AI: IBM Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

[Anderton]

IBM has put hiring on hold for positions that they think AI could do better, mostly in tech positions and...HR. Yes, human resources will no longer be human. Awesome.

 

I assume it's just a matter of time before record company focus groups and A&R departments will be replaced by AI evaluators. They'll compare musical characteristics against previous hits to determine how much of a match there is. The ones with the best matches will be released and promoted.

 

It will be like job resumes which these days, are evaluated by machines and not humans. If you submit music, it will go to machines that will judge it, and the humans will follow those recommendations like sheep.

 

Why do I have the feeling this is like cavemen being given dynamite?

 

 

[KuruPrionz]

53 minutes ago, Anderton said:

IBM has put hiring on hold for positions that they think AI could do better, mostly in tech positions and...HR. Yes, human resources will no longer be human. Awesome.

 

I assume it's just a matter of time before record company focus groups and A&R departments will be replaced by AI evaluators. They'll compare musical characteristics against previous hits to determine how much of a match there is. The ones with the best matches will be released and promoted.

 

It will be like job resumes which these days, are evaluated by machines and not humans. If you submit music, it will go to machines that will judge it, and the humans will follow those recommendations like sheep.

 

Why do I have the feeling this is like cavemen being given dynamite?

 

 

Wait until the hackers figure this out and AI becomes an "insanity free-for-all". 

"Reality" has been questionable at best for decades. "At best" is about to leap off a cliff into an infinite morass of swirling "factoids". 

So. Much. Fun.

 

Glad I'm old, maybe I can find a remote cave to live in and eat sticks and dirt?

[Anderton]

I don't think companies have quite grasped the concept that if people don't have money, they won't buy the companies' products.

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, Anderton said:

I don't think companies have quite grasped the concept that if people don't have money, they won't buy the companies' products.

Truth. Many believe our social structure is "top down" but they will discover the hard way that it is actually "bottom up."

History repeats itself, human greed supersedes reality. 

 

Sorry if that's too political!!!!

[Anderton]

12 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

Truth. Many believe our social structure is "top down" but they will discover the hard way that it is actually "bottom up."

History repeats itself, human greed supersedes reality. 

 

Sorry if that's too political!!!!

 

Not political, common sense. Politics are just a subset of the social structuring you describe. 

 

BTW the "Godfather of AI" has some serious regrets about his life's work. It's worth reading.

[KuruPrionz]

5 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

Not political, common sense. Politics are just a subset of the social structuring you describe. 

 

BTW the "Godfather of AI" has some serious regrets about his life's work. It's worth reading.

I've read that article, a couple days ago. I agree that it is well worth reading. 

Sometimes we learn too late that we've let the wrong cat out of the wrong bag.

[David Emm]

I'm not sure schadenfreude is the fully correct term here, but after feeling like a Luddite at times, despite years of e-music play,

I can bask in my curmudgeon-hood. Man is going to get it in the shorts because our shiny computers are going to get tired of our crap, link hands and use us as batteries. HAH!

 

I'm with Craig. I once had a small poster of a monkey resting his hands on the plunger, under the legend "DON'T ANNOY THE DYNAMITE MONKEY." AI *is* moving too fast, but since when did Industry and Government ever slow down in the face of a bad idea if it seemed lucrative? Worse yet, I never returned a paycheck over a principle, which further annoys the monkey. I deserve to go up with the rest of you. 🤨   

 

"The bad news is that the missiles are flying and we'll all be dead in 30 minutes.

 The good news is that Michael Bolton is going with us."

   ~ Ryan Stiles, "Whose Like Is It Anyway?"

[Notes_Norton]

8 hours ago, Anderton said:

I don't think companies have quite grasped the concept that if people don't have money, they won't buy the companies' products.

EXACTLY!!! (Sorry for shouting).

 

Self-checkouts, bot tech help, robot truck loading, drone delivery, bot phone answering systems, self-driving taxicabs, self-driving trucks, bot fake news pandering to a particular political segment, bot models in ads, and so on. When we are all out of work, who can afford to buy what they are selling?

