all_summer_beauty's recent activity
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Comment on Suggestion for a new label: "Misinformation" in ~tildes
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Comment on The Don Hertzfeldt Collection is now on Dropout in ~tv
all_summer_beauty Link Parent(Pretty sure @moonwalker is referring to the Android TV smart TV OS app here rather than the Android mobile app) CC @DefinitelyNotAFae <3(Pretty sure @moonwalker is referring to the Android TV smart TV OS app here rather than the Android mobile app)
CC @DefinitelyNotAFae <3
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Comment on Is music just sound? A creative technologist's perspective on AI-generated music. in ~music
all_summer_beauty (edited )LinkAn essay in which the author, someone deeply invested in both music and technology, explores why AI music bothers him; he does this first by examining the status quo, then by attempting to...- Exemplary
An essay in which the author, someone deeply invested in both music and technology, explores why AI music bothers him; he does this first by examining the status quo, then by attempting to steelman the pro-AI argument, and finally by explaining why he feels that argument is still insufficient.
There's a quiz near the beginning that A/B-tests you to see if you can distinguish which of two music clips is AI-generated and which is "human-generated". My degrees are in music, so I expected to do decently well, which I did (4 out of 5), but it was still tricky, even having encountered plenty of this stuff before.
Selected quotes and thoughts
The steelman:
I want to make the strongest possible case I can for the other side. The technology is genuinely remarkable on a technical level, and music has survived every disruption people said would kill it. Why should this be any different? (...)
History shows an interplay between technology and art. It's true that technology does disrupt and displace, but it also creates new opportunities and new forms of expression. (...)
These disruptions have never been painless. (...) The interplay between technology and music is a constant tension, sometimes breaking barriers, and sometimes creating new ones. Good music has always found a way to survive.
Mikey Shulman, the CEO of Suno, describes their goal as "first and foremost giving everybody the joys of creating music". It's hard to dismiss that vision in isolation.
(...) The desire to make music is real and widespread. The barrier, for many people, is the difficulty of the craft. For some populations, such as those with disabilities, that barrier is even higher.
A tool that helps professionals work faster, amateurs create more easily, and enables people who might never otherwise make music is undeniably powerful. Just like photography ended up expanding the visual arts, new technology can expand music.
On why people make music:
"It's not really enjoyable to make music now... it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don't enjoy the majority of time they spend making music." - Mikey Shulman, CEO of Suno, January 2025
But that's not how making music works, at least not in my experience. The idea doesn't really exist in isolation before the process, just waiting to be expressed by a series of vague text prompts. You find it by playing, by making mistakes, by following something unexpected.
A tool that jumps straight to the output short-circuits all of that. The output arrives before any discovery can happen. This treats creativity as a productivity or "content creation" problem, where getting to the output as easily as possible is the goal.
This reminds me of the conversation around creation vs. maintenance. People want to be the ones who make things, not the ones doing the unglamorous work of making sure those things keep running day after week after month after year. The quote from Schulman seems, to me, to further clarify what the sentiment at work actually is - some people want to be the ones who have made things. Neither the first nor last step of the process (creation -> production -> maintenance) are valued by people who think as Schulman describes, yet all three are critical.
[a good visual illustration that you really should click through to see]
Responding to comparisons to previous revolutions in technology and the arts:
Advocates will sometimes compare AI music's effect on music to photography's effect on visual art as a way to suggest that resistance to new technology is just fear of change. But photography created something new and announced itself as such. Shulman has said it "doesn't make sense to have an AI world and a non-AI world of music". The goal is indistinguishability, not a new medium. And unlike photography, which built its own identity from scratch, AI music was trained on the entire corpus of human music without consent and now competes directly with the people it learned from. There's no reason to think that new technology will always yield the same positive outcomes as it has in the past. [emphasis added]
There's a clear difference in scale when we compare AI music generation to historic technological disruptions in music. Drum machines and samplers didn't autonomously generate 7 million songs a day and distribute them to streaming platforms with most of us being unaware.
On "everyone should be able to do everything" and the value of being a listener/observer:
Being a listener, a viewer, or a reader is its own complete relationship with art, not just a consolation prize for people who never learned the craft. The hunger AI music claims to satisfy might just be misdescribed. It's rarely "I need to be able to immediately generate my own version of this". More often it's "I want more of this feeling", and for that, human-made music already has an answer.
