AI disqualifies anyone as a musician! It's like playback.

[guitarzan]

…dig it:
Beatnik Firebird (featuring Max Sax)
https://www.flowmusic.app/song/8f7d8cf7 ... d4eb7b217d

[eassae]

… having a valid perspective on AI.

At a certain scale or narrow scope I can see that the iterative nature of AI can be very useful, for example AlphaFold or providing variations for new alloys. But when it comes to music these variations become insignificant, ultimately detrimental imo, and you don't need to have a background in mathematics to understand this, you can hear it.

Don't take that as universal praise for AI music, hardly, there is a sameness…

And, it's been said before, getting rid of the craft or immersive nature of creating music is only something a mathematical dick would do, and not understand—or a profiteer.

Does AI have a place in music creation? Maybe. I haven't seen a great example—it's not generative AI(I did actually mention one example earlier that was pretty good).

P.S. I'm not anti math in any way, but it's not the only lens for understanding the world.

[eassae]

[Seafire Mk2]

Art = wank

Can't remember who said that

Probably some wanker.

I think it may have been Donkey Tugger

[eassae]

Art = wank

Can't remember who said that

Probably some wanker.

I think it may have been Donkey Tugger

The name does fit…good music though.

[ghettosynth]

P.S. I'm not anti math in any way, but it's not the only lens for understanding the world.

It's a lens that you lack to understand the thing that you expressed an opinion about. Nothing more, nothing less. You didn't understand my point and rather than be honest with yourself about your own limitations, you doubled down on your ignorant rhetoric.

[zerocrossing]

Good video. I've seen it before, but it still hits. It points to the Dunning-Kruger effect that happens with a lot of the CEOs in tech companies. Actually, I see that in a lot of CEOs from all types of companies, even small game studios. It's especially salient because we live in a time when science is under a massive attack from the political Right. Entire studies are being defunded because someone doesn't understand the difference between "transgenic" and "transgender." It's really that stupid.

[zerocrossing]

Art = wank

Can't remember who said that

Probably some wanker.

I think it may have been Donkey Tugger

The name does fit…good music though.

I wrote a paper once on fine art that I think covers this. For art to be considered "fine," it does have to really be wanking, metaphorically speaking. If the work has a primary function that's not just being art, then it's really just craft. In the end, fine art has to be almost useless, except for one thing. I believe it serves as a cultural mutation engine. Artists are always making things that don't hit. They go into the dustbin of time, usually forgotten to "die," but occasionally rediscovered at a later time when cultural conditions are right. This is why if you went back in time and played Roll Over, Beethoven to Beethoven, they'd laugh at you and maybe burn you as a heretic, but this would be true of most modern classical, even stuff that's now pretty mainstream, like Philip Glass.

This is why it drives me crazy when people insist things like a beautifully made guitar is "a work of art." It's not. It's fine craftsmanship, because the purpose of a guitar is to be a guitar, even if it's made to a very high level of aesthetics and precision. Etching artwork on the face of the guitar is just putting a piece of art on a guitar, which should be regarded as separate things that are bound together. When Banksy paints the side of a building, we don't say, "that building is really a work of art."

[eassae]

Good video. I've seen it before, but it still hits. It points to the Dunning-Kruger effect that happens with a lot of the CEOs in tech companies. Actually, I see that in a lot of CEOs from all types of companies, even small game studios.

I first encountered her channel after she did a guest appearance on Veritassium. Her switch to a focus on AI seems like it's split her audience a bit. At least that's what I've seen in the comments.

My day job is in the art world and I'm seeing the same thing there as well.

[eassae]

Artists are always making things that don't hit. They go into the dustbin of time, usually forgotten to "die," but occasionally rediscovered at a later time when cultural conditions are right.

?

[zerocrossing]

Good video. I've seen it before, but it still hits. It points to the Dunning-Kruger effect that happens with a lot of the CEOs in tech companies. Actually, I see that in a lot of CEOs from all types of companies, even small game studios.

I first encountered her channel after she did a guest appearance on Veritassium. Her switch to a focus on AI seems like it's split her audience a bit. At least that's what I've seen in the comments.

My day job is in the art world and I'm seeing the same thing there as well.

