Everything Is Everything Now

[KingDuppy]

@Laser

I was just saying: we decide our intent of how we use AI. To help or harm.

Of course you’re absolutely right, that consequences are the most important thing… but we can’t always predict them, or choose them.

Yeah, that’s what I mean.

I keep looking at this debate through the lens of Robert Moses and the LIE. The neighborhoods destroyed and communities impoverished and poisoned with lead and brake pad dust in the name of inevitable progress for the already wealthy. The family houses seized through eminent domain. The talented kids like DJ Subroc who die every year because someone put a giant uncrossable highway through the middle of their town so other people can drive on it (and not have to look at poor people).

I wonder what we’ll look back at in a few decades and see as the LIE of the 2020s.

[schoolbabyboy]

@GurtTractor

might be able to lift themselves out of a poor or stagnant financial situation by leveraging AIs to make things or start businesses

yeah, i hate to say it but thats also what they tried to sell for crypto. and gig working. while it may be partially true, its nothing sustainable or valuable, and primarily serves to keep poor people poor by siphoning their money and labor to rich people. i’d love to be proven wrong but history says otherwise.

[dragonaut]

@GurtTractor

I would be very wary of copyright laws strengthening in ways that further limit the consumer’s right to truly own and modify their own stuff. Like if firmware hacking was severly cracked down upon legally that would really suck. In many cases it’s essential for long term maintenance and compatibility, and regardless I think we absolutely have the right to open up the inner guts of our gear and make modifications.

Lots of different issues at play here. I personally think that safe harbor was a disaster and allowed some corporations that were clearly acting more as publishers to hide under a level of immunity that really should have only been given to ISPs.

I get the movement for right of repair, and the desire to reduce e-waste and protect things like third world famers being able to repair their tractors. But the idea that there’s a compelling need to hack the firmware of an old groovebox seems kind of silly.

I think at a certain point, advanced technology becomes inherently unrepairable. If the head on my tape machine wears out, I can replace it with another one if I can find one, but I can’t actually repair the tape head itself or manufacture a new one from scratch. Same thing, if a chip dies I can swap it if there’s a replacement but I don’t have the technology to actually get inside the chip and repair it or to make a new one from scratch. It seems like reverse engineering software was kind of like that until recently.

Ultimately does it even matter if I could theoretically make an entirely new Octatrack firmware from scratch using AI just by describing the features and building it piece by piece? Or by legally reverse engineering it and then having the AI rewrite all of the code so that it’s not a direct copy?

I don’t really understand the concept that breaking through encryption should be a legal right because you need to update or maintain an old piece of equipment. Also IP is ultimately enforced in the courts, so when you’re talking about an modifying an old piece of technology made by a company that no longer exists, maybe you’re technically violating their IP but if nobody is around to take you to court over it, it’s really a non issue.

[jrjulius]

lol yeah I tried to edit my post, but this thread is in slow mode so I wasn’t able to. I definitely didn’t mean to “hand-wave” AI-driven warfare, deepfakes, or large-scale environmental destruction! I’m also really sick of AI slop, shoehorned AI assistants, and the endless hype train for things that look good from a distance but don’t hold up under scrutiny.

My point is that despite all the current problems, the technology itself is not going away. Rather than looking at a fragment of the field and arguing about whether the pros outweigh the cons, I think it’s more useful to learn about the technology while demanding regulations and ethical safeguards.

I love your action items! I’m on board 100%.

[Laser]

@LaVernWinston

For what it’s worth, just in case anybody’s trying to flip down some faces for the game of Who’s Who, and just because I’m knee deep in the debate here, I’m not flagging any of these and I’m not entirely sure why one would have for this specific post. I tend to largely disagree with your mindset on this topic, but that doesn’t mean I think you should be silenced.

Thank you, that’s much appreciated.

I’m the same. I’ve never flagged in my life and I’m interested in other’s opinions.

Imagine how boring it would be if we were all identical with identical opinions… like robots… or AI’s

@LaVernWinston

And to circle this all the way back to my triggering this morning:

@Laser

Any attempts to quantify these two things… is pointlessly subjective and unscientific. That’s fine, of course. We’re allowed opinions. We’re allowed to express them. It’s good to talk.

I chimed in specifically because of your quantifying of this subject.

@Laser

Also, perhaps the topic you mentioned, is thankfully a very small percentage of the population… whereas, the amount of research, to help humanity, that AI is facilitating, or speeding up, is far more widespread.

Seems like you’re agreeing with me, then?

That’s exactly what I’m saying… to be clear, see this word:

@Laser

Also, perhaps the topic you mentioned, is thankfully a very small percentage of the population… whereas, the amount of research, to help humanity, that AI is facilitating, or speeding up, is far more widespread.