On creative atrophy:
Over time, it may accelerate our deskilling and make creative work feel more like playing a slot machine, prompting and regenerating until something sounds right.
This made me think of my experiences using city map generators for my D&D worlds. It's cool to have a fascinating product at the end, which I can then build on top of to expand the setting, but to be perfectly honest, the time spent rerolling the generators dozens of times (and then afterward deciding which result is least inaccurate) mostly just sucks. A much better arrangement would be having a tool that allowed me as much control as I'm able to exercise with my modest skills and then filled in the remaining blanks. I'd get to actually somewhat realize my vision and express myself, but not have to devote dozens or hundreds of hours of my limited time to developing a skill that isn't high on my list of priorities. Flipping a few toggles (or, as in the case of Suno, writing a couple sentences) and hitting "generate" isn't going to do that for me.
AI music generation as Suno sells it is more like asking someone else to put a puzzle together for you entirely. If you have to "learn" the song after it's already made, something else created it.
On hyper-personalization and its effects on culture:
(...) "taste tautology", a feedback loop where recommendation algorithms reinforce prior preferences so strongly that listeners find themselves trapped in an endless loop of the same artists and the same sounds. UNESCO's 2025 report on AI and culture warned that these systems risk fostering monocultures, filtering out minority voices and experimental sounds that don't immediately match a user's prior data.
All of these generative systems have (to varying degrees) the characteristic that their outputs trend toward the average and smooth out all the wrinkles and blemishes that give things texture and resonance. It feels fitting that one of the peripheral systems in their environment (recommendation algorithms) does the same thing. "Average" will never work for enough people (especially if that average is not even the true average; see the recent "Women should be able to open jars" thread). Disregarding personal preferences/needs is damaging when it causes someone to trip on an inconsiderately-sized stair, and it is also damaging when it flattens and sterilizes culture.
I find this vision of music as a disposable commodity rather dystopian. Music has always been one of the primary ways humans synchronize with each other, be it through oral tradition, shared playlists, or the moment at a show when a room full of strangers feels like a collective. When everyone's feed is perfectly individualized, there is a potential cultural loss that's difficult to measure.
I wouldn't want to go back to a world where new music was reserved for the privileged or the especially curious. But an overcorrection into having no shared culture isn't a good outcome either. The goal should be more people finding more music, not everyone disappearing into their own perfectly optimized bubble managed by billion dollar companies.
In closing:
There is a version of music that is oriented around how sound makes you feel, and that it doesn't matter where the sound comes from. That is a valid relationship to music, and AI-generated music will likely be transformational there.
But there will always be a version of music that is more strongly tied to artistry and human expression. People want to know that the feelings behind the music come from another human's story and lived experience. In the same way that paintings aren't just colors and poetry isn't just words, I think the output of music is just an artifact of process that is irreducibly human.
My hope is that the current moment pushes us towards that version of music.
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Is music just sound? A creative technologist's perspective on AI-generated music.
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Comment on Three Cheers for Tildes: App updates and feedback (July 2026) — Version 1.7 detects expired login sessions in ~tildes
all_summer_beauty Link ParentIf you tap on the "Actions" menu, the first item is a link to "[OP]'s profile". (Not saying that's the same thing as having their name simply displayed, but it is a way to learn who posted it...If you tap on the "Actions" menu, the first item is a link to "[OP]'s profile". (Not saying that's the same thing as having their name simply displayed, but it is a way to learn who posted it before clicking in, in case you didn't know about it.)
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Comment on Three Cheers for Tildes: App updates and feedback (July 2026) — Version 1.7 detects expired login sessions in ~tildes
all_summer_beauty LinkThanks for another update! <3Thanks for another update! <3
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Comment on I finally finished my mobile party game in ~games
all_summer_beauty Link ParentAhh, gotcha. Makes sense! I hope it does well for you!Ahh, gotcha. Makes sense! I hope it does well for you!
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Comment on I finally finished my mobile party game in ~games
all_summer_beauty Link ParentUnderstandable, that's more or less what I expected. Definitely not blaming you for it. Why 63 seconds and not just like 60? Personal favorite number?Understandable, that's more or less what I expected. Definitely not blaming you for it.
