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HUMANE INTELLIGENCE TRENDS

For good or ill, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay. This year its rapid growth, financial market buzz and overall controversy puts it in the running for Persona of the Year. Or Impersonator of the Year.

The Beatles released a new song which used new AI technology to separate John Lennon's vocals from a cassette tape piano demo. The surviving Beatles in 1995 tried to make the tape into a song but could not cleanly separate the tracks. The new song, Now and Then, is a nostalgic return of the Fab Four, but with a major caveat. It sounds like the mash up of two different songs. Lennon's vocals are very 1970s while the music production is very 2020s. The song sounds off. You can tell that Lennon is not playing in the studio with Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr; the energy of live playing together is lost. Millions of people listened to the new song on the Beatles YouTube channel.

There was hardly a hint of grave robbing a Lennon track for sentimental profit since Lennon's widow and family endorsed the idea. But it does further open the door for non-musicians, abandoned record labels or electronic geeks to cull their old tapes to resurrect new songs from old analog. And they will probably get away with it. If you listen to the top 10 Spotify pop sounds, it it filled with badly mixed samples and overdone auto-tuned singing. But people still listen to the badness because a) that is all they know; b) it is peer pressure FOMO to be cool to listen to hip TikTok trending artists or c) if you don't play music you cannot fully appreciate it.

This summer's Fake Drake song was both criticized as a rip-off and praised as sounding better than his original material. Hence, we are at a paradox moment. We are at a self-contradictory position between artists and art.

Let us call it Humane Intelligence. We should continue to show compassion and benevolence to the actual human creators and their works. We should have a civilized and refining effect on learning new technology as a discipline and not a lazy way to make a buck off someone else.

Typing in prompts into an AI music generator is not the same as putting your hands on an actual instrument and recording your own note, beats and vocals. The expression of human emotions is only contained in the human creation of those expressions in art.

The US Copyright Office has ruled that AI generated content (pictures or words) is not protected with copyright because it was not authored by a human being. This is the correct interpretation of what a copyrighted work is all about: the physical manifestation of human mind creativity and not some AI derivative process.

AI can be used as a tool to refine one's own work into final form just as a word processing program helps an author finish a novel or manuscript. Music industry has used such tools for decades: Pro Tools to correct every note in a song; AutoTune to harmonize each and every vocal cue. But the meat of the product is still the underlying human vocal or instrument playing. The problem lies when the human element is taken out of the creative equation.

In Japan, Yamaha created Vocaloid program to have artificial singers create music. It spawned the creation of virtual singers and music groups that is still expanding today with holographic concerts. But typing in lyrics into a singer software program does not make the author of the prompts the actual singer - - it is the computer. Granted, the lyrics typed into the program can be copyrighted as an original work, but the sound output can not meet the legal threshold of being human. Just as you cannot go outside and record a bird singing and claim a copyright to it (since it literally is in the public domain), the final legal analysis will be on what is the scope of AI in the human world.

YouTube announced a new program called Dream Tracks where it licensed seven singers vocals for users can create their own music tracks with a computerized version of the professional singer. These artists apparently want to get ahead of the curve and semi-protect themselves from out-and-out theft manipulation of their songs, style and voice. No word on how the monetary split will be between artist and platform, or whether there will be restrictions on distribution of the end product.

Some artists are now relying on encoding their works with poison to wreck havoc on AI training models. According to Ars Technica, artists are figuring out how to manipulate their images to block AI models from correctly interpreting their content. One service released in August, called Glaze, slightly modifies the pixels in an artists' images to trick the AI model into seeing a different style of art. And the maker of that tool, a professor at the University of Chicago named Ben Zhao, is releasing another tool to help artists even further scramble how AI models interpret their works by altering artists' images with intent to corrupt and destroy AI training models. It works by tricking AI models into misidentifying objects in images, and as the number of poisoned images being added to the training data increases, the more confused the AI model will theoretically be.

Existing artists and writers are worried that their jobs are at stake. It is true because the Hollywood Writers Guild struck over this very point. If I tell chatGPT to write a short story in the style of Ernest Hemingway and I receive a light version of The Old Man and the Sea, I am the author of that story? I never wrote a paragraph of it. I never put my imagination into words on paper. I could just put my name under the title. That is not an original or inventive work - - - considering the “training” of AI relies on existing works of authors and artists.

