AI and it's effect on your music, your job and the future

[narad]

But again - the agent doing that reasoning is the programmer, not the computer. The most brilliant algorithm is not itself doing any reasoning. The programmer did the reasoning ahead of time, and embedded the expression of such into the software.

In older AI systems, yes. But larger LLMs induce an ability to perform logical reasoning to the extent that they perform better at benchmark tasks without ever being explicitly programmed to do so. The idea that the programmer imparts their own intelligence / reasoning ability into an LLM like ChatGPT is not accurate.

 

[crushingpetal]

In older AI systems, yes. But larger LLMs induce an ability to perform logical reasoning to the extent that they perform better at benchmark tasks without ever being explicitly programmed to do so. The idea that the programmer imparts their own intelligence / reasoning ability into an LLM like ChatGPT is not accurate.

Yeah, wasn't this covered by one of Turing's early papers, the "creativity objection" or something. The charge was supposed to be that "computers only do what they're told" but Turing points out (even in the 1950s) that computers do things that surprise and surpass the programer. Hell, IBM's Watson is better than all its programmers at Jeopardy.

 

[narad]

Yeah, wasn't this covered by one of Turing's early papers, the "creativity objection" or something. The charge was supposed to be that "computers only do what they're told" but Turing points out (even in the 1950s) that computers do things that surprise and surpass the programer. Hell, IBM's Watson is better than all its programmers at Jeopardy.

Oh, I hadn't heard of that. But I think that's a different thing. Even game AI, which we probably shouldn't even mention in the same breath as research AI, the programmer could lay out a variety of rules, and through their interactions, create behaviors that surprise even the people who made it. But they're still embodying some of their own intelligence in the creation of those rules.

I'm not sure I don't want to consider it as "real" AI because it doesn't learn by itself, or because it's not conceivably scalable to build up human level intelligence manually in that way (so I might have to reconsider that position), but in either case, I feel it is different from modern AI (/GPT) which is both learning what the rules are and implying them. That key combination being what gives rise to a tool that is practically useful across many domains (about as many domains as you can write an effective manual for?)

 

[Drew]

Here are a few ways AI could have impact on our music creation (to be clear, a human is generating this list ):

i) your music could be mastered by an AI service
ii) a few plugins have "digital assistants" that supposedly find areas of eq masking and make suggestions (iZotope has something like this)
iii) logic's drummer can generate drum patterns based on a source audio file
iv) (maybe) the quad cortex profiles an amp with a neural net

I'll think of more. *I don't want to argue if this is _really_ AI or just a smart algo. The difference doesn't really matter for the moment.

I think my point, though, was exactly none of these things has currently happened to me.

 

[lurè]

I only use AI writing tools to help with the lyrics a bit. And that's it.

And I don't use ChatGPT, it's too bad for this. I use Sudowrite, way better. It costs only $19 per month. Here are other AI writing tools: https://writingtools.co.uk/pricing.html. Feel free to browse them, if anyone is interested in a bit of help.

 

[p0ke]

Regarding my job:

Any software developer who's ever in contact with clients will know exactly what I mean

 

[Rubbishplayer]

Regarding my job:

View attachment 147903

Any software developer who's ever in contact with clients will know exactly what I mean

Regrettably, and with respect, I think you are wrong. And I'm speaking as ex-programmer, Scrum master and product owner.

AI is already writing code based on simple textual input: you can do that today with ChatGPT. Moreover, with training, it can learn to understand subjective specifications, especially if expressed as personas and user stories.

On a lighter note, a great excuse for this clip...

 

[lurè]

I only use AI writing tools to help with the lyrics a bit. And that's it.

And I don't use ChatGPT, it's too bad for this. I use Sudowrite, way better. It costs only $19 per month. Here are other AI writing tools: https://writingtools.co.uk/pricing.html. Feel free to browse them, if anyone is interested in a bit of help.

Dafaq happened

 

[p0ke]

Regrettably, and with respect, I think you are wrong. And I'm speaking as ex-programmer, Scrum master and product owner.

AI is already writing code based on simple textual input: you can do that today with ChatGPT. Moreover, with training, it can learn to understand subjective specifications, especially if expressed as personas and user stories.

Yeah, I know ChatGPT is able to write code, but you completely missed my point. Which is that customers will never know what they want to begin with.

 

[Rubbishplayer]

Yeah, I know ChatGPT is able to write code, but you completely missed my point. Which is that customers will never know what they want to begin with.

Spoken like a true programmer.

 

[p0ke]

Spoken like a true programmer.

No but seriously. It always starts with "we just want a basic app" and evolves into a huge system that does everything. I'd say 9/10 projects are like that. And usually the whole focus of the app is entirely different from what it was when development starts.

 

[Rubbishplayer]

No but seriously. It always starts with "we just want a basic app" and evolves into a huge system that does everything. I'd say 9/10 projects are like that. And usually the whole focus of the app is entirely different from what it was when development starts.

And thus it has always been, which is why we have The Agile Manifesto (nothing to do with great value Korean-built 7-strings), which has formalised this indecisiveness into a manageable project management approach.

