could.
THE PRESIDENT: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.
Whether you're defending THE PRESIDENT or not, I can't tell. But what sane person in that powerful position, when the whole nation is troubled about what's really factual, hint/say something this incredibly stupid?
Is being incoherent a defense against being incredibly stupid? It’s just the most relevant part from the linked article. I think his own words speak for themselves.
I don’t seem to even get this effect, the map looks upside down not mind blowing. If I turn a mug over it’s not a mind blowing new thing, it’s an upside down mug.
Steady on now: there's an interesting psychological effect going on. A well known art exercise is to draw a subject upside down, particularly a person or a scene with a clear usual orientation.
When you take something you're very familiar with and turn it upside down, you see all the details - volume, shape, distance between points, geometric similarity, colour - with fresh eyes. With art, it becomes easier to draw a human figure because it discourages symbol drawing. With a map, I find it helps me realise how close certain points are to each other, how small politically significant regions are, which lattitude different climate bands sit at, and so on.
A mug is a pretty boring object which we're all used to seeing upside down and which doesn't have many interesting features, so of course turning it upside down will not reveal anything interesting.
If you're sitting on the opposite side of a table looking at a map that a person on the other side laid out in front of them, you don't just see the map from the other side? You instead see details about volume, shape, distance between points, geometric similarity, colour, and so on? I sincerely just see the same map even if I'm across the table, except flipped. I'm not sure how it would impact my drawing a map, though that isn't really what the article talks about.
Can you read upside-down or does it become a jumble of lines? I can read upside-down with no special effort so maybe this is canceling something out.
I can read upside down, but it's an acquired skill. I can't read at a 90 degree angle without difficulty, although I could probably learn to.
It's not that I don't see the map from the other side, it's that when it's the right way up I see all the extra information I have about it. For example, I bet an eye tracker would show me focusing on Western Europe, Central Asia, Australia, and the US. When the map is flipped, I see it closer to how it really is because I can ignore those preconceived ideas more easily. I don't see e.g. the Iberian peninsula as represented by a land mass, I see the actual land mass, and can concentrate on its size and distance more easily.
This is all very interesting, but I'm sorry, personally I just feel the same as the poster you replied to. I don't experience this as anything weird, I just experience it as if I'm looking at a map from the top.
Same when people get their minds blown about the sizes of countries at different latitudes. Feels like I'm the only one who played with a globe as a kid...
Your analogy is not quite appropriate. An upside down mug is "wrong". The mug looses its meaning and you have to turn it around to use it as a mug.
That's not the case with a map. An "upside down" map is just as valid as a right side up map.
The fact that it is upside down is not supposed to mind blowing, it's the fact that it isn't upside down at all. We are just used to it being represented this way up, but there's nothing in the physical world which prescribes north to be up.
> An "upside down" map is just as valid as a right side up map.
Is it as useful and/or efficient though? I could write a phrase in English from right to left and if you really wanted you could read it, but it would be highly inefficient.
An efficient society sometimes has to pick conventions (how to write text, how to print a map, what characters to use, etc) and I find not interesting to point that other conventions could have been used.
I mean, to me at least it is also interesting. Like Japanese writing or Arabic. It's interesting because it is different, there's a different predominant convention. You can also think further about how the writing convention might have had an impact on culture and the society itself.
Also thinking of maps and Japan: where I am from (Germany) public overview maps of parks or street maps usually have north as up. In Japan however it is very common for those maps to have up as the cardinal direction you are looking at the map at. So if you are looking at the map in a western direction, the map will have west up. So for walking the map is straight up, backwards down, left left and right right.
Like that it is very easy to know which way to go. Want to go to some place that is on the left on the map? Turn left!
In the writing example, something that seems inconsequential like right-to-left or left-to-right, does have real implications. Since most people are right-handed, writing right-to-left means they develop writing styles to keep from smearing the ink. In left-to-right writing, it is unnecessary. The consequence is that the minority left-handed people are just taught a mirror of right-handed writing, making left handedness much more of a burden in a left-to-right writing culture.
Yes, I think there are many interesting things to consider about maps (like projection, orientation maps fixed on a panel/wall, orientation for digital maps). All those discussion will also transmit the basic idea (there is no "good/bad" way) while also discussing other problems ("can't represent area well", "people like different options", "different cases require different orientation").
English (and latin for that matter) is written/read left to right because that is more convenient for the overwhelming majority of the population that is right handed when using easily smudged waxed tablets, wet ink, etc, etc.
Likewise, maps are traditionally "north up" because most of the population lives north of the equator so that's where most maps hailed from and if you're north of the equator having a "north up" map makes celestial navigation slightly easier.
a mug cannot function when upside down and yet when you change the arbitrary orientation of a map it can still function the same
you literally missed the point of the _title_ of the article, quite impressive
I can turn my hand over and it still functions. I can turn lots of things over that still function. I can even set something on top of my upside-down mug. This is not mind blowing to me, your mileage may vary. I also don't seem to have this association with "the bottom of things is bad" so maybe that's why it doesn't seem so shocking or clever to flip things over.
ohhh… so thats why my coffee keeps spilling everywhere. I just thought my mug was defective. Hole faces upward: got it. These things really should come with an instruction manual.
The direction with which you perceive the mug is not any more arbitrary than that of the map, you are just prioritizing the direction gravity takes rather than its opposite, same as magnetism and the north.
You can change your entire system of reference and the setup still makes sense. Same with the map.
A map is a flat, visual representation of an area, showing its features and locations using symbols and drawings. The system of reference can change, like magnetism and north, and the map still functions as a map.
A drinking mug is a large, cylindrical cup with a handle, typically made of earthenware, used to hold hot beverages like coffee or tea. The orientation relative to gravity is fundamental to the functioning of the mug. It is not arbitrary.
Okay, forget gravity. If you stand on your head and look at the mug, do you get lots of insights about a mug that you wouldn't have had standing upright? Does it look different, or is it just an upside-down mug? For me I would just get the upside-down mug.
I suspect I don't have this thing the article mentions where I associate the bottoms of things with badness, so I don't get this effect where the bad bottom suddenly becomes the good top if I flip it or myself over. There's just no effect except perhaps getting dizzy.
>The orientation relative to gravity is fundamental to the functioning of the mug.
Yes. Changing your system of reference fixes this too. Just get upside down glasses, gravity now goes "up" and the mug is upside down. Works perfectly. You can live like this if you want.
You can tell that some people who grew up addicted to video content already sort of just stare at the real world like they are watching a video and don't quite realise they are present. If they were wearing glasses where they were actually watching videos while they stare into space not much would change.
Oh, it'll happen. Whether the replacement will be any good is another matter entirely though. The likely outcome is that it'll resemble Google's "support." Mostly automated and good for nothing besides enraging already frustrated users. Wealthy investors and executives running the show just won't care.
Unless society puts preventative measures in place, people will lose jobs and consumers will get screwed. The increased exploitation will exacerbate the wealth gap, further intensify societal conflict, and lead to chaos. But don't worry, LLMs will flood the internet with narratives praising the state of affairs so that people can feel somewhat better about all of this.
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