I have a very pragmatic view on music: all I care about is whether it sounds good or not. That’s it. That’s literally it. And from that standpoint the advent of AI music has been a major net positive for me.
You can choose to ignore that and come tell me about the ethics of using AI or how you care about the story behind the song and so on and that’s all fine but just note that you’re no longer addressing what I’m actually saying here.
I’m also not claiming it’s great - only that it’s good. I’ve yet to discover an AI song that I go back to like I do with many human-made songs but if I want to put on a playlist playing in the background then one consisting of entirely AI-made music reliably provides me well above average track after another whereas with organic music I need to sift through a ton of absolute crap to stumble upon the occasional good track that still rarely exceeds what AI is able to output. I can go on YouTube and put on a 2 hour playlist of Jazz House or similar and I don’t get the urge to skip a single track.
Currently I feel like where AI still trips is lyrics - they still are only plausible sounding nonsense once you actually start paying attention to it but especially for instrumental music it has far exceeded the level of a good average human artist.
Few examples of what I’m refering to: with vocals and without.
Music doesn’t carry utility beyond how it makes you feel in the moment so the analogy falls apart when you start discussing the nutritional content of it - it’s all about taste.
Bro I think you just don’t like music.
“this machine kills facists”
Well that’s not really true, music has a lot of utility beyond brain chemicals.
I mean there’s what I already mentioned in it just giving more options for stuff to do. If you find a new artist you like, there’s generally shows you can go to, at those shows you might meet some like minded people and maybe even gain some new friends. That whole life experience is impossible with AI music.
Following from that there’s the general broadening of horizons, music is very often a window into other lives & cultures. It might not be overt in any given piece, but brains love to notice patterns, so over time even tiny glimpses add up. You can make the anthropological case that cultures that share music historically end up growing closer. There’s no other culture you’re really getting exposed to via AI music.
Then broader than that, and admittedly the most dubious part of argument, there’s the vanilla-isation of music this causes. If this becomes a popular view, we’re just going to be flooded with beige. This stuff is zero effort to create, so there’s not really going to be anything to stop people from creating infinite copies of the same thing. For business and commercial folk, it’s cheaper to cut humans out, especially if hypothetically most people are happy enough with the pizza hut buffet. It’s not hard to see how this will drown out the actual artists and choke them out of the industry entirely. Pizza Hut every day whether you like it or not.
I question the claim that music “has made” anyone. Nobody can take credit for the kind of taste they have in music. A metalhead might credit the music for having become who they are but I would argue the opposite: that’s who they were all along and being that way is what made them gravitate towards this specific genre of music. They picked the music - not the other way around.
do you believe in free will?
No. Not in the sense that you could have acted otherwise.
then you’re going to find that you’re on the opposite side of an intractable line in a bunch of conversations. almost everyone has a deep, fundamental belief in their own free will, and the vast majority of those will extend that belief to others.
you will never see eye-to-eye on a disagreement so profound.