The Korean Times reported that the integration of AI into Korea's multi-billion-dollar K-pop industry is no longer a question of “if,” but “when."” Industry giants like HYBE and SM Entertainment are charging full-throttle into this technological revolution. But the rise of AI in music production is not without its controversies. Bang Si-hyuk, the mastermind behind the Grammy-nominated boy band, BTS recently revealed that AI is becoming a key factor for his operation and strategy. During an interview with Billboard magazine he said he has long wondered if human artists will remain as the only entities to produce music that caters to peopleÕs needs and tastes.

As a result, many people are wanting a disclaimer on anything that is AI generates... one person notes that it should be like food labeling, what are the ingredients in the end product. Is it 100 percent, 75 percent, 20 percent AI? It would matter to some people. It probably would not matter at all to many consumers who view little difference between healthy and junk food.

cyberbarf

OUR PUBLISHER'S OBSERVATIONS

GOOD

The only thing about IG is that I have set it to follow/show the amazing art work from unknown people. There are so many talented people who are sharing their work on-line. It is inspirational and fun. My feed is not crowded by the dumpster fires of C-list celebrities, influencers and unfunny viral videos. The one genre that took off this year was Urban Sketching. It is a neat but rough style that captures the mood a little better than a photograph.

BAD

The first thing you do not want when you wake up in the morning is to have NO MEMORIES. Thanks facebook.

MAYBE

Since I have been watching more YouTube videos than regular television, I have noticed a trend that content creators are suffering from burnout. After five or six years of feeding the algorithm beast, many creators have called it quits and signed off the platform. Part of the issue may be YT and other platforms continually changing the monetization models. Another part is that there is so much stuff out their on the Net, it is harder to go viral and make an actual living.

iToons

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FOUND BUT NOT LOST ON THE INTERNET

Of course someone had to have AI create the perfect Thanksgiving meal. Special note for the dish names and lack of cuisine context, especially the empty plate labeled GRAVY. Apparently AI does not need actual food in order to grow and become strong; it just needs a steady feeding of copyrighted training materials.

Source: neatorama

And speaking of getting roasted, the conservative newspaper had a wink and a nod laugh on PETA's attempt to shame Americans into indigestion of their holiday meals. It did not work. It always reminds us of the old joke on what PETA stands for: People Eating Tasty Animals.

Source: NY Post

If border security was not the hottest HOT BUTTON issue in the 2024 campaign, we have a new group of trespassers at the border. An exploding population of hard-to-eradicate SUPER PIGS in Canada is threatening to spill south of the border to invade northern states like Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana. In Canada, the wild pigs roamed Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba as crossbreeds that combine the survival skills of wild Eurasian boar with the size and high fertility of domestic swine to create a SUPER PIG thatÕs spreading out of control. Ryan Brook, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan and one of Canada's leading authorities on the problem, calls feral swine, “the most invasive animal on the planet” and “an ecological train wreck.” Invasive species are not new to the US. This year, Giant Hornets that kill native bee populations were found on the West Coast. Feral hogs have ravaged Southern states crops and forests for decades. Solution: add another hunting season and lower pork prices.

Source: AP

The Comedy Wild Life Photograph of the Year was taken by Jordan Moore. He calls it Air Guitar Roo. Nature never ceases to amaze us as captured in this expressive picture. In some respects, Nature was human beings first television set: interesting, colorful and entertaining.

Source: aol

You are never too old to Rock N Roll. Or so goes the old song. After 17 years, the Rolling Stones released a new original album. Of course, they announced a new global tour because they are musical fossils and their senior citizen fan base is the only demographic that can afford their concert tickets.

Source: various websites

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THE WHETHER REPORT

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STATUS

Question: Whether AI generated content will not get US copyright protection?

* Educated Guess

* Possible

* Probable

* Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

* Doubtful

* Vapor Dream

Question: Whether large tax increases post-pandemic spending will lead to continued economic pain to middle class?

* Educated Guess

* Possible

* Probable

* Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

* Doubtful

* Vapor Dream

Question: Whether healthy eating habits is a byproduct of high inflation?

* Educated Guess

* Possible

* Probable

* Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

* Doubtful

* Vapor Dream

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