Artificial Intelligence Noise

[Yvette]

Everything needs control.

Perhaps instead of endlessly navel gazing on these oh so wonderful possibilities with Zero legitimate examples we can ask ourselves Who Benefits from AI Technologies?

Not artists. Noise. Industrial. or Otherwise.

The people who create the proprietary technology & the corporations that fund that technology.

So 1% of the population.

And you were getting exhausted from the modern day privileged washed up GenX Gatekeepers ?

[Commander15]

I think Yvette made some pretty good points there. How would DIY-based scene benefit from technologies that are created, controlled and monitored by multinational corporations?

[GenitalStigmata]

I've read more than once that AI would be great tool for artists. Why would AI be great tool for an creative artist? To remove some of the "uncool" or heavy or boring phases in creative process? To allow artist to be lazy or to easily create something that is "good enough" or to avoid learning some new skills?

I'm truly curious because i really can't see any obvious benefits of AI assisted art making, especially in context of noise.

Yes, that's almost exclusively what it's being used for, at least now. The busy work of cleaning up photos in editing programs, for example, can be mundane work many people don't want to engage with and would rather run a program a few times that'll do it for them, and in turn saving them time. If the result is the same, who's to say there's really anything wrong with it? I'm no advocate for AI, in fact I really dislike the idea that so much of what has made me personally interested in art is essentially being eliminated by the shortcuts AI provides or will eventually provide, but you have to be realistic; most people will see the benefits and forget about grinding to perfect any number of skills.

[Balor/SS1535]

How much can AI-generated noise be "noise" anyway?  If we think of noise as some sort of interruption or malufunctioning of communication/meaning, then that would seem to be the opposite of what I understand an AI to be doing---producing increasingly more streamlined and logically generated results.

I'm not so sure about that definition of "noise," though, so maybe this all means nothing!

[Commander15]

I've read more than once that AI would be great tool for artists. Why would AI be great tool for an creative artist? To remove some of the "uncool" or heavy or boring phases in creative process? To allow artist to be lazy or to easily create something that is "good enough" or to avoid learning some new skills?

I'm truly curious because i really can't see any obvious benefits of AI assisted art making, especially in context of noise.

Yes, that's almost exclusively what it's being used for, at least now. The busy work of cleaning up photos in editing programs, for example, can be mundane work many people don't want to engage with and would rather run a program a few times that'll do it for them, and in turn saving them time. If the result is the same, who's to say there's really anything wrong with it? I'm no advocate for AI, in fact I really dislike the idea that so much of what has made me personally interested in art is essentially being eliminated by the shortcuts AI provides or will eventually provide, but you have to be realistic; most people will see the benefits and forget about grinding to perfect any number of skills.

I am being realistic about people. People tend to be selfish, lazy and ignorant if changes are given and i think that these basic qualities are what is exploited by tech corporations here. In my mind degradation of different skills, that has been done by single person or in collaboration with others, just transfer more power to multinational corporations and make people more dependent on them.

[Yvette]

Sounds about as cool as holograms of dead rockstars.

A.I. seems to be more of a tool of conditioning & surveillance, than a technology that represents the creativity or original vision of a human being. A lot of similarities to Y2k in the way this ruling class keeps praising themselves for these great tech advancements while simultaneously conditioning our culture to accept inferiority to unproven capabilities of their proprietary tech.

Does anyone actually see a "renaissance" in the arts in a post pandemic era? Maybe it's just my American perspective but while I'm so happy that artists can once again perform, it's glaringly obvious that the majority of these artists are legacy acts. Many of which one might consider long past their prime. Meanwhile this amazing nft audio art by computers has sounded like some of The Most Sacrilegious Shit I've Ever Listened to.

Fuck soulless tech & the billionaires, weapons contractors, & multinational corporations it serves.

[Cementimental]

I've read more than once that AI would be great tool for artists. Why would AI be great tool for an creative artist?

It wouldn't. People just say it will because it's the next tech cargo cult now that NFTs failed. People think they will get rich/important just by being pro-AI and saying that it is revolutionary on twitter.

The only use case for GAN images is that now diegetic paintings or drawings in movies won't have to look blatantly like the storyboard artist knocked them up in their lunch break.

[Cementimental]

How much can AI-generated noise be "noise" anyway?  If we think of noise as some sort of interruption or malufunctioning of communication/meaning, then that would seem to be the opposite of what I understand an AI to be doing

But if we think of noise as completely lacking in meaning or information, and being produced using entropy and guided feedback systems, then it's exactly that.

[Cementimental]

Given the above, and the facts that AI/ML/GAN technologies are hyper-prolific with low effort, that they excel at output which is inhuman, derivative, darkly comical, ugly, formless, psychedelic, plagiaristic, disturbing or downright nightmarishly terrifying, that they are surrounded and endorsed by various obscure, perverse or far-right subcultures, that they are a product of the military-industrial complex, and that they are considered un-PC, immoral or even evil by large sections of society, I find it, even broadly 'anti-AI' in art as I am, difficult to argue that they are not fairly perfect for use in a genre where it's already acceptable to simply read out true crime clippings over some mic feedback and shortwave radio static, stick photocopied porn and war atrocities on the cover, and call it an album.

In a way GAN technology is a kind of monkey's paw logical extension of everything i've been striving for my whole life with surrealist collage, cutups, computer-generated random text, video feedback, generative art, plunderphonics and noise/audio feedback. :(

producing increasingly more streamlined and logically generated results.

