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Comment by munificent | Hacker News Reader

As someone who loves making music and loves listening to music made by other humans with intention, it just makes me sad.

Sure, AI can do lots of things well. But would you rather live in a world where humans get to do things they love (and are able to afford a comfortable life while doing so) or a world where machines do the things humans love and humans are relegated to the remaining tasks that machines happened to be poorly suited for?

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As someone who loves making music and loves listening to music (regardless of its origins, in my case), it doesn't make me that sad. Sure, at first, I had an uncomfortable feeling that AI could make this sacred magic thing that only I and other fellow humans know how to do... But then I realized same thing is happening with visual art, so I applied the same counterarguments that've been cooking in my head.

I think that kind of attitude is defeatist - it's implying that humans will be stopped from making music if AI learns how to do it too. I don't think that will happen. Humans will continue making music, as they always have. When Kraftwerk started using computers to make music back in the 70s, people were also scared of what that will do to musicians. To be fair, live music has died out a bit (in a sense that there aren't that many god-on-earth-level rockstars), but it's still out there, people are performing, and others who want to listen can go and listen.

Maybe consumers will start consuming more and more AI music, instead of human music [0], but the worst thing that can happen is that music will no longer be a profitable activity. But then again, today's music industry already has some elements of the automation - washed-out rhythms, sexual thematics over and over again, re-hashing same old songs in different packages... So nothing's gonna change in the grand scheme of things.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1jWdeRKvvk

> but the worst thing that can happen is that music will no longer be a profitable activity.

For me, the worst that could happen is that people spend so much time listening to AI generated music, that human musicians can no longer find audiences to connect to. It's not just about economics (though that's also huge). It's the psychological cost of all of us spending greater and greater fractions of our lives connected to machines and not other people.

The vast majority of music produced is listened to by nobody, or a handful of people, so this is already the case really.

Music was always about people. Even today, as most people listen to the mass-produced run-of-the-mill muzak, there is still a significant audience that seeks the "human element" for the sake of itself.

Black metal community, for example, has always rejected all forms of "automation" and considers it not kvlt - rawness is a sought-after quality, defined as having people performing as close to the recording equipment as possible.

There's also a rapper named Bones (Elmo O'Connor) who's never signed a contract with a label, does only music he wants to do, releases a couple albums every year. There's something about his approach that makes his music sound very organic and honest. I listen to him more than I listen to any mass produced rapper.

So in conclusion, music was always about people. Unless AI reaches AGI level, I don't think it will ever impact music enough to kill all audience.

I agree with this so much that I’d take off the comment about AGI: I think that even if/when AGI lands there will always be audiences that seek raw, organic, and honest artistic expression from other humans.

I play the piano (badly). There are many other people who can play much better than I. There are simple computer programs which can play better. It doesn't stop me from enjoying it or playing it. Computers have been beating people at Chess for years yet you still see people everywhere enjoying the game. At some point computers will be better than humans at absolutely everything but it shouldn't stop you as a human from enjoying anything.

Sure, but a large part of enjoyment in creativity for many is the joy of sharing it with an audience. To the degree that people are spending their available attention on AI-generated content, they have less time and attention available to spend listening to and watching art created by humans.

I would rather live in a world where humans get to do things they love because they can (and not because they have to earn their bread), and machines get to do basically everything that needs to be done but no human is willing to do it.

Advancing AI capabilities in no way detracts from this. You talk about humans being "relegated to the remaining tasks" - but that's a consequence of our socioeconomic system, not of our technology.

> but that's a consequence of our socioeconomic system, not of our technology.

Those two are profoundly intertwined. Our tech affects our socioeconomic systems and vice versa.

Sure, so now that we have new tech, let's update the socioeconomic system to accommodate it.

If only it was that easy.

It's not, but at least it's feasible. Trying to suppress technology instead is futile in the long term.

Musicians already make much (most?) of their money via gigs and I don't think going to watch an AI play at a gig will be all too common. I think we'll be fine. Might have to adapt though.

I'd rather live in the world where humans do things that are actually unique and interesting, and aren't essentially being artificially propped up by limiting competition.

I don't see this as a threat to human ingenuity in the slightest.

There are still chess tournaments for humans, even though our smartphone could play chess better than any grandmaster.

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