Why 63 seconds and not just like 60? Personal favorite number?
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Comment on I finally finished my mobile party game in ~games
all_summer_beauty LinkThis is very cool and really well designed visually! I'm excited to give this a go. It's a joy to use. I'm attempting to learn UI/UX design in my spare time and I hope I can eventually imitate...This is very cool and really well designed visually! I'm excited to give this a go. It's a joy to use. I'm attempting to learn UI/UX design in my spare time and I hope I can eventually imitate many aspects of this.
That said... The fact that it wants my "approximate" location for advertising bums me out. Is this something you have any control over?
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Comment on Unreleased OpenAI model escapes containment and hacks into Hugging Face in ~tech
all_summer_beauty Link ParentUgh. I'm sorry for the tone in my first paragraph, I didn't realize that wasn't the actual OpenAI headline and assumed it was written by them to score marketing points. I saw the link to their...Ugh. I'm sorry for the tone in my first paragraph, I didn't realize that wasn't the actual OpenAI headline and assumed it was written by them to score marketing points. I saw the link to their site and avoided it in favor of other more neutral sources at first, so I didn't end up reading this specific link until later and failed to notice that the title was different than the one you provided. I should have paid closer attention, my apologies.
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Comment on Unreleased OpenAI model escapes containment and hacks into Hugging Face in ~tech
all_summer_beauty (edited )LinkEdit: I am an ass, I did not realize this topic's title isn't the headline that OpenAI wrote. I still disagree with framing it this way, but I would have raised the issue very differently had I...Edit: I am an ass, I did not realize this topic's title isn't the headline that OpenAI wrote. I still disagree with framing it this way, but I would have raised the issue very differently had I realized it was a fellow Tildes user's construction rather than a marketing line from a tech company. Sorry for that, @skybrian.
Love this headline. Makes it sound like OpenAI has models just chilling around in cages and one broke out and decided to do some hacking for shits and giggles. Very responsible comms. Not that I expected better.
My understanding of the events in simple terms:
- OpenAI wanted to test the model(s)' ability to hack stuff
- They put it in a playpen with a couple toys and said "solve this [very commonly-used] model test [that tests your ability to break rules and do dangerous stuff]"
- It was like "hmm, I bet the test answers are on the teacher's desk over there"
- It decided that getting the answers from the desk was the most viable option
- It broke the rules by using a toy in a way that OpenAI didn't know was possible and got out of the playpen to go grab the answer key
Scary, but the headline invites the average person to imagine a much worse scenario IMO. And, honestly, it sounds like the "escaping containment" part is not the most concerning element of this (it found a single zero-day, I think?), it's what it did afterward (the scale and persistence of the attack on HuggingFace). They gave it an objective but didn't realize the scope of what they gave it permission to do since they didn't understand the flaws of the constraints they placed on it.
This isn't my area of expertise though, so I'd appreciate learning whether I'm under/overstating anything here.
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Comment on Tildos, let's be unserious for a while; show us your dankest memes and god-tier shitposts! in ~talk
all_summer_beauty (edited )LinkFound this the other day, Destiny-heads will appreciate: Pete Carsons - The Final Car I think it's the most effort I've ever seen put into a shitpost, by a large margin. I made it to damage but my...Found this the other day, Destiny-heads will appreciate: Pete Carsons - The Final Car
I think it's the most effort I've ever seen put into a shitpost, by a large margin. I made it to damage but my clicker finger was getting tired by then; let me know if anyone finishes a phase!
Note: doesn't really work on mobile
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Comment on Linus Torvalds says Linux is not "anti-AI", tells haters to 'fork it' and 'just walk away' in ~tech
all_summer_beauty Link ParentSlightly off-topic, but just in case anyone assumes that "makes workers' jaws rot off" is a purely fabricated illustrative example: phossy jaw, radium jaw (very very mild body horror warning on...Slightly off-topic, but just in case anyone assumes that "makes workers' jaws rot off" is a purely fabricated illustrative example: phossy jaw, radium jaw (very very mild body horror warning on that first link)
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Comment on Wildfire smoke from Canada will soon spread across the Midwest and East United States in ~enviro
all_summer_beauty LinkVibe for today: Shot Chaser -
Comment on A philosopher’s one-word theory to explain why the world feels so weird: uni-context in ~humanities
all_summer_beauty Link ParentAgree. Anonymity/pseudonymity is a means of preserving our ability (maybe even our right?) to choose what context we're operating in at any given moment, a way to maintain the barriers between the...This, to my mind, is one of the true dangers of removing anonymity from the Internet.
