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| Not a Christmas tree. |
I pay Apple some set sum — I think it's $14.95 a month, though it might be part of my phone plan — for access to something called "Apple Music." It's a fairly intuitive, comprehensive selection of more music than I could listen to in a thousand lifetimes, if a rip-off for artists who instead of getting a dollar when I buy their 45 now get .00001 of a penny when I listen to their song. If that.
Still, I listen to music a lot, particularly when exercising, or walking the dog, or doing chores, like folding laundry. I usually play my own "Library," of self-selected songs, though recently I discovered a feature called "Neil Steinberg's Radio" that plays songs which ... well, I'm not exactly sure what the curation procedure is. Some are often-played favorites. Others songs I've never heard from groups I'm unfamiliar with.
What I've noticed is how really bad it is. How often it repeats songs I declined to listen to an hour ago. How many times it has served up "27 Jennifers." The thing has all of recorded music to choose from and ends up serving up a half-appealing mash, supposedly based on my own tastes.
And I take comfort in that. If AI can't pick songs that are halfway intriguing, it probably isn't near able to take over the world. Or maybe that's part of the plan. AI is being honed every day, and I assume, once it gets its algorithm together, it will cause all sorts of havoc in our lives — whether being monitored and influenced by the totalitarians even now tightening their grip around the throat of the body politic.
Until then, I happily note each AI stumble and blunder. Maybe that's my way of blinding myself to he growing peril. Still, you can't help but be more impressed by its failures than its successes. So yes, when I asked iPhoto to serve up photos of a "Christmas tree" to illustrate the blog yesterday, most pictures were evergreens trimmed with tinsel and ornaments. But also my wife and boys wearing pointed birthday hats. And a house with a conical turret. And a Nick Cave sock monkey suit, above and Félix González-Torres' "Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)" at the Art institute of Chicago below. One of the rare artworks in a major museum that you can not only touch, but take a bit of. Visitors are encouraged remove a candy, and the pile is replenished regularly, kept at 175 pounds, the weight of the man being honored, who died of AIDS in the early 1990s.
I know that. AI thinks it's a Christmas tree. Hardly seems a fair fight. So far.
What I've noticed is how really bad it is. How often it repeats songs I declined to listen to an hour ago. How many times it has served up "27 Jennifers." The thing has all of recorded music to choose from and ends up serving up a half-appealing mash, supposedly based on my own tastes.
And I take comfort in that. If AI can't pick songs that are halfway intriguing, it probably isn't near able to take over the world. Or maybe that's part of the plan. AI is being honed every day, and I assume, once it gets its algorithm together, it will cause all sorts of havoc in our lives — whether being monitored and influenced by the totalitarians even now tightening their grip around the throat of the body politic.
Until then, I happily note each AI stumble and blunder. Maybe that's my way of blinding myself to he growing peril. Still, you can't help but be more impressed by its failures than its successes. So yes, when I asked iPhoto to serve up photos of a "Christmas tree" to illustrate the blog yesterday, most pictures were evergreens trimmed with tinsel and ornaments. But also my wife and boys wearing pointed birthday hats. And a house with a conical turret. And a Nick Cave sock monkey suit, above and Félix González-Torres' "Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)" at the Art institute of Chicago below. One of the rare artworks in a major museum that you can not only touch, but take a bit of. Visitors are encouraged remove a candy, and the pile is replenished regularly, kept at 175 pounds, the weight of the man being honored, who died of AIDS in the early 1990s.
I know that. AI thinks it's a Christmas tree. Hardly seems a fair fight. So far.
AI can never take over anything, as we can cut off the electricity that powers it.
ReplyDeleteThat will happen first...if they really want to cripple us, just unplug the grid.
DeleteHave you seen this story about fake artists for Spotify? Perhaps related. https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/
ReplyDeleteCheck out WingsofPegasus on YouTube. Fil has been sounding the alarm on the music industry's use of AI and other technologies to hasten the demise of real singers and musicians. They're Autotuning, Pitchcorrecting and more every piece of music they touch, even classic catalogues of all genres. And he shows AI use by fraudster musicians that too many unaware or uncaring, are helping to promote to everyone's detriment. https://www.youtube.com/@wingsofpegasus/videos
DeleteMostly AI for photography is easily recognized. In some programs, you just give it a few terms and it creates a photo. Unfortunately people are passing it off as their own work done with a camera. As a former English teacher, I find the the one designed for writing particularly offensive. I am glad I am no longer teaching. Just another step in the dumbing down and cheating of our “brave new world.”
ReplyDeleteRobert Hughes once stated that if a "work of art" requires a museum to be recognized as art, it may not be art. A pile of candy in a parking lot is just a pile of candy. A pile of candy in a museum honoring an AIDS victim is just a pile of candy in a museum with an explanatory placard.
ReplyDeleteAnd a banana duct-taped to a wall is just trash on a wall.
DeleteAnd the waste of good duct tape is an affront to the entire HVAC community.
DeleteKurt A do you know the name of the man that it honors?
ReplyDeleteI think AI will be a lot like the fall of most regimes. It will take over very slowly and then all at once.
ReplyDelete"AI" is a lot more A than I at this point. As an active buyer and seller on eBay, I've seen it at its most useless, but also as a good demonstration of its weaknesses.
ReplyDeleteeBay has long had a reputation for chasing the latest shiny object for its website, at the expense of getting what it has already put into Production to run properly, and AI is its latest shiny malfunction. It's being touted as a tool to help sellers write descriptions for their item listings, but instead simply acts as a crutch for those who cannot be bothered. As a result, it tries to feed off of others' descriptions for what it "thinks" are similar items, leading to strangely vague third-party word salad that describes nothing well, and does it at length. (It has an odd fascination for the phrase "must-have," using it in virtually every description, regardless of whether the listing in question is advertising designer jeans or replacement dishwasher parts. "Must-have" is probably more accurately used for replacement parts than clothing, I'd say.)
The long-term problem here is that the more AI is used to write the same material over and over, the more likely it will be to keep finding its own effluent over and over again when looking around for material. It is not going to "learn" anything when it is simply eating its own dog food.
Listening to Washington Journal self-identifying Christian callers in support of Trump's Deportation Program cheering on the use of nationwide surveillance, AI, facial recognition to roundup all criminal [aka illegal] immigrants...Damn day after Christmas they're advocating using tech to place the mark of the beast...?
ReplyDelete