Quotes
Anonymous and mild sensibilities have currency because today’s music — whether created and curated by humans or machines — is so often used to make people feel nothing instead of something. […] This music is not meant to be listened to directly; it’s used to drown out everything else.
Ian Bogost
The Atlantic
Ian reflects on the small success of Velvet Sundown, a band made by artificial intelligence that was already approaching 1 million streams on Spotify. “This is second-order music listening, in which you experience the idea of listening to music. What better band to provide that service than one that doesn’t even exist?”
All of these stories have the same intellectual validity as writing “I’m alive!” on a piece of paper, photocopying it, and then saying “Look! In our analysis, the photocopier says it’s alive!”
Benedict Evans
Issue #597 of his newsletter
The story he’s referring to is from an Anthropic “study” that found that generative AIs will “lie, cheat and steal” to achieve their goals. Yes, because they were instructed to do so.
In a quote attributed to Spotify founder Daniel Ek when speaking at a company all-hands, he says “Our only competitor is silence.” To which I say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
— Reuben Son.
In “Quiet Time”, Reuben delves into the genesis, reinterpretations, and paradigm shifts found in ambient music — a delightful coincidence in light of this post I recently published. Bonus points for starting with a quote from Clarice Lispector.