4 ms·

The title of the article is really kind of nonsense in a way. I mean I could write music and declare I had completed Beethoven's Unfinished Tenth Symphony, but

The title of the article is really kind of nonsense in a way. I mean I could write music and declare I had completed Beethoven's Unfinished Tenth Symphony, but it wouldn't mean I did a good job. Unless it's deeply compelling, believable, or otherwise worthy of performance and audience applause, it really doesn't mean much - at least based on that title.

int_19h 5y ago
The article specifically talks about how they have tested it with audiences, who were unable to tell the AI-generated bits from the original ones.
- platz 5y ago
  How do you know beethoven didn't intend for the remainder to be 79 bars of silence? (This is a serious question.) Fundamentally, current A.I. is predicated on replicating stationary distributions. In that sense they are deeply conservative and can only "predict the past", instead of creating true novelty. > they have tested it with audiences What do they do if the audience says that there are too many notes?
- default-kramer 5y ago
  Indeed. It's a cool project, but I don't think this is a great success metric. A better metric would be to have a human composer do the same task, and have audiences judge whether they like the human- or AI-generated result better.
  - lom 5y ago
    No, that’s completely flawed. Beethoven’s style of music is not about liking it or not, it’s about his way of understanding and composing music. If you wanted to know if they liked the music more, you could play any modern song and it would probably score higher, and I say that as a classical music fan. To give an example, I would always go to a Mozart concert if the chance comes up, despite me not really liking his music a lot, there’s still no denying that they’re musical masterpieces and provide more than nice sounding tunes.
    - default-kramer 5y ago
      Sorry, "like" was a bad choice of words. I was assuming that the test audiences had a certain level of musical education and understood that the goal was to produce a Beethoven-sounding result.
- powersnail 5y ago
  > We challenged the audience to determine where Beethoven’s phrases ended and where the A.I. extrapolation began. They couldn’t. I'd say that's a pretty weak test. The AI could have repeated the previous phrases for 20 times, and the audience won't be able to tell where exactly to draw the line, but they'll realize that something is wrong. It's an interesting feat. But it's nowhere near "How Artificial Intelligence Completed Beethoven’s Unfinished Tenth Symphony".
- pugworthy 5y ago
  True, though my point was directed at the title.

int_19h 5y ago

The article specifically talks about how they have tested it with audiences, who were unable to tell the AI-generated bits from the original ones.

platz 5y ago
How do you know beethoven didn't intend for the remainder to be 79 bars of silence? (This is a serious question.) Fundamentally, current A.I. is predicated on replicating stationary distributions. In that sense they are deeply conservative and can only "predict the past", instead of creating true novelty. > they have tested it with audiences What do they do if the audience says that there are too many notes?
default-kramer 5y ago
Indeed. It's a cool project, but I don't think this is a great success metric. A better metric would be to have a human composer do the same task, and have audiences judge whether they like the human- or AI-generated result better.
- lom 5y ago
  No, that’s completely flawed. Beethoven’s style of music is not about liking it or not, it’s about his way of understanding and composing music. If you wanted to know if they liked the music more, you could play any modern song and it would probably score higher, and I say that as a classical music fan. To give an example, I would always go to a Mozart concert if the chance comes up, despite me not really liking his music a lot, there’s still no denying that they’re musical masterpieces and provide more than nice sounding tunes.
  - default-kramer 5y ago
    Sorry, "like" was a bad choice of words. I was assuming that the test audiences had a certain level of musical education and understood that the goal was to produce a Beethoven-sounding result.
powersnail 5y ago
> We challenged the audience to determine where Beethoven’s phrases ended and where the A.I. extrapolation began. They couldn’t. I'd say that's a pretty weak test. The AI could have repeated the previous phrases for 20 times, and the audience won't be able to tell where exactly to draw the line, but they'll realize that something is wrong. It's an interesting feat. But it's nowhere near "How Artificial Intelligence Completed Beethoven’s Unfinished Tenth Symphony".
pugworthy 5y ago
True, though my point was directed at the title.