Love that quote! Was it Dawkins?
1 Like
Love how this turned more philosophical as a thread…huge fan of debating with philosophy glasses on! 
Did you know that the average “guess” of when we will have general AI, asked to a huge group of scientists in various field…was 27 years. Most believe it will happen almost instantly as soon as self learning reaches the tipping point. Beyond that there will be no going back. Super human intelligence will be a fact.
Now, the opposite side argues that it is impossible to develop a “mind”, because there is something elusive (a soul?) that can not be mimicked by logic and electrical circuits.
2 Likes
Just YouTube some of the AI robots Japan has already built. Asimo is kind of mind blowing really. It can recognize a soccer ball and kick it back to you. I remember when I saw it in person, I was up front of the stage and the handlers left it buy it self and it was waving to the crowd, I took out my camera and it recognized that and specifically bent down closer, looked directly at me and waved. I’d say 30 years isn’t far fetched.
2 Likes
One of Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws. 
The other ones are pretty interesting too, and well worth keeping in mind - especially for know-it-all old farts (in the computer field, in my case) such as myself. 
2 Likes
Yes self learning for specific tasks has come a long way. They have now made robots that can learn to walk…from infant state to running and jumping acrobatically. Without any human input, just pure self learning algorithms. At least from what I’ve understood.
However, specific AI like learning how to play chess from analyzing chess games and then win against the world champion. That kind of “AI” has been a thing for a while already. The real big step is to go beyond specific tasks…essentially creating a “mind” for the AI that can handle any situation or problem without previous experience. Just like a human can.
2 Likes
Ahh, Arthur C. Clarke. Maybe Richard Dawkins used that in one of his books somewhere.
I’m getting there. Although it’s my personal philosophy and I believe my human responsibility to teach others what I know—not what I think I know, mind you, but what I know.
1 Like
Now, the opposite side argues that it is impossible to develop a “mind”, because there is something elusive (a soul?) that can not be mimicked by logic and electrical circuits.
This reminds me of another discussion, around a John Williams quote, where he essentially states that inspiration is something that happens when you work, rather than something you sit around waiting for. Of course, lots of creative people have a compulsion to disagree with this, as if to validate their own lack of self-discipline and structure… Sure; it’s not an exact science, and there’s no one-size-fits-all method, but given the massive amount of incredible music Williams’ has written through the years, chances are he knows a thing or two about the creative process.
I think it all boils down the human fear of the unknown, and the consequential reflex to invent irrational explanations (magic, religion, fate, …) for anything that can’t (currently) be fully understood. It’s kind of like scientific theories, except that in science, theories are updated and refined as new discoveries are made, whereas humans stick to their random ingrained ideas as if they were above the universe itself.
“Creativity is magic beyond our control, and that’s just how it is, no matter what!” 
3 Likes
Definitely one for the philosophy books…and nerds like me 
I do think it’s possible. Like I said before, a brain is just a set of electrical circuits–a bio-computer. I don’t think a wired set of circuits wouldn’t be able to function similarly, and anyway, with how tech is advancing, I’m sure they’d create some bio-cellular circuitry instead of copper wires and you’d begin to have a real brain in these things.
As to the larger question, I think more AI in more operations would ultimately give humans more time to create since we wouldn’t have to do other tasks.
3 Likes
As long as we don´t have an answer what consiousness or awareness is it´s quite impossible to make certain assumptions of the “danger” of AI. One question I might consider are: If AI never can replace us as for example composers in complexity there is still a risk that we as listeners adapts to hearing artificial music as standard and gets used to it and therefor like it more. And then it would be a danger anyway because of our transformation.
I personally don´t think this though cause we´ll probably evolve in the meanwhile too and get more complex as time passes.(i´m a bit of a nerd on this subject too, I believe time itself is an illusion and just an experience from our side) by the way have you all noticed how we in this community tends to take interest in these kind of subjects. Must relate to our creative musicnerdy brains 
right?
2 Likes
There is no “danger” if you believe 100% that true AI will never come. If you even believe there is 0.1% chance if it happening…then you have to be open to every single task humans can do now…would be done a million times more effective and faster by an AI.
It has even been described as “The Final Invention”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Final_Invention
And yes, these are fascinating subjects!
2 Likes
Yeah AI can be more effective in some instances, such as a drive thru where you order food or a bank or other robotic/routine like functions but not in all matters. Like you said the human mind and consciousness is the difference, it’s what makes us as people in the end more efficient compared to AI in my opinion. The real threat is when we as people believe AI being superior and better than our own capabilities and potential. I see it as a growing silent enemy and all going back to control, power and most of all $. Look around today, if societies were run by AI judgment or AI scientific research instead of human judgement and individual research, you could be in a social mass lockdown experiment, which we are in now, except you could be in it longer than a few months but years if it was not for some human consciousness and reason.
2 Likes
I think AI is an interesting tool at this stage of the game, and is a starting point for some to create a melody to manipulate and make their own. But, the fact is that AI cannot create. It cannot create new sounds. It won’t create the new ‘pop’ sound of the future- humans will do that. All AI can do is replicate. It reiterates every variation that has ever been done by tossing it into a blender and spitting it out using the parameters it has been coded with. It takes consciousness to be creative. I see things less Trek-like with little Datas roaming about, and more like Battlestar Gallactica with Cylons domineering humans.
3 Likes
Here’s my h’penny worth for what its worth.
Will AI take over from what composers do today? Yes
But…how it affects what people do will change over time.
