It was only today that I discovered just how deeply the pro/anti-AI rift had run on this forum. I thought the warnings I received about how touchy a subject it was were just that, no more. I try to keep an open mind on the subject, because I know that even people much more involved in it than I disagree widely about what its ramifications will be, or even whether there will be any significant ramifications in the long term. At present, I see both good and bad, so I can sympathise with neither fanaticism nor Luddism when it comes to AI. In fact, I find both extremes amusing. Absolute certainty in the absence of sufficient evidence is, of course, ludicrous. But not everyone shares my sense of humour.
Having said all that, maybe AI should be added to the forumās list of proscribed subjects (religion, politics), particularly as on the one hand it is seen as simultaneously the work of the devil or the saviour of our species, and on the other it is so inherently knitted into the question of how we manage ourselves and control others. When all said and done, it has little to do with learning how to play guitar.
Perhaps the one dispensation should be that if someone has found a use for AI in their learning progress, the right place to mention that is in their learning log.
Not sure what incident youāre referring to. Mark, but that ādivisivenessā is exactly why.AI-Corner was set up. So folk who abhorred it wouldnāt have to be exposed to it, and those who wanted explore/debate its potential and future can do so respectfullyā¦
Itād be impossible to ban at this stage, as it has reached into so many aspects of the music world (and will continue to do so).
If someoneās crossed the ārespectā line, a gentle reminder or pm would be my preferred response.
Have a great week
Iām not totally against AI, in regard that it can be a usefull tool for humankind.
But what i absolutely abhor (if thatās the word iām looking for) is how itās a) being forced upon humankind, b) the crazy amount of energy it uses and who pays for it (answer = you and me), c) the complete lack of privacy, d) the absence of decent guardrails, making it that this āsoftwareā allows people to do the most horrific things and last but not least, the total (afaik) disregard from ābig techā in regard to how this affects us all.
Iād very much like a personal assistant like Mycroft, back in the days, but wouldnāt you know it, that didnāt go too well. And look where it ended.
The way things are now, iām doing my very best to stay away from everything ai related.
Nothing unpleasant happened to me @brianlarsen. Itās just that I read the backlog of AI-related discussions and in doing so realised thereās been a history of less than cordial dialectic. I donāt think anyoneās changed their position since the subject came up. So whatās the point?
The only reason I started this new thread was to see whether there was any consensus about how to handle the category, not to create another opportunity to air personal opinions all over again.
While I like discussing AI, I donāt think it is worth it if it inevitably becomes disagreeable.
I think I might have shifted a bitā¦
I went from happily using AI for videos and stem separation in tracks to using an AI generated text as āinspirationā in my last thread. I could easily see myself ācrossing the Rubiconā and trying a co-write with AI, or even what a Suno production of one of songs would sound like
I canāt be bothered yet thoughā¦
The difference is, you can share religious/political songs as divisive as you like; you just canāt discuss the topic.
That wouldnāt work with AIā¦
I meant ban the discussion of the subject, just as we ban those other subjects, and for the same reason: not that they are not worth discussing, but that the discussions become unpleasant. Itās not a matter of breaching guidelines, itās the question of whether to modify the guidelines.
Iām with Mark.
Itās a divisive topic. Perhaps it would be better to include in the community rules that we donāt discuss it anymore. Itās not something that any of us can control and it comes down to personal ethic. It has very little to do with playing guitar.
The problem I see is that some people wish to use AI to help both learning and creation of songs.
I think most of us would agree that this is not the place for entirely prompt driven, AI performed, derivative musak (and I would hope such monstrosities are quickly moderated if they do appear).
But some wish to use AI to help with song development and performance, whether that is through helping develop lyrics, or backing tracks, etc. Whilst I have a personal dislike for a lot of this, if the poster is using it in the context of the forum (i.e. to benefit their learning of guitar, or to support their guitar performances) then Iām not sure we could meaningfully ban this.
But if people are using AI in this way, personally I think itās not only desirable, but should be compulsory to state where AI was used.
