In popular music (and I mean that extremely broadly, as in most music, that is being sold) there is an interesting thing going on.
Listeners don't really wants to know the truth. They don't really wants to know that Justin Bieber had nothing to do with the genesis of Sorry. They don't really want to know that most "live performance" videos were created in studios and filmed afterwards. Nobody is really interested in how music is made, because studio work is mostly draining, moving through the dark and an endurance test. Nobody wants raw and honest, because nobody even has any idea how that would sound.
But everyone imagines they do. It's not even that information is well hidden. Everyone wants there to be a great story so much, that they are very happy to ignore the flimsiest of veils and just believe what they must. And the industry has always been happy to provide. It is the essence of stardom.
I am fairly certain we are not going to notice of even care about how it was generated, as long as we can be made to love it, which will still require an entirely different set of skills.
I think you are confusing apathy about attribution with quality/originality. Sorry was produced by Skrillex who is unquestionably a musical genius. Even though most people aren’t interested in the producer credits Sorry is only as good as it is because of Skrillex’ work
AI content will surpass human content in quality and quantity. Moreover, it will enable vast numbers of people to do things they were previously unable to do due to budget, time, resources, depth of talent, opportunity cost, etc.
Meta point: I've never seen so many smart people so bearish about the future. The science fiction dreams and utopias we've celebrated since our childhoods might actually be feasible now, and yet so many are wearing frowns.
LLMs are in many people’s opinion overhyped. Their capabilities are overhyped.*
People don’t trust the powers to be to use AI to benefit the masses. Instead of the Star Trek-like utopias, we are more likely to get Blade Runner-like dystopias.
* Tech has a real “hustler culture” problem, I guess it was always a part of tech culture, but with the advent of cryptocurrency it really exploded. With the implosion of crypto (and real people losing a lot of real money), all the hype people need something to hawk. “AI” is that something, it’s the new “blockchain”.
I am very concerned about the future of jobs and workers.
Our capitalistic society is salivating at the idea of cheapening the cost of production by eliminating all the creative and generative work that workers make. The capitalist class doesn't care who gets hurt or what gets destroyed as long as they make more money.
Unfortunately the people that are hurt the most are the middle and working class folks who use their skills to create things, make money, and immediately spend it. These are the folks that keep the whole system running by using their money to buy more goods.
> I've never seen so many smart people so bearish about the future. The science fiction dreams and utopias we've celebrated since our childhoods might actually be feasible now, and yet so many are wearing frowns.
As it stands we aren't heading towards utopia, we are running head first to a bleak dystopia; where critical thought and creativity is authorized only to the algorithms and probability machines of the wealthy and powerful. While the rest of us are relegated to cheap, often dangerous, labor.
If we had support systems: Universal healthcare, wages, education, etc. I might be more supportive, but we don't because capitalism.