 

[Randy]

No but seriously. It always starts with "we just want a basic app" and evolves into a huge system that does everything. I'd say 9/10 projects are like that. And usually the whole focus of the app is entirely different from what it was when development starts.

As someone working in marketing/branding, I will second that the client not knowing wtf they want will always be the thing standing in the way the most. And that they likely don't have the awareness to prompt the software into giving it what they actually want.

 

[TedEH]

I've been making this point for a long time whenever it comes up - I don't think AI can meaningfully replace programming because it isn't actually intelligent. It lacks greater context and the ability to collaborate with other teams, and interpret client requests, and meaningfully debug, etc etc. It can do basic versions of these things, with guidance, but there's a lot of human work in being a programmer if you intend to produce anything valuable.

In the same way that AI "can" write songs, and AI "can" make videos, and AI "can" play video games, it's only doing so with a lot of guidance and is mostly producing slop that wouldn't hold against deeper scrutiny or tighter requirements or more complex problems. AI can fake the Software part but it can't fake the Engineer part of Software Engineering. Programmers don't just produce lines of code, they're problem solvers and collaborators, roles that AI is not currently suited to.

 

[Moongrum]

Yeah, I know ChatGPT is able to write code, but you completely missed my point. Which is that customers will never know what they want to begin with.

My product managers don't even know what they want

That said I'd be happy if AI replaced every software engineer, even though I am one. Maybe people would leave Washington and it would be a nice place to live again.

 

[Demiurge]

I think I posted about it in another thread, but I am part of a group at my workplace that tested an AI application that would replace a portion of the work that we perform. It wouldn't replace the entirety of the job, but upper management went into the whole deal hot, asking how many hours we think that the application would save us. Of course, enough hours saved = a position that can be eliminated.

Turns out that the application was next to useless for its intended purpose. In short, it's hard to replace work when you have no fucking idea how the work is done in the first place.

 

[wankerness]

I've been making this point for a long time whenever it comes up - I don't think AI can meaningfully replace programming because it isn't actually intelligent. It lacks greater context and the ability to collaborate with other teams, and interpret client requests, and meaningfully debug, etc etc. It can do basic versions of these things, with guidance, but there's a lot of human work in being a programmer if you intend to produce anything valuable.

In the same way that AI "can" write songs, and AI "can" make videos, and AI "can" play video games, it's only doing so with a lot of guidance and is mostly producing slop that wouldn't hold against deeper scrutiny or tighter requirements or more complex problems. AI can fake the Software part but it can't fake the Engineer part of Software Engineering. Programmers don't just produce lines of code, they're problem solvers and collaborators, roles that AI is not currently suited to.

It can't meaningfully replace programming with something functional, no. But shareholders and top level execs that don't understand how anything happens are absolutely going to be pressuring managers to replace programmers with AI to increase their profit margins. So, it's not really going to matter if it does a garbage job if they decide that's what companies are doing now and it's how to make numbers go up. This is already happening with a lot of the AI garbage that's out there now (like those worthless summaries you get everywhere on facebook and google that are just an oroborous of shit). And now spotify is doing it, too - making it harder to look up individual albums and create a library, forcing more and more people into ALGORITHM playlists, and now feeding AI generated tracks into those ALGORITHM playlists. Eventually it's just going to be AI all the way down, all feeding off itself, getting shittier and shittier.

I'm hopeful at some point it becomes so bad that companies will realize it's a losing maneuver, but we'll see.

 

[SalsaWood]

I'm actually really looking forward to AI offsetting all the people whose only marketable skill is showing up on time sober and knowing how to use a computer. So basically 75% of government workers.

Start saving.

 

[TedEH]

But shareholders and top level execs that don't understand how anything happens are absolutely going to be pressuring managers to replace programmers with AI to increase their profit margins.

Maybe some, but I can vouch that at least some companies are being very cautious around AI for a whole host of reasons. A lot of companies feel like their value is in the team they've cultivated, not so much lines of code or some other arbitrary measure of productivity. Some companies recognize that using AI could put you in hot water for IP and copyright given that you can only train an AI to "be a programmer" by feeding it someone else's code. I think smart companies will be evaluating for themselves what they can and can't get out of AI before jumping to any conclusions about who or what it will replace.

I certainly think some will try to replace their programmers with AI, and there will be some successes, but I expect even more failures. Because, as Demiurge said:

it's hard to replace work when you have no fucking idea how the work is done in the first place.

And I don't mean that as a jab to say that anyone who believes AI can replace a programmer must be a bad programmer, but not all software jobs are equivalent. It's not like code generation or automation are new concepts in the world of software. Automated testing and CI etc. didn't replace QA, for example.

 

[BlackMastodon]

I only use AI writing tools to help with the lyrics a bit. And that's it.

And I don't use ChatGPT, it's too bad for this. I use Sudowrite, way better. It costs only $19 per month. Here are other AI writing tools: https://writingtools.co.uk/pricing.html. Feel free to browse them, if anyone is interested in a bit of help.

Dafaq happened

Did you get haxxed and the first post was bot spam?