Comment Re:Ahh Australia, always trying to define you (Score 1) 26
Not much, just smaller.
Not much, just smaller.
Committees deciding what counts as "art" doesn't have the glorious history that you seem to think it has.
Wait... you're going to the National Museum of African American History and Culture (founded in 2003, signed into law by George W. Bush) and you're shocked that there was - somewhere in the 400k square foot building - a chart of stereotypes about white people next to a chart of stereotypes about black people?
I'm sure you'd be welcome if you ever wanted to - you're already ideologically highly aligned (and never really were with the US...)
Shifting eastward wouldn't be frictionless - for example, your oil infrastructure is designed to send it south, not to ports that can export it to the east, and European refineries would need to set up to process it, for example. But it's pretty clear that the current status quo can no longer be relied on, as the US is intent on extortion.
They're certainly trying. I was listening to an exoplanets researcher the other day (in response to "How are scientists adjusting the way they work during the Trump administration?") grumble about how they're afraid to use the phrase "diversity of exoplanets" in their work because of a (well-grounded) fear that having the word "diversity" will get their paper flagged for rejection. This sort of environment is toxic.
(My favourite response was "Spell it 'divers' and throw in the occasional 'thou art' and 'exeunt' "
"another human - like me"
Serious Zalgon 26 McGee vibes there
Yes, I'm sure children in poor countries who may or may not read English are desperate to get ahold of, say, an obscure 1993 book on VCR repair.
These are books that are unsold for a reason.
It's a testament to the interplay of words that forms the tapestry we call language!
But leaving out a comma can certainly make sentences more fun
Anyway, let's eat Grandma.
....are books that they can buy by the meter, for pennies on the dollar, if that much. These are surplus books that publishers - the world's leading destroyers of books - would have to destroy anyway.
Trainers can't afford to buy actually rare, desirable books.
It's a shame that all of this data is locked up on private servers, but that's really more of a problem of the copyright system than anything else. Anyone who scanned these books would be banned from making it public.
This is all moot because it's false that if you use AI you cannot gain copyright on the work. I literally hold a copyright registered with the US copyright office (I registered with them, despite not being a US citizen, because they're precedent-setting), fully disclosing the use of AI in the process, and directly speaking about the matter with a copyright examiner.
What the standard is is that raw, unfiltered outputs are not copyrightable (and even then, there's wiggle room; the argument put forward by the copyright office was "based on their current understanding" (as of several years ago) and presumed very minimal control by the user over the outputs (which was actually already obsolete by the time they put it out, but that's nitpicking)). But the human creative action you take with those outputs can cause the resultant product to be copyrightable. This can be things like sample mixing, mastering, adding vocals, etc, but can also even just be the selection process itself. Yes, assemblage, selection, curation, etc are all potentially copyrightable acts.
In my case, while the samples were (overwhelmingly) AI, the whole project was weeks of work, involving hundreds of generations, track splitting and reassembling, things down to the level of editing individual phonemes (or for example in one part, stripping the vocals and instruments from a sample down to just the residual "other" channel, throwing it into reverse, and then piling on progressively more reverb and volume up to a sudden cutoff to create a tension-point transition). No issues whatoever registering the copyright on it. I'm sure you could do far less and still have a copyrightable work.
I think people need to keep in mind that marketability (aka enjoyability), talent, and effort are three independent axes. You can be talented at one or more aspects of music production, a genuine skill (play a guitar, sing, etc), but put forth either high or low effort, and make good or terrible music, all independently. You can put forth a lot of effort, but you may or may not be talented, and it may or may not be good. You may make a great enjoyable marketable track, but may or may not have notable talents, and may or may not have put in a lot of effort.
In general: I judge how much I want to listen to it by its enjoyability; I attribute how much the author deserves credit / how much it's "art" by how much non-rote effort they put in; and I value the artist's skill based on their demonstrable talent. All of this independent of what specific tools were used. That said, knowledge of certain facts may colour one's enjoyability of a track. If you hate AI and know / suspect it's AI, that'll strongly colour your enjoyability of it. Or if you know the artist is a bad person or whatnot, that again can colour your enjoyability of a track that you'd otherwise enjoy in a vacuum.
One thing I've been thinking recently is being in the AI trade but only with high seniority, not common stock. So if there is a "pop", but the underlying business remains sustainable, the high seniority investors end up with the assets and make a mint when the market returns to balance, whereas the stockholders are the ones who suffer. This could mean a mix of convertible bonds / convertible ETFs, preferred shares, senior corporate debt, physical infrastructure (power suppliers, REITs, etc), BDCs and private credit vehicles, etc. Or possibly even common stock in some of the diversified giants (Google, Microsoft, etc), who - while they'd take quite a temporary hit in a crash - would survive and then buy up all the distressed players.
Oh, shoot, I forgot my "Claude-isms"
I mean, Leopold was literally fired from OpenAI after one year.
(Though I would hardly call Altman "a genius". He's a rather sociopathic VC guy who happened to be in the right place at the right time)
Save gas, don't use the shell.