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My use of illusion was not intended to diminish the significance of music. To the contrary, I meant to distinguish it as an exceptional perceptual phenomenon wh
by odyssey7 3y ago
My use of illusion was not intended to diminish the significance of music. To the contrary, I meant to distinguish it as an exceptional perceptual phenomenon which reveals important aspects of the inner workings of human experience.
Somehow, the physical situations of our bodies become perceptual experiences. Usually, those perceptions are mere descriptions of the physical world, for physically navigating it. Some exceptions exist, such as music and optical illusions. The translation from air pressure fluctuations to a tree branch falling is one type of experience, the link to love or hope is another. Rather than being insignificant, my sense is that music understanding will prove to be an emergent capability available in whatever architecture might produce humanlike AGI, because it connects human perception and cognition too thoroughly to not be baked-in. Going further, building models to understand music would be an excellent step toward embodied AI with humanlike cognition.
- andoando 3y agoThis is something I've been thinking about the last 3-4 years and desperately what I am trying to do. I have what I think some interesting ideas and implementations, but no one quite grasps my thought process and I am stuck between believing Im onto something and that I am furiously chasing nothing.
- odyssey7 3y agoMy experience in pursuing this is that I applied to about a dozen on-campus CS grad programs, over the course of two years, noting this research direction, but those applications were all rejected. You would think with the emergence of generative AI that there could be some interest. I suspect the application was of interest, but that universities have a shortage of experts in generative AI, and that a multidisciplinary project like this might be misunderstood within a CS department or would have to be accepted by a very specific advisor who may not exist. The best chance might be to convince investors to help assemble the right team and to provide a viable R&D budget.
- andoando 3y agoOh wow thats nuts. Did you end up attending grad school for something else? Ive been thinking about applying but I haven't even able to find any departments that do research in this area. There is a huge craze around ML as its producing tangible results and it seems the school of thought is that anything else is wasted time. The closest thing Ive found to my own is Wolframs writings. Seriously I know I seem like a delusional nut but this train of thought has really grabbed me. Ive written hundreds of pages of (mostly intelligible) notes/figures and spend countless nights trying to implement what I can so clearly see in my head. Unfortunately I dont have anything concrete yet that would warrant building a team, and its hard to even find people I can discuss my ideas with. I think there ought to be interest in this area in mathematics, philosophy or even linguists though.
- odyssey7 3y agoWould you mind reaching out through a contact method in my profile? The discussion is getting less general so that might be a better avenue.