By saying ‘perhaps’ I was communicating that it’s a guess. Not a proven fact. Expressing my opinion. This bit basically:

@Laser

Any attempts to quantify these two things… is pointlessly subjective and unscientific. That’s fine, of course. We’re allowed opinions. We’re allowed to express them. It’s good to talk.

I will say this: when communicating on a forum, the whole meaning of what someone thinks or feels, is often bigger or more complex than they can convey in a few messages.

Add to to that, when people quote little bits of each other it’s a kind of ‘selective editing’, it’s apparently called contextomy (learned this today).

It’s often done in good faith, because we can’t quote their whole message when replying, we have to focus on certain bits, it’s unavoidable.

Just to be clear, what I was talking about was (in the quoted bits above):

I think (and very much hope with an optimistic outlook) that people doing the CSAP are a very tiny fraction of people (again, I have no actual proof and no data, but I have to think positively). I understand it’s a just an opinion.

@KingDuppy

I keep looking at this debate through the lens of Robert Moses and the LIE. The neighborhoods destroyed and communities impoverished and poisoned with lead and brake pad dust in the name of inevitable progress for the already wealthy. The family houses seized through eminent domain. The talented kids like DJ Subroc who die every year because someone put a giant uncrossable highway through the middle of their town so other people can drive on it (and not have to look at poor people).

Two very different scenarios, in my opinion. Perhaps pointless to even try and compare.

Yes AI brings many benefits, solutions, risks, and problems. But the details of all of that will be completely different from the example you gave.

I agree it’s the rich trying to shaft the poor, mate. Absolutely fucking spot on. That’s the world as it is, and is the main thing we have to correct.

@jrjulius

My point is that despite all the current problems, the technology itself is not going away. Rather than looking at a fragment of the field and arguing about whether the pros outweigh the cons, I think it’s more useful to learn about the technology while demanding regulations and ethical safeguards.

I love your action items! I’m on board 100%.

This is spot on for me. I agree about @rtme’s action items, too.

And right there, after 600-ish posts, filled with… stuff is a proper reason for this thread to exist:

Helpful information and ideas of how to make better choices.

[davestasiuk]

Something barely touched on in this thread is concern for cognitive abandonment, the impact on childhood development, and the future of critical thinking and reasoning skills.

The NVIDIA CEO outright suggested that kids failing to learn basic math is probably okay.

Shit is wild.

[LaVernWinston]

@Laser

By saying ‘perhaps’ I was communicating that it’s a guess. Not a proven fact. Expressing my opinion. This bit basically:

Whereas means “compared with the fact that” or “while on the contrary”.

Your statement reads as:

“Also, perhaps the topic you mentioned, is thankfully a very small percentage of the population… , compared with the fact that the amount of research, to help humanity, that AI is facilitating, or speeding up, is far more widespread.”

You’re following up a possibility with a claimed fact.

Nonetheless, doesn’t really matter how this was written in the grand scheme of the discussion. Whether you believe that the benefits outweigh the dangers, or whether you believe they’re about even, I simply believe the dangers easily outweigh the benefits.

[micabeza]

[JamesM]

@LaVernWinston

I simply believe the dangers easily outweigh the benefits.

Unfortunately, sociopaths believe the opposite and are relentless in their justifications.

[aMunchkinElfGraduate]

Injecting some source material into this thread:

I signed up to take place in my school district’s AI Institute. My rationale for joining was not due to an interest in using AI, but rather in learning what other people thought about it. So now I am supposed to use AI this year to help my teaching and to help students, then write up a project about it. I already am way ahead of the curve on using technology within my discipline, but this doesn’t seem to translate into an interest in using AI for anything more than web search aggregation (which I already am feeling guilty about and should probably disable on my browser).

Anyhow, it didn’t take more that a few hours of the introductory session to learn that the “institute” is, by design, a way to get AI vendors into the halls of the district office, then to build excitement among the small number of participants given temporary access to these platforms, who will presumably then lobby the district to spend money on these platforms so all teachers can then access them. Funny, one of the presenters explained the business model to us. There was no detectable irony in their explanation.

So, this experience fed into my general cynicism about the ways AI is pushed on us.

Another story, this one from about 10 years ago. Our coordinator brought in a representative of Disney to give a presentation on copyright. The presentation was more carrot over stick, and the gentleman presenting was quite charming. He started the presentation with an animated short film about a humble bicycle maker and his humble bicycle shop. Along comes someone who invents a handheld machine that shoots out a perfect replica of the bicycle-maker’s bicycle. Not just one, but many replicas. The outcome of the story was that the bicycle maker went out of business and his family fell into poverty, I think.

The received wisdom of the story was kind of lost on me. There was no ensuing conversation about the utilitarian benefits of everyone getting free bikes zapped out of the ether. Or the fact that scale matters, that Disney is no mom and pop bike shop. I felt like the guy holding the bike-materializer was the real hero of the story.