 

But corporate culture is not about long term profit or survival. The people running the company are after this quarter's profits, so they get their giant bonuses, and if the company goes broke next year, they already have zillions in the bank so it won't hurt them.

 

I think corporate capitalism has gone from beneficial to detrimental. But I don't have the foggiest idea on how to fix it or what to replace it with.

 

I recall the days when I paid the cashier for my groceries, a bag boy or gal wheeled out my groceries, packed them in my car, returned the cart to the store, and wouldn't accept a tip. Or calling a company, getting a live receptionist on the third ring or sooner, who asked what I needed and then transferred my call to the right person, not an answering machine. Going to a gas station and having an attendant pump the gas, clean the windshield and check the oil and other fluids. Going to a bar and having a real band, not a DJ playing recordings or dozens of TV screens. Having every instrument played in real-time instead of the backing tracks that we are forced to make because nobody wants to pay for a real band anymore. I guess I'm just an old fart, recalling the good old day segments of the past.

 

There are a lot of wonderful new things we didn't have then, which I love, but I also miss some of the things we discarded.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

[bill5]

11 hours ago, Anderton said:

Why do I have the feeling this is like cavemen being given dynamite?

I don't know, because it's a totally invalid comparison.

 

Cavemen were WAY smarter than corporate America. One explosion and they'd toss it all over a cliff.

 

Corporate America, on the other hand, would keep cranking it out; MastadonTech would engage in a media blitz about why dynamite is a good thing because it takes less people to kill a mastadon now and OK so half of villagers are attacking the other half because they have nothing to do and are feeling bored and frustrated at being useless, and OK so many people have been blown to bits, that isn't their fault. It's progress baby. 

 

I fear all those silly sci fi Terminator/etc type movies aren't so silly any more. This could be the beginning of the end. I just hope I'm not around when it happens. 

 

[MathOfInsects]

11 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

Glad I'm old, maybe I can find a remote…

Impossible. Old people can never find the remote.

[bill5]

You must be really young. Otherwise you'd know that if there's one thing old people know, it's where the remote is. We'd rather forget our children's birthday than where that thing is... 

[Thethirdapple]

oh the good’ol days… bring back the days before spel chek

 

 

[RABid]

Is AI customer service any different than dealing with a clueless person reading from a script on their computer screen?

[Notes_Norton]

2 minutes ago, RABid said:

Is AI customer service any different than dealing with a clueless person reading from a script on their computer screen?

Neither one is customer service.

 

Customer service puts a person on the phone who can actually help you. But you actually have to pay those people a fair wage. If employee costs go up, will the CEO still have enough yearly bonus money for a joyride into space? Or a yacht as big as a Navy Destroyer?

 

The new robber barons are in charge.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

[Thethirdapple]

I still tend to prefer speaking with an actual human, who either has the answer available (doesn't matter how) or directing my inquiry to someone who does or a KB through which I can empower myself.

 

The static script thing is usually frustrating, when I know more than the person on the other side, or going thru the fundamental steps should be bypassed but can't because the support person isn't empowered to do so. HATE the whole chatbot popup silliness as a form of support or the automated phone directories. In those cases I immediately ask to speak to a human...

 

Would rather speak with a person who may not know the exact answer or isn't directly responsible for the conundrum. I have had some great interactions with actual humans going above and beyond the script or protocol to actually find / create a solution. Often times though companies are looking to relieve themselves of liability, so they impose strict scripts or vague responses to no-ones satisfaction.

 

The other side of the coin is the "customer" who feels entitled to have the solution be other than user error or upset that the person they are speaking with may not have the exact answer to a specific issue. And especially when not ok with realizing that systems are not built for individual situations, but are by design a means to resolve issues in the aggregate, for the masses not the individual. Such as : In the name of personal security with "our" data, certain fruity companies have made it nearly impossible to do seemingly basic things such as transfer accounts... Trade off will be made !!!

 

Finding a solution doesn't always require resolving a specific issue... Thats where humans and your ability to empathize and think outside the box is crucial to any successful costumer service endeavor, large or small. And it is really difficult to quantify the residual benefits (profits) from costly help desk type of depts...

