As other posts point out, leaving out the third takes away the major-ness.
It's also worth mentioning the way Kurt often played power chords, using his index for the bass note and barring the rest with his ring finger. This often leads to major chords when the root is on the A string and non-major ambiguous-sounding chords with the root is on the E string. It's obvious as early as the 3rd chord in the intro to Teen Spirit; it has the notes Ab Eb Ab Db (NOTE: Db, not C). It's inconsistent in Kurt's playing (edit: whether or not his strumming makes that 4th string, 4th interval sound come out), but the subtlety is a signature part of Kurt's guitar sound.
Also some of the chord analysis in the site (ex. In Bloom verse) is just flat out wrong.
I'm getting a little tired of hearing this quote at this point.
What about humoring the opposite?
I want AI to automate art so I can spend more time doing dishes and doing laundry. Dishes and laundry are purely analog human experiences. Art, at this point, is essentially digital, and digital is the domain of machines so we can let machines do that now.
What's to humor here? Do you have a passion for laundry and dishes? Do you spend your free time gleefully dirtying dishes just so you can wash them again? Is art or music something you feel forced to do but don't want to?
I am struggling to understand what's really the opposite here. I don't think anyone views art as the same sort of burden as people view dishes. It's not something you're forced to do (even in the situations you do need it it's pretty trivial to buy).
I keep coming back to this thought. Maybe it’s how I was raised, but knowing that I’m doing something useful to other people / humanity is the entire point.
When a machine can do everything better than we can, then what do we derive meaning from?
I usually get out of the existential dread by thinking that we’re still some time away from the issue, and that there will still be some pursuits left, like space colonization. But it’s not fully satisfying.
He walked for days, stopping at bars and restaurants whenever he felt thirsty, hungry, or tired; mostly they were automatic and he was served by little floating trays, though a few were staffed by real people. They seemed less like servants and more like customers who’d taken a notion to help out for a while.
“Of course I don’t have to do this,” one middle-aged man said, carefully cleaning the table with a damp cloth. He put the cloth in a little pouch, sat down beside him. “But look, this table’s clean.”
He agreed that the table was clean.
“Usually,” the man said. “I work on alien – no offense – alien religions; Directional Emphasis In Religious Observance; that’s my specialty… like when temples or graves or prayers always have to face in a certain direction; that sort of thing? Well, I catalog, evaluate, compare; I come up with theories and argue with colleagues, here and elsewhere. But… the job’s never finished; always new examples, and even the old ones get reevaluated, and new people come along with new ideas about what you thought was settled… but” – he slapped the table – “when you clean a table you clean a table. You feel you’ve done something. It’s an achievement.”
“But in the end, it’s still just cleaning a table.”
“And therefore does not really signify anything on the cosmic scale of events?” the man suggested.
He smiled in response to the man’s grin, “Well, yes.”
“But then, what does signify? My other work? Is that really important either? I could try composing wonderful musical works, or day-long entertainment epics, but what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure. And people come to a clean table, which gives them pleasure. And anyway” – the man laughed – “people die; stars die; universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? Of course, if all I did was wipe tables, then of course it would seem a mean and despicable waste of my huge intellectual potential. But because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure. And,” the man said with a smile, “it’s a good way of meeting people. So where are you from anyway?”
It definitely is (and I would encourage that even).
But such resistance cannot be luddite if it actually wants to win. Therefore, its goal cannot be "no AI", but rather "AI used for the benefit of society".
I'm not worried about controlling ASI acting on its own behalf.
What we need is to prevent humans in position of power from using the fledging AI that they control to entrench themselves and stomp on the rest of us.
My grandmother-in-law especially enjoyed our visits, engaging her in conversation, she delighted in serving us a lovely hot pot of tea. We would give her a few days notice so she could bake a cake, later she just bought one.
Thanking of yourself as "redundant" limits your view of a human to that of a machine, and in doing so you are doing humanity a great disservice. I'd recommend reading the Culture series for a vision of a future where AI has essentially taken over and humans can live out their lives as they want instead of as they need to.
You don't need "companies". You need enough customers to buy/support your work so that you get a living out of it.
Being a software developer is a _facet_ of your work. You (unconsciously perhaps) do many other things around/with it that the most efficient AI today cannot do alone. And AGI is still far on the horizon, if not a mirage.
Hey we're talking about a future scenario where AGI actually exists and is vastly better at software development than any human, and can do it much cheaper than current developer salaries.
We're talking about science fiction which may become true much sooner than most people expect.
I would be competing with cheap AGI services so it makes no difference whether I am a freelancer or not.
> Being a software developer is a _facet_ of your work. You (unconsciously perhaps) do many other things around/with it
The non-development parts of my job are not interesting at all. If that's gone then my career is finished. I'm done.