[schoolbabyboy]

@aMunchkinElfGraduate

who will presumably then lobby the district to spend money on these platforms so all teachers can then access them.

this happened in my school district. amid a budget crisis. we are literally tens of millions in the hole. amazing use of funds.

[LaVernWinston]

@Laser

Add to to that, when people quote little bits of each other it’s a kind of ‘selective editing’, it’s apparently called contextomy (learned this today).

I call it ADD and I’ve just done it, and must admit that slow mode and ADD do not mix well. Maybe that’s a good thing.

@Laser

Seems like you’re agreeing with me, then?

Not exactly. I don’t believe it is subjective nor unscientific to quantify the risks vs benefits, and the whole framing of “can’t do that yet” is ironically one of the contributors to this. Just naming one major red flag, the global economy now relies heavily on the success of AI, before it has even become profitable for anybody outside of the major players themselves. This alone drives me to believe it’s more dangerous than beneficial. There should be no reality where any economy is reliant on the mere promise of anything. That is nothing other than a gamble, and you’re using the people’s wellbeing as your chips.

[Monobear]

@dragonaut

Intellectual property is the benefit to mankind because it allows artists to make a living from their work which directly drives innovation, creativity, and the creation of more work

How is making money driving Innovation. You are kneedeep in a neoliberal story which has proven itself to be wrong for decades now.

[blurrghost]

@KingDuppy

There is at least one thread on here where a user says they want to share music but they won’t because they’re worried about content on enauts getting scraped and some jerkass using their music to train his slop machine. So it’s already causing at least some artists to self-censor

Can’t say for sure but that might have been me, i mentioned that on here recently though i doubt I’m the only one. I’ve been on this program for a few years now.
I’ve pulled almost all music I had online off the internet. There are still three albums up that I’m aware of but I’m working on that, they are less in my control. All told only a small percentage of the releases I’ve done were ever online in the first place, not counting hired work for which i have no control.
I find myself sharing less in general here because of the slop scrapers. I was all about freely dispersing my decades of knowledge and experience as a repair tech/ builder/ circuit designer/ luthier/ modder/ etc but now i think twice.
I never gave a rat’s ass if someone sampled my music and it certainly wasn’t ever about money. I just don’t want to contribute anything I’ve done to some low effort slop jockey so they can feel better about themselves by pretending to be creative or talented. The even bigger issue is that i don’t like the idea of anything I’ve worked on helping to make the swasticar guy or the rest of cankles caligula’s buddies even more grotesquely wealthy, which the use of this tech does and is evidence for support of.

[lerba]

I’m faced with this day to day at work. The brain rot is real. It’s hard to say what is caused by social media, lack of education or issues at home, but folks seem stupider / more helpless the younger they are. In my opinion of course.

And it’s clear that the more dependent we are on LLMs for basic tasks, the more we’re willing to pay for a subscription.

[Laser]

OT discussion, clearing up the meaning of the word 'whereas'.

@LaVernWinston

Whereas means “compared with the fact that” or “while on the contrary”.

Mate, I don’t want to labour a point, so this is the last I’ll say on this. Once more, selective editing and putting words into anothers mouth… adds up to poor discourse.

We use the conjunction whereas to indicate a contrast between two facts or ideas:

From the Cambridge dictionary, link here.

The key words there being ‘or ideas’.

Not only that… but I’m also telling you straight, admitting that they were ideas, opinions, not facts.

Might be better to move the discussion forward with less nit-picking and contextomy.

So, with that hopefully out of the way, let’s move on.

@LaVernWinston

I don’t believe it is subjective nor unscientific to quantify the risks vs benefits, and the whole framing of “can’t do that yet” is ironically one of the contributors to this.

It isn’t unscientific to quantify the risks vs benefits…

It IS unscientific (and subjective) to attempt to quantify it in the absence of hard data.

We can’t do that yet… that is a simple fact. We don’t have sufficient data. If we did, everyone would be arguing less, right? Someone would pull out some facts to shut everyone up.

Deliberate obfuscation by the major AI players? Fuck yeah, of course. I’d agree all fucking day on that one.

@LaVernWinston

That is nothing other than a gamble, and you’re using the people’s wellbeing as your chips.

Mate, I agree all day on this.

What I’m saying is basically twofold:

1. AI ain’t going anywhere. There’s too much money involved, too much potential for profit.

2. There ARE some good aspects to having this tech.

As discussed upthread, pretty much the only thing we can do, is educate ourselves and make informed decisions, and try to widen our perspectives.

In my opinion, having watched loved ones wither away and die from cancer, had an uncle drop dead at 53 (no reason found, he was fit and healthy, didn’t drink or take drugs, lovely man too, worked as a pro-bono solicitor helping the poorest people)…

I’d keep AI around, just for the advances in healthcare.

