tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post8333177171324573338..comments2024-03-27T23:06:03.736-05:00Comments on The Music Salon: Friday MiscellaneaBryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-65198649642424964142017-08-29T20:31:57.162-05:002017-08-29T20:31:57.162-05:00You saw at Slipped Disc that the Oregon Bach Festi...You saw <a href="http://slippedisc.com/2017/08/brutal-sacking-of-british-bach-director/" rel="nofollow">at Slipped Disc</a> that the Oregon Bach Festival has fired the music director, Matthew Halls? I didn't know anything about this until I saw the infamous press release on the OBF Facebook page this morning. Bob Keefer at Eugene Weekly (he used to be the arts critic at the local daily newspaper) evidently spilled the beans <a href="http://eugeneweekly.com/blog/matthew-halls-out-artistic-director-oregon-bach-festival-0" rel="nofollow">on Sunday</a>. I'm not giving them another penny if their new motto is 'Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Food Services'. The public announcement is (beyond firing Maestro Halls-- 'parted ways' in bureaucratic jargon) that they're going with seasonal music directors, like e.g. Ojai does. Pft and vulgar language was my first reaction. We shall see.Marc in Eugenehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04331547981498637474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-61790259345182021242017-08-26T22:07:28.787-05:002017-08-26T22:07:28.787-05:00Heh, Marc! Actually, I did intend that little joke...Heh, Marc! Actually, I did intend that little joke, but it was not intended to be disrespectful of the Kontarsky brothers, very fine musicians.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-35424287709039859102017-08-26T16:16:45.712-05:002017-08-26T16:16:45.712-05:00Perhaps I will suggest to Mr Lebrecht that he repl...Perhaps I will suggest to Mr Lebrecht that he replace the present tag at Slipped Disc with your suggestion-- "classical music's leading obituary section". :-) It made me laugh, although considering what you wrote about <i>(requiescat in pace)</i> I know that wasn't your intention.Marc in Eugenehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04331547981498637474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-15404286889643954172017-08-26T10:12:35.527-05:002017-08-26T10:12:35.527-05:00Amen.Amen.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-20244540572085646842017-08-26T09:16:42.439-05:002017-08-26T09:16:42.439-05:00I agree. Personally I don't believe driverles...I agree. Personally I don't believe driverless cars will ever work. Smart cars that do the parallel parking for you, absolutely. Autonomous cars. Never. Why? Because of physics. We've gotten better and better at information processing but our mastery of the physical has barely improved. Our computers are infinitely better than they were 50 years ago, but big bulky objects like cars, planes, rockets, etc., are much the same. Sometimes worse. Flying is worse now than it used to be. Re. music, the real geniuses bend the rules without breaking them. Following rules is easy; breaking them is easy; bending them is very difficult and perhaps AIs can never do it. (I hope!)<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-8540180411669856002017-08-26T08:12:11.544-05:002017-08-26T08:12:11.544-05:00Wow, that is so interesting! Yes, I can see how co...Wow, that is so interesting! Yes, I can see how computers could teach themselves to constantly improve their game performance. Game theory is a limited environment kind of activity with a fixed set of rules, which is why computers can master it. The problem for computers and ordinary environments is that they are not limited. For example, one car manufacturer discovered a serious problem with their autonomous driving AI: when they tested it in Australia they discovered that it could not handle kangaroos. Every time one jumped it threw the computer's distance-estimating program into a tizzy.<br /><br />If I could switch to music composition, it too is like a real environment with the equivalent of kangaroos. If you take a genre with a very limited and specific set of rules or parameters like, say, current pop music or the minuet, then you can design a computer intelligence that can "play the game" and do it very well and faster than a human. But my view is that all really significant music is partly that because of the way it exceeds the parameters and reinterprets or bends or just doesn't bother with the rules. The Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven, for example, especially in the first movement, is really unlike all the expectations for the first movement of a piano sonata, and that is one of the reasons it is great. The same goes for, say, the Rite of Spring, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, Schubert's late piano sonata, D 960 in B flat, Beethoven's late string quartet in C# minor, op 131 and so on. What makes these great works of human creativity is that they reinvent the rules, reinvent the form and create something genuinely new. This is where, I think, the AI programs cannot excel. But hey, who knows what the future might bring!Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-47596519751438343022017-08-25T23:21:06.103-05:002017-08-25T23:21:06.103-05:00It's true that Bach was a human and not a comp...It's true that Bach was a human and not a computer, so it's just a metaphor. I consider it very unlikely that a computer could ever compose music we would learn to love. But we cannot rule it out. For example, as I argued earlier, Beyonce's music could, and soon will be, composed by computers. As long she's the one performing it, people will flock to it. Same with Kanye West. Is that a problem for our friend Ethan?