Initially it will be tools that help composers do what they want to do and become more efficient at what they do - it will enable the production process. Imagine plotting the time it takes to create a music piece and how many people hear it over time from 1800 to now and into the future, that line is decreasing (time to create) and increasing (number of people who have heard it).
Later it will deepen and really make the process very efficient allowing composer to focus on the creativity.
Later still it will allow people to realise what they are thinking, you wont need to have any specialised skills to compose and create whats in your head.
Finally, or in parallel, machines will be able to create at the same level of current composers and I my opinion would be that that would be the creative process too - so investing new genres etc. They will be chart toppers and films with only AI generated music.
So during the time this change is happening what the composer does is changing too.
By the time composers are out of jobs (along with everyone else) you wont need to work anyway as AI will run everything and people wont need to do anything.
One of the barriers to AI development is lack of data on which to ‘train’. One thing thats true about music is that there is a lots of data available and so initial development I think will be quite quick.
From an economic perspective there will be a tipping point at which different roles will disappear or change. As soon as someone has a model that can create music good enough for video games where it costs a fraction of what it does for a human to do it, the job will be gone in its current form. The same will be true for lawyers, accountants, doctors initially all the repetitive mundane parts of the job will be automated. Eventually all of the jobs will be gone in their current form.
Personally I think all of this enables creativity as more people will have more time and the tools to realise their imagination.
3 Likes
There is one who might have the answer to this. It’s a CAT. His name is Schrodinger’s cat. Problem is we can’t ask him, we don’t know if he is alive or not. 
2 Likes
Personally, I don’t fear AI as a composer.
If AI starts to compete with the niche I’m in the industry I’ll buy one myself.
I see it as a tool at least for now.
I think it will take quite some time before you can put a movie, manuscript etc in its head and out comes a score with sound design that fits and resonates with us.
Everything in universe changes all the time and will do forever. so what we can and need to do is to adapt the best way we can, I guess
3 Likes
Interesting points! I don’t agree with the idea that AI cannot create - but you have a good point there; AI cannot create new things. Well, technically, it can do that too, through extrapolation and randomization, and I would say that’s essentially what humans do too, but that’s where the problem is: Since the AI (at this point) can only rely on data collected from existing music, and doesn’t have the human ability to “test run” new ideas on an actual human brain, it can’t tell if it’s on to something useful when reaching outside the pool of tried and tested ideas.
So in short, we’re not even at the point of AI doing a decent job of orchestrating pieces composed by humans, but I definitely think that will happen in the near future. However, actual, unsupervised AI creation is way into the future. I mean, even decades of training is not guaranteed to turn a talented human into a great composer, so we’re nowhere close to understanding what’s actually going on there, let alone emulating it in AI. Until then, the best we can hope for is an AI composer assistant that actually produces results that don’t need substantial manual reworking.
2 Likes
Agree with you are saying. I think there’s people who gravely underestimate AI as well as there are people gravely overestimate it. I will point out one thing that might make quite a difference: As far as I’m aware there have nowhere in the world come any reports of AI being part of any resonance as we humans are all the time. But maybe that’s a coming evolutionary step.
1 Like
Wow I’ve missed a lot! Sorry folks, I got sidetracked by work
All interesting views. As I’ve said I don’t see this as a fear whatsoever… but I do have a question regarding this subject. We are in the digital era, so a lot of our music has gone computer cases, and for the most part “perfect” in tone and pitch. We’ve seen seen the industry push this form of music to the forefront, which means that kids these days (for the majority) have been conditioned to hear perfection as … well, perfection 
even though in the past the things that made music great were the imperfections.
Now, this isn’t AI… but it is a step towards AI. I believe we probably would t be here talking about it without this change, and though I love the older music and constantly strive to add imperfections into my own music I can’t help but think that if we are moving towards AI then it might encourage even more of us to pick up music… I very much doubt that AI music will take over as it actually sounds too perfect… but it’s noted to say that it’s probably not going to reach that point, if it did then the infinite musical pallet that we know of now will become not so infinite due to computers being s ls to churn if out infinitely quicker than we ever could. If we lol at this like that, what are our thoughts?
3 Likes
I am not afraid because it is going to happen. AI will replace us. Think about it like this. Music is a billion different things which all can be described by Harmony and Theory.(Math) If you are not schooled it’s just the math of music which I will show anyone with interest for free. If taken far enough ( Like E=MC2 ) wraps General relativity in a cute little reduction that although I can tell you what it means I cannot write it out on a board. In music H&T replaces the letters with numbers so it doesn’t matter what key you are in if it’s a 1 6 2 5 progression (Heart and soul) it’s the same in every key but… many don’t know, the first 2 years at least of music school is memorizing every note in every key in every inversion ect and it’s a lot but once you learn it you see it’s all the same. It takes your hands years to catch up if they ever do. Summing up. a 2-5-1 progression is the outline of every song or piece of music when you start using substitutions and pluralities. I write in every genre and although each new style is diferent it’s a losing battle There is so much more to this but I think great melodies will be toughest, so get good at that ( Being able to write and play and sing melodies puts you in the front row of everyone) why? because I can without a doubt hire someone in 10 minutes that is better than me at keys or singing or sight reading,but few are going to hear/write melodies better than me and no one has a book of composers who is amazing at melodies like they do for singers players ect. The reason is most are born with it, and if over 30 went to school. Still I give it 10 years until the world reaches singularity. (When a computer can do everything better than a person)
3 Likes
For those interested of the subject I would highly recommend the book Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark. One of the most skilled mathematicians out there.
2 Likes