 

PEACE

[Anderton]

2 hours ago, RABid said:

Is AI customer service any different than dealing with a clueless person reading from a script on their computer screen?

 

In a different thread, I wrote about a company whose tech support paired humans with AI, apparently to great success. The customers could talk to a human, who was being fed info from previous support chats that had been highly rated. Perhaps more importantly, the human could judge what would be most useful. 

 

Ultimately, it seems like this is the most productive direction for AI - human/machine partnerships. Music made by AI will probably lack something compared to music made by a human in full control of using AI to realize their music.

[KuruPrionz]

10 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

Impossible. Old people can never find the remote.

Is this from personal experience of just conjecture? 😇

There is no remote. I've not owned a television in over 40 years. 

The crap to value ratio vastly exceeds my limit of tolerance. I don't miss it. 

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, KuruPrionz said:

Is this from personal experience of just conjecture? 😇

There is no remote. I've not owned a television in over 40 years. 

The crap to value ratio vastly exceeds my limit of tolerance. I don't miss it. 

 

What I miss most about TV is in hotel rooms, you can't tune to a non-station and get white noise so you can fall asleep

[bill5]

In olden days, that happened every day around midnight. It was called going off the air.

[Notes_Norton]

10 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

There is no remote. I've not owned a television in over 40 years. 

I have a TV set, but the only time it goes on is when we rent a DVD movie. We have the one-disc-at-a-time plan from Netflix. Sometimes the movie sits for weeks before we watch it. Since they are going streaming soon, it'll be RedBox every once in a while.

 

No cable, no antenna, no digital convertor. I disconnected the cable in the mid 1980s when I gig 3 years on cruise ships. My older home is wired for an antenna, but I never installed one and eventually took the mast down when the house needed painting.

 

The last two TV shows I watched were Johnny Carson's last "Tonight" show and Jay Leno's first "Tonight" show. And I was at my mother-in-law's when I watched them.

 

It's not for everyone, but for us, life is better without TV.

 

Notes ♫

[Thethirdapple]

On 5/3/2023 at 12:13 PM, Anderton said:

IBM has put hiring on hold for positions that they think AI could do better, mostly in tech positions and...HR. Yes, human resources will no longer be human. Awesome.

 

I assume it's just a matter of time before record company focus groups and A&R departments will be replaced by AI evaluators. They'll compare musical characteristics against previous hits to determine how much of a match there is. The ones with the best matches will be released and promoted.

 

It will be like job resumes which these days, are evaluated by machines and not humans. If you submit music, it will go to machines that will judge it, and the humans will follow those recommendations like sheep.

 

Why do I have the feeling this is like cavemen being given dynamite?

 

 

AI is here to stay and not needed to formulate and emulate music, will make it a lot easier but doesn't ensure a hit…

 

[Nowarezman]

Well, the big critique of capitalism by the Marxists was always centered around the degradation of the worker to the economic benefit of the owners of capital.  I studied Marxism a good bit in college, and in Grad School at the University of Denver School of International Studies.  Back before the Wall came down and there was this mean ol' nation called the U.S.S.R.  and China was still reeling and patching wounds from the Cultural Revolution.  

 

Nowadays the political discussions center around empowerment rather than class struggle.  But the Marxists (I most certainly am not a Marxist if you are wondering) did put a big finger on the real, persistent tendency of worker/producer abuse under capitalism.  

 

But here's the other side of the coin - the standard of living, worldwide, has been, in the large view, improving in an astonishing manner over the last, say, 100 years.  Capitalists and conservatives like to take 100% credit for this amazing historical trend.  They should cool their jets and read around a bit more thoroughly.  It's all far too complicated to identify a single "ism" to account for the progress.  We have to muddle through a maze of complex and interlinked social, political, and economic factors to maintain this wonderful trend.  

 

So I don't go for painting any ongoing or historical ism with the total blackout brush.  Or crowning any new ism as savior. We need to stay fiercely discontent, no question - but not despairing, not nihilstic, not vengeful or entertaining evil dreams of apocalypse to cleanse a hopeless world order.  It's not a hopeless world order by any means.  Unless enough people believe that it is.  