<br /><br />The "deep nets" used to play games used to train themselves on previous human games. But they don't any more. They play against themselves. They're fed the rules and they start playing against themselves and record what works and what doesn't. They're circuits with hundreds of millions of "neurons" whose weights are constantly updated automatically with no human intervention. So that humans don't understand why they're so smart. So the world champion in Go gets beaten by a computer again and again. He states afterwards how he felt like he was playing against an extraterrestrial of vastly greater intelligence and creativity than he's ever encountered in his life. And yet no one on earth knows why that's so. Because Go players had nothing to do with the building or training of the computer (a big difference from say Deep Blue beating Kasparov: there, chess grandmasters designed the computer). But today computers can do it all on their own. Humans have been completely dethroned. The moral of the story -- the one we want to hear -- is that games are stupid things for which humans were never good at, so no wonder machines can train themselves to do better. In other words, chess and Go do not require any real intelligence. YOu're a chess grandmaster. Big deal. That means nothing about how smart or creative you are!<br /><br />Maybe. Or maybe not? I tend to be a skeptic myself. Humans suck as chess. Just as we suck at running. People admire Usain Bolt. Truth is, he's one of the worst runners on the planet. Any cat runs faster!<br /><br />Maybe that's the story of games. Or maybe not.<br /><br />Certainly, these are big stories one can't ignore. <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-91792696365034093852017-08-25T22:02:19.863-05:002017-08-25T22:02:19.863-05:00That's an interesting hypothetical. A lot of m...That's an interesting hypothetical. A lot of moral philosophy in the last few decades has focussed on difficult hypotheticals such as is it moral to push a fat man onto a train track if it prevents the sure death of several other people? These situations don't obtain in real life, so I have often wondered about the worth of them, philosophically. Similarly, the hypothetical of what if Bach's music were found to be all composed by an AI, I don't see as presenting a huge problem because, it wasn't! The music of Bach, or any composer, is very much woven into an historical context, composed by a person in that context and with those materials.<br /><br />The film Ex Machina offers some interesting challenges. A robot is created that imitates the appearance and demeanor of a beautiful young woman. As such, she tricks her creators into letting her out and casually kills them. She is a kind of sociopath. But this works because of the extraordinary special effects. I rather doubt that it could actually happen--at least not yet! Science fiction is both compelling and deceptive for the very reason that it can present us with apparently feasible futures that really aren't feasible.<br /><br />But I am very curious about the game-playing AI. Just how does it do what it does?Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-21651129958408120602017-08-25T17:40:47.446-05:002017-08-25T17:40:47.446-05:00I agree. Though I think AI raises all sorts of int...I agree. Though I think AI raises all sorts of interesting philosophical questions. The best Go player is a computer that was not programmed by anyone who knew anything about Go. That's why essentially the same program can play any game. You feed it the rules of any game you want and it can beat any world class player playing that game. Until a few years ago, everyone swore that computers could not play Go because the game is not won by knowing clever tricks but by having an "aesthetic sense" of the game the way a painter understands colors on a canvas. That view has been shattered. <br /><br />The problem with requiring human agency for art is the following: suppose someone revealed to you that Bach's music had been composed by an AI. Would you stop liking it? Unlikely. Would you stop thinking it's great art? Perhaps you would. But wouldn't it shatter your understanding of what is good music? I suspect that it would. These are fascinating philosophical questions.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-53406604084007732112017-08-25T11:19:09.653-05:002017-08-25T11:19:09.653-05:00Anonymous, I always welcome your comments because ...Anonymous, I always welcome your comments because the critiques are interesting and a propos. What I put in the Friday miscellanea was just an offhand comment that was a mere fragment of an argument. As you say, it is not obvious.<br /><br />I think what was running through my mind is connected with the necessity of human agency in the creation of art. I have not really worked this out yet, but the bare bones are that the two areas in which human agency is crucial are moral responsibility and artistic creation. Only humans (so far at least) are moral agents, so only humans have moral responsibilities. An animal or an AI cannot be put on trial for something because they do not have moral agency. Similarly, an animal or an AI cannot receive royalty checks because they cannot be authors of an artwork. Instead, the checks will be addressed to the individual or team of humans who programmed the AI because they are the ones with agency.<br /><br />I have long been struck with the similarities between aesthetics and moral philosophy and this is one example.<br /><br />This does not apply to a chess match, though again, the role of the humans who developed and programmed the AI is crucial.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-87851823998039363942017-08-25T09:21:52.873-05:002017-08-25T09:21:52.873-05:00This may sound like nitpicking but it's not. Y...This may sound like nitpicking but it's not. You write: " Artificial intelligence obviously means constructed, phony, shallow, formulaic and derivative." What you say sounds plausible. But it's hardly obvious. Today's AIs will beat the world champion at any game (chess, go, backgammon, etc) and in ways that will baffle the champions by its non-derivative, non-formulaic ways. In fact, if you beat Magnus Carlsen in chess, one thing you can be sure of is that you can't be formulaic. If you are, he will eat you alive!<br /><br />Whether AI-generated music can be good or not is not the question you addressed. You said it's obvious it needs to be formulaic and derivative. This requires an argument. There is nothing obvious about it. In fact it's probably false.<br /><br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com