As soon as you do that, you are introducing discussion of AI.
Personally, I think this sort of disclosure is a good thing and I wouldnāt want to see it removed because of a ban on discussing AI.
There are music sites that ban absolutely all AI content. Discussion about it, as well as content generated by it.
There are a lot of issues related specifically to generative AI. Other sorts of machine learning have been getting used elsewhere without many people noticing them. Folks might be surprised what AI systems they use without being aware.
But gen AIā¦so many unresolved issues there with power consumption, water use (cooling), rising utility rates for US to subsidize those data centers, the space those data centers occupy, the noise that many of them generate, how those gen AI models function (ie - stolen content/plagiarizing), the tendency of them to just make things up, hallucinate, or lie, the lack of guardrails on what they do (ahemchildpornahem), the impacts on users of actually using them, and so on. Many of these issues are not consistent globally, but folks paying attention to AI-related topics in the US might have an idea about some of this. Particularly related to the Anthropic/US Govāt contract issue recently.
On that end, the subject is inherently political so a new policy doesnāt necessarily need to be created regarding AI. Certain people over there are pushing AI HARD. I see it if I go to LinkedIn. Thereās a crowd there acting like if youāre not hard core using AI and 100% bought into it, then you will get left behind in the world. I see it as akin to a fad. No, itās not going away at this point. But things will crash and reset, much as they did with the early dot-com bubble. There are real logistical constraints with the computing hardware necessary for pervasive use of these big AI tools. Itās already getting close to the wall with the memory chip shortage and the echoes up and down the supply chain with rare earth minerals issues and product availability and high prices. Not to mention people standing up in opposition to construction of data centers near where they live because of the power/water issues or because of the noise or whatever. A town near me is in the process of redeveloping an old paper mill site (so large that it occupies over half of the area of the town) and they just a couple weeks ago placed a moratorium on data center construction because they donāt want a data center going in there. Right in the middle of town. And they didnāt even have anyone looking actively to build one there. They just wanted to cut off anyone who might think about purchasing that land for one.
I have a friend in NZ who lives near a big data center that makes a TON OF NOISE and it is impacting her familyās quality of life. People in local government are playing dumb about it. She had been working and saving to buy a home for SO LONG and now that she finally has one, she has to sell it because the noise from the data center is driving her insane.
Iām really not cool with a lot of these problems that keep coming up. The costs are too high.
I feel that keeping it in its own corner of the forum has been fairly successful so far so why change that?
Iād hate to have to monitor every single thread on the forum and arbitrarily decide when a particular thread had strayed too close to a banned subject (be that AI or anything else).
While thereās plenty of people who hate all things AI, even those people will probably have disagreements about where does AI start and end. Thereās lots of products out there that proclaim theyāre using AI to make them sound more cutting edge but when you look closely thereās nothing that software hasnāt been doing for years
As things stand I think the balance is about right around here. Iām generally against AI in music creation and I havenāt felt the need to leave these forums which I would if every thread descended into an argument about AI
Yeah, the āAIā term is getting tossed around for a lot of stuff thatās just more refined tools contained within the program itself. Processing is handled on the local machine and doesnāt necessarily require access to the internet to function.
The bulk of any issues seem mostly connected to generative AI and requests that are processed on some datacenter elsewhere.
I think for now this is largely true although it would seem like a matter of time before youāre able to generate a song on your local machine just from a simple text prompt
Itās possible that could happen. But as I understand it, thereās a concern that weāll run into problems with Mooreās law before it can.
Maybe it winds up being less a matter of whether itās possible to build a computer that can do it and more a matter of whether we have the resources to make enough computers for everyone who wants to. Weāre already having memory/storage shortages that are driving prices up. and thatās causing some people to change their purchase decisions when it comes to computers.
and that still doesnāt address some of the other problems regarding intellectual property, appropriate credit, hallucinating AI agents, AI agents that want to nuke everybody, people who use gen AI so much that it takes a toll on their brains, and probably a million other things we donāt have guardrails to prevent.