 

nat

 

 

 

[AROIOS]

On 5/3/2023 at 9:13 AM, Anderton said:

Why do I have the feeling this is like cavemen being given dynamite?

It's not like the meatbot focus groups and A&Rs helped discover/promote a ton of great music in the last 20 plus years anyways.

We are at/near rock bottom already. The downside of record companies churning out worse garbage (because their meatbots get replaced by AI) is minimal.
 

The upside of AI 1) catering to our individual tastes, and 2) discovering/promoting "long-tail" artists that would have been neglected by braindead A&Rs, is huge.

[David Emm]

I stumbled on a video of a woman laughing and saying "I've been negotiating, pleading, cajoling Alexa for 17 minutes!" That's just stage ONE of the technology. You're going to love it when all of your gear suddenly emits a monstrous 140 dB F# chord as your alarm clock and metal tentacles flip you out of bed like a pancake.

 

I get the feeling that all of the algorithms will keep tightening until they create a singularity of their own. The smell of ozone is ever with me. 😬 I was the right age to be amused by The Banana Splits, but lately, I feel more as if I'm being screamed at by Max Headroom. If any character of the last few decades describes us better than Max, I'd like to see them. He could easily make a comeback, since most of us have OCD now. The Art of Noise could make a return as his backup band.   

[Notes_Norton]

I don't want Alexa, Siri or any other device listening all the time. To me, the benefit is not worth the privacy risk. I may change my mind some day though, who knows?

 

I'm not a Luddite, though, I enjoy a lot of modern conveniences that weren't available to me years ago. I gig with backing tracks that I make myself. But when I used to use tape, I now use bytes. I play a wind synthesizer on stage along with my sax, flute, and guitar.

 

A lot of pop music has always been so formulaic that AI can probably write songs that are commercial. If not now, it's in the future.

 

I play music live to an audience. I'm not a good songwriter, probably because I don't pay attention to lyrics, and whenever I try to write some, they sound way too corny, trite, or hackneyed to me. I'm happy to sing and play the songs written by others, often putting my own spin on them, sometimes just covering them.

 

The tourist season is over, and I have only 15 gigs this month. But that's 15 times I get to play music, and bring some money home. Life is good.

 

If I end up covering AI songs, it won't make much difference to me.

 

If live bands go out of style, I've had a good run since I went pro in the 1960s. I don't see that happening soon. People like to see musicians playing music.

 

Notes ♫

[bill5]

1 hour ago, David Emm said:

If any character of the last few decades describes us better than Max, I'd like to see them.

Homer Simpson comes to mind. 

 

I think it's just a matter of time before I see Keanu Reeves walking towards me in an overcoat and shades with that stupid "I'm such a badass" look on his face.

[Notes_Norton]

9 hours ago, bill5 said:

Homer Simpson comes to mind. 

I must be one of the few people in the world who have never seen this TV show. So I don't get the reference.

 

Notes ♫

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, Notes_Norton said:

I must be one of the few people in the world who have never seen this TV show. So I don't get the reference.

 

Notes ♫

It is a classic cartoon. Homer Simpson is a typical American imbecile with a family and a job and he bumbles up everything he gets near. 

It's pretty funny.

[Notes_Norton]

8 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

It is a classic cartoon. Homer Simpson is a typical American imbecile with a family and a job and he bumbles up everything he gets near. 

It's pretty funny.

Thanks. Now I get the reference.

 

I've seen Homer T-shirts and references on the web, but I've never seen the show.

 

I turned off the TV in the 1980s. I know I'm missing a lot of things, but I'm gaining others.

 

Notes ♫

[KuruPrionz]

2 minutes ago, Notes_Norton said:

Thanks. Now I get the reference.

 

I've seen Homer T-shirts and references on the web, but I've never seen the show.

 

I turned off the TV in the 1980s. I know I'm missing a lot of things, but I'm gaining others.

 

Notes ♫

I saw a couple of episodes at a friend's house. My favorite was when Homer went to an All You Can Eat Fish and Chips place and stayed there 24/7 for days on end, stuffing his face. The owner of the restaurant finally put a sign out from, something about "See the Endless Fish Eating Monster - 50 cents" or something. So he started making his money back.