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> I wonder if "The Orchestra that draws no salary" was as controversial at the time as "Artisans won't complain about work-life balance" is today. Ex-Orchestra

> I wonder if "The Orchestra that draws no salary" was as controversial at the time as "Artisans won't complain about work-life balance" is today. Ex-Orchestra player here. I don't think so. A musician who's not playing in an orchestra pit in a play/performance can always play in a concert or in future times in a recording orchestra, or have a solo career. Using the same skill set they have, and even earning more in the process. Employees replaced by AI find that their whole skill set captured by the said AI, and they're now irrelevant without a new set of skills. Getting a new skillset requires time, money and effort, and sometimes substantial background. What we're going through is much more damaging. The former one was transformative, not destructive.

diggan 2y ago
I'm not sure if I'm dumb or something, but I don't see the difference in your examples. First: Musician used to play orchestra, but now automation might replace them. Musician can take their skills elsewhere as they still posses them Second: Software developer (for example) used to write CRUD apps, but now automation might replace them. Developer can take their skills elsewhere as they still posses them. I don't see how in the second example, somehow the skills as "destroyed" while in the first example, they're used somewhere else instead of destroyed.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  A cello player is a cello player everywhere. They can use the same instrument, same reflexes, and what they used to play in a different environment. Consider a developer versed in CRUD apps obsoleted by a code generator AI and, they need to pivot to something different. e.g.: UI, simulation, games or system. That pivot will require different languages, different mindset, different knowledge (simulation and games needs different sets of deep math, UI needs new tools and paradigms, system requires a different knowledge stack from hardware to lower levels of OS, etc.). They need to learn, get experience, go through hoops, etc. A musician can play in an orchestra pit in 2PM and play with a symphony at 8PM. They just need a little rest and a meal in between (had friends doing exactly that). If said musician is forced to change their instrument. e.g. from cello to tuba, or cello to timpani, the effect will be the same as software developer's. Some things would carry over, but others needs to be replaced completely.
  - diggan 2y ago
    > A cello player is a cello player everywhere. They can use the same instrument, same reflexes, and what they used to play in a different environment. But programming is exactly the same. A programmer knows how to program, and they can program all sorts of different things, with different languages, without having learn how to program from scratch each time. Most programming languages/projects are more similar to the rest, than different. > A musician can play in an orchestra pit in 2PM and play with a symphony at 8PM. In your developer example, it would be more fitting to compare it to that they could build CRUD apps, or desktop applications, and it wouldn't be that much different. Plenty of programmers work in multiple "fields" at the same time, just like a Cello player might.
    - bayindirh 2y ago
      > But programming is exactly the same. Respectfully, no. You're right about picking up programming languages, but missing the nuance about developing different genres of software. I develop utilities, material simulation systems (think finite element, boundary element, etc.), and used to develop an AI system (a multi-agent collectively intelligent system, an autonomous marketplace). The knowledge required in each one of these is vastly different. First one requires OS knowledge and is generally I/O bound, so you try write good code, talk sensibly with the OS, but you don't need to optimize beyond the obvious pain points. Writing simulations is completely different. I do care about the language, how it behaves, how I can extract every bit of performance from the CPU, while implementing numerical differential equations which needs to be exact, accurate and precise, while not compromising the performance of the codebase. I benchmark memory and CPU separately and as a whole, while not deviating from ground truth values. Otherwise things go very bad. AI system was latency sensitive. I needed to make it fast while not bogging down the system as a whole, it needed to scale while being intelligent about what to do, and be flexible enough. This required strategies, self-tuning, etc. It was no neural net, so it was a completely different beast. System programming is similar. Latency sensitive, talking correctly with the OS, and not bogging the system down while doing useful work. Learning programming languages is easy. Implementing differential equations with demoscene levels of optimization while being exact and accurate is not. Heck, even the usage patterns for the same programming language is different between different genres of software.
- bad_haircut72 2y ago
  If automation takes your job, there are now less overall positions and more people competing for them (you and everyone else who got laid off) so its not like you can "just" take your skills elsewhere, there may be nowhere else to go.
  - diggan 2y ago
    How is that different from the hypothetical Cello player? Once enough automatized cello players exists, how could they go anywhere else?
    - bad_haircut72 2y ago
      Thats exactly the point I was trying to make.
  - whtsthmttrmn 2y ago
    This is assuming we're at some sort of job ceiling and no new jobs will ever be created.
vunderba 2y ago
I agree with respect to that old advertisement, but GenAI + acoustic physical modeling (SWAM) are likely poised to disrupt music more than you'd think. You can 100% believe that the moment a composer/company/etc. can sketch out the cello/viola/whatever line of a song as pure midi and have an AI that can render it in a realistic articulable fashion (think some kind of futuristic band in a box coupled with physical modeling of the instrument)... a TON OF GIG/SESSION musicians will unfortunately lose their jobs. It also wouldn't surprise me with the advent of MPE (Seaboard, Linnstrument, Osmose) that we start to see more instrumental approximations that are considered good enough for many lines of work. Obviously though live performances will always have their place. https://youtu.be/11Qprwtzl6s?si=qKlWX35zeOHIkiSS https://youtu.be/11Qprwtzl6s?si=qKlWX35zeOHIkiSS
- bayindirh 2y ago
  The comment I have written taken both examples during their eras of the respective advertisements. So it was what records did to orchestra players vs. what AI did to programmers. Good sound fonts, a good sound cards (DACs) and MIDI was already good enough to render complex orchestrations at impeccable quality since 00s. We're just seeing it trickle down to ordinary attic musicians' budget limits. I like Venus Theory's channel and videos for that reason. He shows what can be done with bog standard software of today, but it was already possible yesterday.

