> but NNs can go beyond this, and this article is exactly the kind of thing that will instigate this evolution.
Thought experiment: one day it is not uncommon for some deeply moving, emotional works to be composed entirely by computers (though performed by humans). How will we, as a society, react to that? Will be reject it as being 'unauthentic', or use it as an opportunity for introspection?
It would even probably not be unreasonable to think that these NNs will be given names, and different NNs will be characteristically different, so then you might see a Wikipedia page or an album from a specific NN in much the same way we'd see a human composer today. How weird would that be?
Edit: or, even, NNs trained on specific composers (and the music they'd have heard), to try and create 'new' works from existing long-dead composers, or even just to complete famous half-finished works. How blasphemous would that be? But for a sufficiently competent NN, I can imagine the output might be very interesting.
Edit 2: (apologies, but this is really out there) I have also wondered how much information is sufficient to 'recreate state'–that is to create an 'AI' that passably mimics a specific real person (kinda like a Turing Test), and in that sense creates a pseudo-immortality.
Arguably, what makes a worthy creative different from someone just spewing out content is their ability to filter output by applying their taste. There’s the never-ending loop where you create and evaluate and necessarily throw away.
A person with developed taste who ‘filters’ someone else’s creation, recognizes great work, helps the creator shape their output, is thus a part of the above loop, and depending on specifics may be of importance comparable to or greater than one of the creator.
The balance between contributions of different entities that cause a work to be created and known, or a style to be formed, is always fluid (among singers, performers, front-personas, authors, producers, mentors, labels, etc.). Replace one of the components with a computer and overall picture doesn’t change much.
If a piece of music was generated by software, then whoever set that software up and filtered its output is the creator. That may include the programmer, those who were using the software, other people who directly influenced the creation in significant way.
If a person using some generative algorithm doesn’t feel like their input was substantial enough, they might use a pseudonym. Attributing music to a computer explicitly would be purely marketing move and it doesn’t change the fact that author is always conscious being(s), which, unless we’re in singularity, a computer isn’t.
> Attributing music to a computer explicitly would be purely marketing move and it doesn’t change the fact that author is always conscious being(s), which, unless we’re in singularity, a computer isn’t.
I don't know. I'm sympathetic to this view (and for the record, I wasn't going anywhere near a hard AI/singularity argument), but on the other hand, I think after enough iterations you won't be able to find where that human input actually comes in. When we finally get a NN that produces something actually great, will we be able to point to a specific line of code, or a specific input, or a specific programmer whose taste resulted in that? We already struggle to understand the inner workings of neural nets.
So you can argue the 'taste' step comes into the selection process. Somebody has to sift through the output of the NN to choose what's good and what isn't. But what if that's automated? A different output to a different member of the population, so then the NN can test itself, and it decides what is worthy of output on a larger scale? Then you can't point to any one individual either.
So it's a semantic point. I think you're right, fundamentally. But I think we can very quickly reach a point where we have to travel through a very long rabbit hole to get back to that key human influence.
>Thought experiment: one day it is not uncommon for some deeply moving, emotional works to be composed entirely by computers (though performed by humans). How will we, as a society, react to that? Will be reject it as being 'unauthentic', or use it as an opportunity for introspection?
It would even probably not be unreasonable to think that these NNs will be given names, and different NNs will be characteristically different, so then you might see a Wikipedia page or an album from a specific NN in much the same way we'd see a human composer today. How weird would that be?
I know you're talking about Neural Networks. But I'd like to point you to Vocaloids. As far as names, personalities, and music go - it's a good match for what you're getting at. Hell - one of them is even famous for having concerts! [0]
Hatsune Miku, Rin Kagamine, Luka Megurine, Neru Akita
Thought experiment: one day it is not uncommon for some deeply moving, emotional works to be composed entirely by computers (though performed by humans). How will we, as a society, react to that? Will be reject it as being 'unauthentic', or use it as an opportunity for introspection?
It would even probably not be unreasonable to think that these NNs will be given names, and different NNs will be characteristically different, so then you might see a Wikipedia page or an album from a specific NN in much the same way we'd see a human composer today. How weird would that be?
Edit: or, even, NNs trained on specific composers (and the music they'd have heard), to try and create 'new' works from existing long-dead composers, or even just to complete famous half-finished works. How blasphemous would that be? But for a sufficiently competent NN, I can imagine the output might be very interesting.
Edit 2: (apologies, but this is really out there) I have also wondered how much information is sufficient to 'recreate state'–that is to create an 'AI' that passably mimics a specific real person (kinda like a Turing Test), and in that sense creates a pseudo-immortality.