> scenario where AGI actually exists and is vastly better at software development than any human
then humans deservedly should no longer be doing software development, and those who were doing it would necessarily be the economic sacrifices. This has happened to many industries before, and shall continue to happen to others. I don't think there's any necessity to stop it - just ease the transition via taxpayer funded schemes.
However, none of this stops anyone from persuing an artisanal craft - because otherwise, they would be persuing it for economic reasons rather than artistic reasons.
> then humans deservedly should no longer be doing software development
Then you could argue that humans won't "deserve" to exist when aliens show up with superior military technology. This isn't a matter of technology becoming obsolete. It's a matter of human beings becoming obsolete.
No need to call to aliens for that, this happened within human history several times... towards other humans, and towards other species (which some were considered as pest, until it was discovered they were crucial to the ecosystem balance).
That's definitely where the danger of some AI builders is, one more example of how technology _is political_ and the reason it's not so surprising some tech leaders are totally aligned with Trump/Project 2025 (if not funding it).
(all while there is a _real_, _documented_, _non fictional_, _short term_ ubiquitous threat that is global climate change)
You sound really jaded and close minded to me in your posts. If AI replaces software development, the only reason you are "done" is because you are jaded and close minded and seemingly unwilling to adapt to the world and life.
You are totally misunderstanding the point.
I am talking about the hypothetical AGI/ASI scenario where ALL jobs are replaced by machines. Not just software development. The economic value of human labour drops to zero. This is not just about me and my own little career. It would impact everyone.
This is a serious topic that is being discussed and debated at a high level. It is an existential threat to human society. It could be catastrophically disruptive. No one knows how it would play out. There could be severe economic inequality and stratification of society unlike anything we have seen in the past.
I am actually not worried about my situation. ASI is unlikely to arrive that soon.
HN is a place for nerds to discuss technology and its future impact. Nothing has more disruptive potential than AI.
"Governments worldwide (e.g., US AI Executive Order, UK AI Safety Summit, EU AI Act), international organizations (UN), leading AI researchers (including pioneers like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio who have voiced strong concerns), major tech companies, and dedicated research institutes (like the Future of Life Institute, Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk) are actively discussing, researching, and debating the implications and safety of advanced AI."
"If ASI concentrates wealth and power in the hands of those who own or control it, while simultaneously rendering most human labor economically valueless, the resulting inequality could dwarf historical examples based on land, capital, or industrial technology ownership. It raises fundamental questions about resource distribution and societal structure in a post-labor world."
> What if you WANT to have a career or a job which is now done exclusively by AGI?
> If AGI takes my job as a software developer, my career is finished. I don't know what else to do.
Do you want to have a software developer career for the sake of having a software developer career (because you enjoy it), or are you worried about your livelihood?
Use your imagination a little... There are endless things you can do. I don't understand this mindset. Especially if you are intelligent enough to be a competent software developer, you have the capacity to do a LOT or at least in my experience you probably do.
It depends; if you do that job or career for fun, then keep doing it!
If you do that job because you like contributing to society and not because you like the job itself, then find another way to contribute to society.
Even in a scenario where all jobs are taken by AGI (a utopia if we can get rid of capitalism and wealth, but a dystopia if the billionaire class is the only one that benefits), you could do something as profound as raising children, or something as social as organizing music and art festivals.
But there are people who already doing what you are currently doing. Also they do it waaaay better. If this does not make you redundant, why would AI do it?
No they don't. There is a very limited supply of developers who are better than me.
I am talking about a future where we have a practically infinite supply of cheap AGI software developers that are vastly superior to the smartest human being who ever lived.
And where do you find the energy technology required for that to happen?
Hint: it's not on the radar, but if you account for several fundamental breakthroughs in energy production, storage and transport, and all that while having positive side-effects on Earth's ecosystem, within the next 50 years.
Totally agree, IF an AGI can fully replace/improve on the work of developers, it's definitely cheaper.
But: 1/ cheaper isn't always affordable either.
2/ who will engineer/maintain/steer AGI once AGI takes the job? once you make that leap, there's no way back, no one to understand the machine that makes the stuff we rely on.
And that circles back, in some way, with the debate about AI-generated art: there's no human component in it, there's no understanding, no feedback loop, no conversation.
> who will engineer/maintain/steer AGI once AGI takes the job?
Yeah that's the question. A reduced number of human developers may be privileged to work in these companies.
It's hard to imagine a world with cheap artificial super intelligence. It's like we are introducing a new artificial life form into society, whether it's actually conscious or not.
> debate about AI-generated art
I hope there will always be a majority of people who reject AI generated music.
Does digital art reduce analog art in the world? Not even. There’s still more and more, courses, workshops, live performances and physical artefacts.
> and digital is the domain of machines so we can let machines do that now.
Art by machines for machines to understand machines (to the extent they would have a notion of self and of other), fine, do your thing as long as the energy you need does not deprive humans needs.