diggan 2y ago

I'm not sure if I'm dumb or something, but I don't see the difference in your examples. First: Musician used to play orchestra, but now automation might replace them. Musician can take their skills elsewhere as they still posses them Second: Software developer (for example) used to write CRUD apps, but now automation might replace them. Developer can take their skills elsewhere as they still posses them. I don't see how in the second example, somehow the skills as "destroyed" while in the first example, they're used somewhere else instead of destroyed.

bayindirh 2y ago
A cello player is a cello player everywhere. They can use the same instrument, same reflexes, and what they used to play in a different environment. Consider a developer versed in CRUD apps obsoleted by a code generator AI and, they need to pivot to something different. e.g.: UI, simulation, games or system. That pivot will require different languages, different mindset, different knowledge (simulation and games needs different sets of deep math, UI needs new tools and paradigms, system requires a different knowledge stack from hardware to lower levels of OS, etc.). They need to learn, get experience, go through hoops, etc. A musician can play in an orchestra pit in 2PM and play with a symphony at 8PM. They just need a little rest and a meal in between (had friends doing exactly that). If said musician is forced to change their instrument. e.g. from cello to tuba, or cello to timpani, the effect will be the same as software developer's. Some things would carry over, but others needs to be replaced completely.
- diggan 2y ago
  > A cello player is a cello player everywhere. They can use the same instrument, same reflexes, and what they used to play in a different environment. But programming is exactly the same. A programmer knows how to program, and they can program all sorts of different things, with different languages, without having learn how to program from scratch each time. Most programming languages/projects are more similar to the rest, than different. > A musician can play in an orchestra pit in 2PM and play with a symphony at 8PM. In your developer example, it would be more fitting to compare it to that they could build CRUD apps, or desktop applications, and it wouldn't be that much different. Plenty of programmers work in multiple "fields" at the same time, just like a Cello player might.
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    > But programming is exactly the same. Respectfully, no. You're right about picking up programming languages, but missing the nuance about developing different genres of software. I develop utilities, material simulation systems (think finite element, boundary element, etc.), and used to develop an AI system (a multi-agent collectively intelligent system, an autonomous marketplace). The knowledge required in each one of these is vastly different. First one requires OS knowledge and is generally I/O bound, so you try write good code, talk sensibly with the OS, but you don't need to optimize beyond the obvious pain points. Writing simulations is completely different. I do care about the language, how it behaves, how I can extract every bit of performance from the CPU, while implementing numerical differential equations which needs to be exact, accurate and precise, while not compromising the performance of the codebase. I benchmark memory and CPU separately and as a whole, while not deviating from ground truth values. Otherwise things go very bad. AI system was latency sensitive. I needed to make it fast while not bogging down the system as a whole, it needed to scale while being intelligent about what to do, and be flexible enough. This required strategies, self-tuning, etc. It was no neural net, so it was a completely different beast. System programming is similar. Latency sensitive, talking correctly with the OS, and not bogging the system down while doing useful work. Learning programming languages is easy. Implementing differential equations with demoscene levels of optimization while being exact and accurate is not. Heck, even the usage patterns for the same programming language is different between different genres of software.
bad_haircut72 2y ago
If automation takes your job, there are now less overall positions and more people competing for them (you and everyone else who got laid off) so its not like you can "just" take your skills elsewhere, there may be nowhere else to go.
- diggan 2y ago
  How is that different from the hypothetical Cello player? Once enough automatized cello players exists, how could they go anywhere else?
  - bad_haircut72 2y ago
    Thats exactly the point I was trying to make.
- whtsthmttrmn 2y ago
  This is assuming we're at some sort of job ceiling and no new jobs will ever be created.

vunderba 2y ago

I agree with respect to that old advertisement, but GenAI + acoustic physical modeling (SWAM) are likely poised to disrupt music more than you'd think. You can 100% believe that the moment a composer/company/etc. can sketch out the cello/viola/whatever line of a song as pure midi and have an AI that can render it in a realistic articulable fashion (think some kind of futuristic band in a box coupled with physical modeling of the instrument)... a TON OF GIG/SESSION musicians will unfortunately lose their jobs. It also wouldn't surprise me with the advent of MPE (Seaboard, Linnstrument, Osmose) that we start to see more instrumental approximations that are considered good enough for many lines of work. Obviously though live performances will always have their place. https://youtu.be/11Qprwtzl6s?si=qKlWX35zeOHIkiSS https://youtu.be/11Qprwtzl6s?si=qKlWX35zeOHIkiSS

bayindirh 2y ago
The comment I have written taken both examples during their eras of the respective advertisements. So it was what records did to orchestra players vs. what AI did to programmers. Good sound fonts, a good sound cards (DACs) and MIDI was already good enough to render complex orchestrations at impeccable quality since 00s. We're just seeing it trickle down to ordinary attic musicians' budget limits. I like Venus Theory's channel and videos for that reason. He shows what can be done with bog standard software of today, but it was already possible yesterday.