It's human nature. I have a hard time thinking about a job I've had where I wasn't hired for my expertise and then told how and what to do by someone in management that had zero background in art. I was talking about ambient music (which he didn't get) with a new art director and I said, "it's like the difference between a Rothko and a Vermeer," and his response was, "I don't know what those are." A quick trip to a search engine showed me that my new boss had a journalism degree, and became an "art director," when a college buddy hired him at a startup. Evidently they liked to follow Phish in the summers while in school. He was replaced by a "creative director," who had an agriculture degree, but was made creative director at Netscape by his ex wife when they were together. She was a VP there. My last "art director," had a degree in computer science, and during the interview process, I asked to see examples of his work, and he showed us a lame game level... that he then admitted one of his past employees did. His contribution to our game was a robot that was literally a T.I.E. fighter with robot arms (pinched from a model that I made) instead of the iconic hexagons.

What they all have in common is that they were hired by people who also have zero art background, and are often very willing to admit it. One game studio owner had the entire art department churning out different looks for characters in a game he had designed. This went on for months, burning up a ton of artist hours. The art director (an actual artist) started printing and putting up the art on the wall of our offices, until the entire wall was full. Every single version was good. Seriously, you could have randomly picked one, and gotten into production and we'd have already had a finished game, but instead we had to follow a man who would proclaim, "I don't know art, but I'll know it when I see it." WTF?

How did that end? That company folded. Now, if we had spent the time in production and had produced a finished game, would that have saved the company? Probably not, but maybe. If a publisher saw a good finished product, they may have bought it. I've had that happen at other studios. We made one game in 6 months that looked and played great. Won a GDC award. Why? The studio owner heard the game pitch, approved it and went away and let us make that game, unobstructed. Sega saw the game at GDC and bought it. When people find out how fast we made that game, they'll always say, "you must have crunched (worked crazy hours) the whole time!" Nope. I left every day at 5:00. We worked so quickly because no one was second guessing everything we did. I was in charge of UI, and no one said anything to me, but I also strictly followed the look of the level and character artists.

So that's my rant. Every time you see any media that looks off, or like crap, just know that there's probably frustrated artists in the mix that are making arbitrary changes, demanded by people with an MBA.

[MattCable]

An art director who doesn’t know the difference between a Rothko and a Vermeer makes me sad, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. As an art lover with no formal training, that was a perfect analogy for ambient music. It feels like people who bring in big money for an organization and make big money themselves are often playing a whole different game than the rest of us.

[VOODOO U]

It feels like people who bring in big money for an organization and make big money themselves are often playing a whole different game than the rest of us.

Yeah it's called the game of making investments. Big Money people invest and if they decide to invest in art they know nothing about that's their perogative and furthermore it's their money so they have every right to say if something works or not regardless if ego driven "artists" understand that.
Like musicians who get signed and expect to call the shots, uh... no stupid. You're not the one investing the money so sit back, shut up and do as your told otherwise don't sign the dotted line and go sell hot dogs.

[ghettosynth]

It feels like people who bring in big money for an organization and make big money themselves are often playing a whole different game than the rest of us.

Yeah it's called the game of making investments. Big Money people invest and if they decide to invest in art they know nothing about that's their perogative and furthermore it's their money so they have every right to say if something works or not regardless if ego driven "artists" understand that.
Like musicians who get signed and expect to call the shots, uh... no stupid. You're not the one investing the money so sit back, shut up and do as your told otherwise don't sign the dotted line and go sell hot dogs.

Agreed, and while I despise nepotism, that's just how shit works. Moreover, this is not "Dunning Kruger", which is narrower than over-generalizing one's domain knowledge, and the video itself is trying to make a bigger point than it deserves to. Yes, empirical data is a bottleneck, that's not an argument for how to develop AI models. I too would roll my eyes at not knowing the difference between a a Rothko and a Vermeer, but, most of the AI whiners can't define a vector space but it's not stopping them from droning on about things that they don't understand.

Please clock the irony before passing go to collect the $200.

[VOODOO U]

Agreed, and while I despise nepotism, that's just how shit works

I've come to peace that skills mean shit over who you are as a person. What's your character? Because the work environment may not be blood relative but it can become family and you better be pleasant to be around.
If I owned a business, yeah, I'd take family over someone who I don't care to work with no matter how skilled they are. If I can get best of both worlds I'd consider a non-blood but there's no love lost if they find a better position that benefits them. At least with family I can spank them for leaving the business.