It's true that this technology becomes less obviously 'good' for weird or noisy results as it improves. When I first had a go at Talktotransformer or other text-AI things years back it would routinely continue mundane texts into completely bizarre, disturbing and dreamlike stories, but now ChatGPT and the like pretty much just give you boringly plausible 'information' that on closer examination is complete bullshit with the tone of a student who didn't bother to study for the exam but is trying to blag it anyway.

[Balor/SS1535]

but now ChatGPT and the like pretty much just give you boringly plausible 'information' that on closer examination is complete bullshit with the tone of a student who didn't bother to study for the exam but is trying to blag it anyway.

I actually agree with a lot of what you are saying---in some senses, AI is the perfect extension of various industrial ideals and artistic practices.  But your final comment, about how AI now is increasingly becoming "useful," boring, plausible, and, bottom line, fundamentally politically correct, is what makes me stop and wonder about its utility in the context of noise/industrial.  After playing with ChatGPT for a while and actually getting it to produce some fairly weird/interesting things (with quite a bit of difficulty, I might add), I think it is, by and large, going to be something that streamlines culture and produces greater conformity.

But that's only if AI stays within its current parameters.  If I could feed it whatever I wanted and it could produce with no artificial restrictions, I would be much more optimistic!

[tiny_tove]

Very interesting topic.
A few thoights.
In my real life I work for an IT multilnational who does a wide variety of application linked to AI. technically I am Satan incarnated for luddities and happy to be. I don't see AIs as something grounbreaking that helps pushing boundaries on one side, on  the other speed up many annoying tasks. I will not get deeper in the topic, but It's very exciting to test different language models for a living as an "idiot user"

Said this, despite i have been using AI for ages (aka PHOTOSHOP, AFTER EFFECT, ILLUSTRATOR, Max Msp, Ableton, etc all have been using AIs for ages just they didn't make a fuss about it)., most average midjourney stuff around is shit, cold and very limited. It gets good only when you experiment a lot with it, add something yours and really make the difference not limiting yourself to copy other artists' style. To me AI programs like midjourney (which I use a lot also for work, saving lots of time in protptyping boring interfaces) are the ultimate collage application, lots of fun to use, but also something that must be used properly. It's no more no less "stealing" than using other photographer's works downloaded from the internet, but edited in a more radical way. I felt the same criticism when photoshop was born. I remember feminist graphic designers "it's the weapon of patriarchy to design impossible women" while in fact, it was simply doing more quickly what geniouses of design were able to do by hand... yes that was an art, but nobody is as skilled as these people... so we get photoshop :)

regarding sound. Max Jutter already used ai based patches, so the whole generative approach has been existing for ages. there are already albums and performances completely done with ai (ars electronica linz already shown these fopr the past 4/5 years), the result fascinating but not always exciting. I saw some dude doing Plonk style vocalisation, very interesting as process, but the sound was more funny than exciting.

Having entire albums done with ai may be interesting for the result and the great work of the programmer, but it doesn't turn me very much on.
I can see myself using something to work on a specific track ( already do with the audialab software) , but if I let a program doing a whole album, what is the purpose of expressing myself doing "music" in the first place?

to each his own

[Theodore]

The more i hear media and its retarded journalists [Today i read on a newspaper that the future of the 'free' world depends on the restart of ... Kamala Harris ! -God, HELP me-] praise AI with big words, 'a new era for humanity' , and make big deal about it, the more i establish my opinion that the world the last 20 years has failed so miserably ... That's the only 'achievement' they can advertise, and they do it, and they just started. Pathetic.

The good news is that i believe that AI is the shit that will attract all the lame people to stick on it, so they will be flushed down the toilet all together at once.

[Cementimental]

Don't want to be That Guy who starts posting 'hilarious' GAN images but Bing's attempts at "1980s power electronics / Death industrial album cover, depressing high contrast black and white photocopied collage artwork" actually aren't half bad

[Yvette]

Sounds about as cool as holograms of dead rockstars.

Does anyone actually see a "renaissance" in the arts in a post pandemic era?

Really one of the most pathetic years for "modern music" I've ever experienced in my lifetime. Seems like the business model agrees. But you know, how the fuck can you dominate a market while consistently running your business at a loss for 17 years?

Algorithmically Conditioning the value of music & art; is the biggest mass marketed psyop joke I've ever seen. The "value" of an opinion from a military industrial complex subcontracted "biological entity"...or the consistent suggestions feature & automated play options; trapping users in a loop of finely taylored monotony. Even with all that influence there is still a noticeable lack of "bangers" or fresh inspiration at the most well financed levels of this industry. The AI notion & promotion of a copy of a copy is good enough; seems to permeate not only a lot of popular music, but a majority of underground music scenes as well. Like a boy band formula that never dies or changes or artistically challenges its self or its audience.

Many who financially prosper from this formula will inevitably cheerlead an incoming wave of divide & conquer sycophantic algorithmic hypernormalization & polarization of opinion and status. Without that "grant money" or label promotion & lack of compensation will I ever be "perceived" as successful? Instead of like actually achieving independent autonomy. Sellout the progressive ideas of electronic composition, avant garde sensibilities, & noise experimentation for a chance to pantomime as CrustietheClown2k or mediocre generica status obsessed clubbin' cultured out playlist fist pumper; "I don't record music I record social media posts"
Without my AI cop bot dog am I even an artist?
 
Now, imagine at what a success DARPA public relations adjacent grant holders of Tomorrowland will become!

[tiny_tove]

using lots of gen AI in many aspects of my life (work, music, artwork). Not to do noise yet, except to treat some specific sounds and samples.
we all have been using AI simply if we owned Photoshop, etc. etc.
I would never let a machine decide the final work for me, yet I can ask its help if I need a specific element.