Agree. Anonymity/pseudonymity is a means of preserving our ability (maybe even our right?) to choose what context we're operating in at any given moment, a way to maintain the barriers between the different people we are in those different spaces. There's a lot of useful things about the connectedness that comes with a uni-context (see @chocobean's top-level comment) but it brings with it a lot of challenges too, since it's such a radically different environment from the one we've evolved to function in. Being able to adopt different identities (those things that, according to Callard, cut across contexts) lets us get a little of the best of both worlds. We can access the connectedness on our own terms instead of being completely reshaped by it.
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Comment on Control the ideas, not the code in ~comp
all_summer_beauty (edited )LinkSpeaking as an amateur, my approach has been to not touch LLMs for code help unless I'm absolutely desperate, and part of his closing vindicates that choice, I feel: I take that to mean, roughly,...Speaking as an amateur, my approach has been to not touch LLMs for code help unless I'm absolutely desperate, and part of his closing vindicates that choice, I feel:
I have a doubt only regarding young programmers that don't have enough experience, and can't build a mental model. We don't know, yet, if they will require or not to understand very well how a given piece of code works, but I believe they should learn how to write programs.
I take that to mean, roughly, "If you couldn't write the code/solve the problem yourself, you shouldn't be asking the LLM to do it for you." So while I find a lot of what he says in there disturbing (e.g. "I believe many programmers at this point have less impact they could have because they look at the code. [...] The working day is 8 hours. If you read the code, it is a tradeoff."), the ending bit kind of qualifies the rest of it in a way that I'm slightly less uncomfortable with, I guess?
Idk. Looking forward to hearing what the professionals on here think.
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Comment on Feedback for a beginner singer in ~creative
all_summer_beauty Link ParentGotcha, okay. @TheRtRevKaiser do you have a BandLab account? If not, can you share you how accessed it?Gotcha, okay. @TheRtRevKaiser do you have a BandLab account? If not, can you share you how accessed it?
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Comment on Feedback for a beginner singer in ~creative
all_summer_beauty LinkHmm, it's telling me I need an account to view that page/track. Is that something you have any control over?Hmm, it's telling me I need an account to view that page/track. Is that something you have any control over?
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Comment on Three Cheers for Tildes: App updates and feedback (May 2026) — Version 1.6 adds "Find in comments" in ~tildes
all_summer_beauty Link ParentYou're breathtaking Just got the update! Good catch finding that it was specifically related to double-tap voting, I hadn't realized that. Thanks so much! Is there a place I can send a donation...You're breathtaking
Just got the update! Good catch finding that it was specifically related to double-tap voting, I hadn't realized that. Thanks so much!
Is there a place I can send a donation your way that isn't via Google Play?
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Comment on Smush in ~games
all_summer_beauty Link ParentYeah this also confused me. I tried several real English words that were just rejected because they weren't in the pile.Yeah this also confused me. I tried several real English words that were just rejected because they weren't in the pile.
I'm not super comfortable with the idea, for reasons others have explained, but I do see value in at least exploring possible implementations of similar concepts.
My only suggestion at the moment is that, if something like this is in fact appropriate, maybe it could function like this:
This seems like a gentler interruption of the thread presentation, since it still requires new viewers to go down to your correction (and then potentially vote for it to more organically increase its visibility), rather than hijacking the sort order to force them to see it. It also seems like less work to develop than a whole separate viewer for "community notes", since it utilizes the existing comment threading structure.
It also might be good to limit the number of times a formal correction can be posted? Perhaps even to just a single time. That could keep the refutation organized, as well as contained to prevent it feeling like a dogpile if it really catches on. Though I suppose you can still effect a dogpile by simply replying as normal without utilizing the feature.
And maybe only top-level comments could be disputed? Idk, just spitballing at this point.
To some extent, though, this still feels to me like an unnecessary formalization of dissent when "just post a corrective reply" is an available course of action. I guess my experience of this issue's severity differs from yours.