Personally, I think AI is in it’s infancy and eventually it will help save countless lives, help solve world problems, and raise the standard of living for the poorest people.

Realistic? Naive?

That’s a matter of opinion, of course. We’re all allowed to have them… that’s why we’re discussing it.

I’ve really enjoyed all the debate, so thanks to everyone who has contributed, whatever your opinions were.

This is the most I’ve ever posted… my studio is nearly back together so I’ll be making music instead of posting very soon! (I’m sure @Kegeratorz will be pleased You okay mate? Notice you didn’t reply to my apology )

[Laser]

@JamesM

@LaVernWinston

I simply believe the dangers easily outweigh the benefits.

Unfortunately, sociopaths believe the opposite and are relentless in their justifications.

Really don’t want to get bogged down in silliness… but I have to ask:

Is it more sociopathic, to have a different opinion to others?

Or to call someone sociopathic for having a different opinion?

[Kegeratorz]

While all the smart folks here discuss how to save humanity, I’d like to make an observation.

This conversation is so convoluted that the mods had to put a leash on it. Slow mode! Ha!

It’s embarrassing!

[jc_privateer]

My view is somewhat nuanced, in that I advocated against using AI at my workplace, and lost that argument (at least initially). I essentially then had to force myself to learn how to use it, in order to police and audit its adoption. Of course I have ‘liberated’ runtime/tokens from my employer-funded account in order to do a few things with music-related coding tasks. As the great King Missile said: ‘Take stuff from work - it’s your duty as an oppressed employee’.

It can be extremely capable. It can code better than I can, but it cannot easily or accurately anticipate my needs beyond the basic intent (although it is getting better, albeit more verbose). It can spot and fix subtle bugs that I have missed, but introduces obvious bugs itself (and then pats itself on the back when it finds and fixes said bugs). It’s like having the most brilliant work experience kid you’ve ever seen join your team. What they do well, they do brilliantly and quickly. But they can also make gross mistakes just as quickly, particularly when combined with someone who is not familiar with basic software development principles.

My basic view is this: reverse-engineering someone else’s intellectual property is often (but not always) unethical. It all depends on the situation. Abandoned hardware or software? Open season, particularly if you’re trying to eek extra usage out of it. Better than it becoming landfill. But don’t go crazy releasing ‘hacked firmwares’ for current gear etc. Have some respect for the developer and their wishes (good rule of thumb is the smaller the dev, the more respect and caution you should show). It’s obvious that if you take the risk to brick your device, you should wear the consequences.

I mostly do stuff with M4L, largely trying to solve niche problems unique to my setup/workflow that are fairly obviously non-commercial. I’ve coded since late primary school, and have messed around with Max and M4L for well over a decade now, and JUCE /C++ for almost as long. It’s not great for my ego, but Claude is simply far superior to me at the actual coding. And I’ve been able to extend beyond M4L with some prototyping of my own applications/plugins, but based on my own ideas, and reliant on no-one else’s intellectual property (apart from the elephant in the room, the theft and mass hoovering up of open source code). I have installed and use Schwung on the Move, and it’s great. It doesn’t ‘break’ the Move, nor disturb the underlying intent of the instrument.

The big red line for me is people commercialising / charging actual money for this stuff. Put up a Ko-Fi link or something at most, but don’t please sell stuff. And don’t be surprised when the inevitable rug-pull happens, and these companies start imposing higher costs, greater restrictions, or if they simply disappear.

So I guess I simultaneously agree that it’s bad, and also that it’s good, it’s toxic, and it’s revolutionary. I hope that the seemingly-inevitable economic crash only wipes out the tech bro elite, but as we all know by now: the rich get socialism, the poor get late-stage capitalism (and starvation). ‘Interesting times.’

[Laser]

@Kegeratorz

Slow mode! Ha!

It’s embarrassing!

I kind of like it. Encourages slower, more thoughtful debate.

@jc_privateer

My view is somewhat nuanced

Good post!

@jc_privateer

The big red line for me is people commercialising / charging actual money for this stuff.

Yep, agree… totally shitty that people are doing this.

@jc_privateer

Abandoned hardware or software?

For me, it’s about whether it generates money for the company, or takes money away from them (because that’s probably what every company cares about, right?)

For example: I had zero interest in the Model Cycles. I don’t need or want one. But recently, looking at some alt-firmwares, now I want to buy one (a new one).

So, there is some benefit to manufacturers. It’s not like pirating a video, where the movie studio gets nothing at all… you still need to buy the device to run the firmware in the first place.

Ultimately, it’s going to be up to each manufacturer to choose, not us. Cryptographic code signing will be implemented if they want to lock it down.

Encouraged firmware modifying as-a-feature, if they don’t.

However, I would urge manufacturers to embrace this trend. It’ll hopefully result in better devices for everyone, in the long run.