As for me and many others, life happens in the analog realm, so does art.
I go to art museums regularly and look at framed canvas hanging on the walls. It’s an entirely analog experience minus the occasional digital exhibition. I use this experience as an escape from the digital world and hope it stays this way.
You don't need AI for that. Just come to my house, I can allow you to spend time in analog human experiences like dishes and laundry for free. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.
"essentially" is, regrettably, a misplaced word. I meant "basically" or "generally".
But if the art is expressed as a sequence of bytes/tokens (ex. a song on spotify, a movie on amazon prime, a png, etc.), then it is by definition digital. I think it's reasonable to assume this is how most art is produced and consumed today.
I mean I guess In this obtuse, maybe someone's joy In life is doing dishes and that is their art, then idk maybe but not even then.
First, this just misunderstands what is being said here. For most people, chores like the dishes is a menial task that we will be happy for any reduction in time/effort. In addition, dishes and laundry are considered necessary for modern life.
By contrast, art like music and visual mediums is often associated with joy and the creative act of building something out of making art rather than getting a task done.
To misunderstand this contrast is to misunderstand why we automate things in the first place, to minimize the unnecessary toil and maximize human flourishing. This does the opposite frankly.
A nice thing about doing dishes over creating art is that it's something you can work hard in and get a predictable amount of work done which is gratifying. Meanwhile you can stare at a blank sheet of staff paper in frustration for an hour not knowing the best way to evolve your music composition and it's a really bad experience. That's my experience often. Personally, it's not too difficult for me to invert it / humor the opposite. My context is that I got a degree in music composition and also had several jobs washing dishes. It often goes with having a music degree :)
Obviously the original quote deliberately creates an unfair fight in the arena by matching a conventionally dull-sounding analog task such as "washing dishes" with a sophisticated digital task such as making art (digital since LLMs do it, and that's what the complaint is about).
I could also create an unfair fight by saying "I'd rather have machines organize my spreadsheets (boring digital task) so I can have more time to hang out with other humans I love (appealing analog task)."
For me, by inverting it, I've come to realize it's not about art or dishes, but more about analog and digital. If one is partaking in any digital activity, then the trend of machines entering and taking over that space is inevitable. I think humans will revert more towards prioritizing and finding meaning in purely analog endeavors. Human art will shift back to analog. That's just my personal prediction.
I love your perspective here. I don't agree with all of it, but it really made me think.
I do a lot of photography as a semi-amateur hobby (semi because I occasionally get paid but my goal is not to be a professional.) Often when I'm going out shooting in a city, thousands, maybe even millions have observed the same sight I'm seeing. I'm not snapping the first picture of the Hindenburg or the unveiling of the Empire State Building. But it's my unique perspective that makes my art. People like and recognize my pictures because of my personal composition. In general I think most portrait and street photographers have come to terms with this, and an increasing number of landscape and event photographers in the age of smartphones.
With art there's no "right answer", it's the soul found within the work.
I pranked someone (probably not on April Fools) at an office job I had in High School decades ago. I had a summer job digitizing documents.
I discovered that I could access the Startup folder on other employee's machines on the network via Windows Explorer. I put a script in one of my very rule-following co-worker's folder that was something like: dir dir dir dir (x100) echo All files have been deleted.
I watched them from around the corner when they booted up, saw the flood of file names flash across the screen, and flipped out when they read the message at the bottom. They reached for phone immediately to call the IT admin and I rushed out from around the corner explaining the joke. Never got in trouble. Good times.
His own health choices are a private matter as far as I'm concerned. He held off too long on modern medicine and paid the price for it. Bringing it up here is irrelevant and distracting.
Are you suggesting Apple was not innovative, or that he did not have a role in Apple's innovation?
We can pretend all day that the Apple II, the Mac, iMac, macbook, iPod, iPhone, and iPad would have been exactly the same without Jobs. But in the reality we currently inhabit, he was the person overseeing them all.
Given the farcical nature of those allegations and all that we now know, including that others with access to the Dread Pirate Roberts account assert that the DEA agent making the allegations (who is himself now in prison for attempting to steal some of the silk road bitcoin) had access as well, it will be wonderful if DoJ attempts to bring charges, just to further clear Ross' name.
There are not a shred of evidence that Ross ever had the slightest thing to do with those conversations, and it seems much more likely that the DEA used the DPR account to frame him.
There's something so dull at this point when people mention "impact", "billions of people", etc. Just another thirsty CEO trying to extrude money from the system. Who can blame him. Idk, it's just boring is all I can say.
But I don't think he's wrong necessarily. A friend of mine always said, "The artist of the future will only have to point." I imagine things will continue to progress towards that until we arrive there, wherever that is or whatever it flips into.
In other words, I don't know where it's going, but it's definitely going there.
