There's background sounds and there's music. Music can communicate as much as the written word. I've listened to algorithmically generated bloop-blops and it's fine for background sound, but if it can't touch my heart it's not really music to me.

To me, as soon as I know it was fully generated it looses it's magic. It doesn't matter how good it is.

I see the same with potteries. A factory made pot cannot have more value than a hand made pot with the signature of a human. This touches the very fabric of society. Hard to explain.

I think it comes down to your area of interest. As a musician and music lover, I spend a significant amount of time trying to find or create music that is both original and good. AI generated music can be a competent imitation of well established ideas and forms, but that’s of zero value to me - I’m not looking for ‘more of the same’ - quite the opposite.

Of course. In my case, I'm not saying that I could do with AI music in any context either. Sometimes I play music in the living room, and I pay real attention to it, obviously AI won't do there. But when I'm using the music just as a background for exercising? Then sure, why not.

So you’re basically saying filler music, elevator music, backgrouound noise or whatever names it may come under. Since there’s already so much of it out there and since AI one isn’t novel in any way, I have a hard time understanding why you’d choose AI generated one.

I don't agree with either of your premises.

Too much of it -> No, there are entire musical genres (e.g. italodance or big beat) where I have already listened to pretty much everything available, and they are not expanding anymore because they are not fashionable. It would be nice to have more songs and be surprised.

Isn't novel in any way -> This is not how it works, there are studies showing that AI can be creative. Or at the very least (since the definition of creativity can be controversial) produce output that is indistinguishable from novel, creative output, which is enough for the purpose discussed here.

LLMs are already better than books for exploring some ideas. But in conversation form.

Until we get better versions of o1 that can generate insights over days and then communicate them in book form the loss of interactivity and personalisation makes LLM books pointless.

An interactive conversation / tutorial session beats a book pretty much all of the time. Nonfiction books contain a lot of information that's redundant to a reader familiar with the topic, and not enough for someone new. They don't backtrack if you clearly missed an important point. And so on. It's like fractal geometry.

If an AI agent understands you (and book writing, and the topic of the book) well enough then it should be able to write you a pretty nice bespoke book.

I do suspect that interactive media is just strictly better in theory. But maybe there will be a period of time where bespoke AI-generated books make sense.

The problem is a whole book worth is a long time to go between feedback and questions. I don't see how the agent would know the reader that well, knowledge is embedded in the brain and only comes out when prompted.

> I would definitely listen to AI-generated music if it were good enough

Why not just seek out the original works that the AI stole from?

Because that's not how it works.

Yes it is. How else are they "trained?"

Your comment implies that there is an existing piece of music, which can subsitute the generated music. While subsitutability varies from person to person, your original statement implies for me that each generated music has an accompanying original music that you can listen to instead (of which it was "stolen" from), since it is similar enough. I think we both know that that is not the case.

I know that you likely intended to imply that you can subsitute the aformentioned AI music with an existing piece of music of the same genre, but that is not a view shared by all. Sometimes the generated music scratches such a specific and personal itch, that it cannot be replicated by something in the same genre.

A better counterargument to your original comment would be "It is not an exclusive situation. I can listen to and support both generated music and handcrafted music at the same time. They both contain music tracks that I like."

You don't have to be a big fucking nerd about it, you know what I meant. The generated music wouldn't exist without the foundation of stolen music made by people.

No, I didn't know what you meant. Communication is hard, and there are multiple ways to interpret your statements. It is better to be specific.

To be more specific about the second sentence, if there are any readers in doubt:

> The generated music wouldn't exist without the foundation of stolen music made by people.

The word "stolen" is a value judgement that is not shared by all. It is a word meant to invoke an emotional response in the reader. For example, Stallman has argued that the data could not have been stolen, or else it would not be there anymore. So, removing this word gives you:

> The generated music wouldn't exist without the foundation of existing music made by people.

Which is a true fact that has never been in debate.

However, this is not relevant to the main point that not all generated music has a suitable handcrafted substitute, and that there is no actual need to choose exclusively to listen to generated or human crafted music. Furthermore, the conversation has turned uncivil (the first sentence). Therefore, goodbye.