It's probably an overrated skill depending on the musical task, but to say it's completely useless is really ignorant. Nearly anyone who studies music at the university level or above would find this statement ("completely useless") to be wildly incorrect.
> Random chance would be 8.3%.
A random human won't sing off the cuff with their tonal center magically quantized to one of the twelve keys in our modern western tuning (Equal Temperament).
The smiling emoji at the end of the first paragraph indicates that these statements were made somewhat in jest, or perhaps exaggerated. Of course some uses can be found for absolute pitch. I saw one a couple weeks back, when Jacob Collier was tuning the audience choir to lead into "Somebody to Love" played on the piano. But, hadn't he had absolute pitch, he might just have picked up a reference note from the piano or his in-ear monitors, like a filthy commoner. Usually when making music, having good relative pitch is required, and a reference instrument is mostly handy, making perfect pitch somewhat redundant. But do tell what you're doing with perfect pitch, I'm curious.
And on curiosity, I went to your website and randomly listened to "The Fugue Song" [0]. Really loved it! Very nice moment when the singing comes in, repeating the phrase from the fugy guitar intro. Good song! (I'm a total sucker for Nina Simone's "Love Me Or Leave me", do you know that? A song where she's inserting some counterpoint improvisations in the middle). I'm listening to a bit of "Hiss" now.
> 8.3%
Rounded to the next semitone of course, I left that detail out, it's in the paper.
It's just an anecdote, but: I remember playing in a band with an amateur musician friend who told me had perfect pitch, and it was "very annoying", according to him, when we transposed songs to fit our voices. They just "sounded wrong" to him. He would make beginner mistakes since he relied on pitch memory rather than listening to us to know what to play/sing.
I have no idea how it works in general, but it seems like it was a problem for at least this one guy.
xD Well I didn't expect it to go there. I don't know that song but I'll have to listen to it when I get home.
I don't have perfect pitch but it's not too hard to imagine what I could do with it. For me, it'd simply make a lot of tasks faster. I've spent a lot of time throughout my life transcribing music. I can do it relatively quickly but there's lots of moments where I have to confirm things, or poke around notes finding the matching notes, struggling to clarify shades of a chord based on the presence of notes.
Reading music will be easier for people with AP, especially in singing situations. Even if you're a pianist it will still be helpful. There are a few Marc-Andre Hamelin interviews out there where he describes some of the advantages. It's easier to read music if you know immediately what it's going to sound like. Again, this is possible with relative pitch, but it's just more work and slower.
Arranging and composing away from the keyboard will be much easier with perfect pitch.
As time goes on, it'll be less important, most likely. And yes, there are some downsides obviously. In my final aural training class in music school, we had a competition at the very end of the year for fun. It came down to a team of 3 I was on vs. a team of 3 that had a guy with AP. The final task was to sight-sing a musical 'round' (a composition where the melody repeats in the various voices at different points in different voices overlapping each other). The guy with AP actually ruined it for his team. They mistakenly chose him to finish the round instead of start it. Mid-way through their performance, the pitch on their team had drifted so heavily they were in-between notes on the piano when he took over. He tried to sing 'relative' to everyone else but it was so hard for him. It was so unnatural for him to sing out of key, he couldn't do it; it sounded really bad. Great guy though and a ridiculously good violinist.
> A random human won't sing off the cuff with their tonal center magically quantized to one of the twelve keys in our modern western tuning (Equal Temperament).
Why is that relevant? Whatever pitch they pick would fall into one of the 12 buckets, even if it isn't precisely the correct pitch.
It's not called "in-the-ballpark" pitch, it's called perfect/absolute pitch. Being up to a quarter tone off is a large error in music. Thinking of pitch in terms of 12 buckets is not musically useful. The vast majority of music is based off consonance where being even a few hertz off means unpleasant dissonance. TLDR: Thinking of pitch as 12 buckets is mostly irrelevant.
I always observed that the number of random non-musicians who can get it right using the "major" handful of those twelve keys is remarkable enough to be considered.
Since those are the only 12 notes so many people have been hearing from every direction for so long, and truly confined to not more than a few of the major keys that are "dominant" as a result of modern instrumentation, it gets ingrained in the psyche and the notes are almost memorized by frequency. With nothing in-between, so that's what they reproduce without any training. Or can have a more sensitive ear for out-of-tune notes than an actual music student of a number of years.
Huge +1 to this post. Lots of other posts are off-base about the basic definition.
I've always had strong relative pitch ability and many people mistake my ability for perfect pitch. But in most practical applications, it's not just the _answer_ you arrive at that makes the definition so (because this can be faked), it's _how_ you know it.
People with absolute pitch just _know_ it without thinking -- no tricks, no mental reference note, no memorizing songs, no relying on a certain instrument's timbre, etc., they just know it.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_(disambiguation)