this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2026
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Unpopular Opinion

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AI music is objectively good and getting even better and that's a good thing for me as a music consumer. (feddit.uk)
submitted 3 days ago by Iconoclast@feddit.uk to c/unpopularopinion@lemmy.world
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I have a very pragmatic view on music: all I care about is whether it sounds good or not. That's it. That's literally it. And from that standpoint the advent of AI music has been a major net positive for me.

You can choose to ignore that and come tell me about the ethics of using AI or how you care about the story behind the song and so on and that's all fine but just note that you're no longer addressing what I'm actually saying here.

I'm also not claiming it's great - only that it's good. I've yet to discover an AI song that I go back to like I do with many human-made songs but if I want to put on a playlist playing in the background then one consisting of entirely AI-made music reliably provides me well above average track after another whereas with organic music I need to sift through a ton of absolute crap to stumble upon the occasional good track that still rarely exceeds what AI is able to output. I can go on YouTube and put on a 2 hour playlist of Jazz House or similar and I don't get the urge to skip a single track.

Currently I feel like where AI still trips is lyrics - they still are only plausible sounding nonsense once you actually start paying attention to it but especially for instrumental music it has far exceeded the level of a good average human artist.

Few examples of what I'm refering to: with vocals and without.

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[–] DonkeyStar@lemmy.world 68 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I can’t believe nobody’s called you out on not knowing what “objectively” means yet.

[–] Vespair@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I just think people understand modern colloquial use, even if OP below erroneously declares it was intentional. In the same way we can parse "I could literally eat a horse right now" as, in fact not literal, we can likewise parse the colloquial use of "objective" in this case.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

No. It's not the same as "literal/figurative". At least not yet. And it's important that we don't allow that to happen to these words as well.

Language directly informs our thoughts. Like literally, we think in our respective language, and controlling/molding that is an extremely powerful tool of control and oppression. Perhaps the most powerful. Read 1984 if you want someone to explain it much better than I ever could.

We cannot allow words like "objective" and "subjective" to colloquially mean the same thing. It will just continue making it more and more difficult for people to grasp what's real and what is not.

[–] petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone -1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I just don't think that's how it works, man.

The ministries of truth, peace, etc. didn't control people's thoughts by confusing the dictionary, they controlled them with social pressure. The point of twisting language the way they did was to goad people into following along: the idea being that the more people pretend to believe something like 2+2=5, the more they will actually believe it—or, the less their belief or not even matters. Because it's safer to agree. Nobody wants to be abnormal. And it is "normal" to believe the war is for peace.

What's another example of this...

I don't like the way that AI people insist that AI is a tool. Not that I disagree with them; there's no twist of language. AI is, technically, an object which a person can manipulate toward some end.

I don't like it because that's not what they mean. When they say "tool," they mean "not a disaster." "No side-effects." "To be used responsibly," and that "the irresponsible get what they deserve." Their insistance on the word "tool" is to close their ears and maintain the arrogant posturing that AI is our slave and we are its master. It is to imply shame or stupidity or incompetence for not agreeing with them.

But I can't get any of that from the word "tool" alone. A tool is, like, a wrench. What does a wrench mean to me?

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

When was the last time it read the book? The entire point of Newspeak was to shape how people thought, and it worked like gangbusters.

To meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania, the Party created Newspeak, a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to prevent people from being able to think critically. The Newspeak language thus limits the person's ability to articulate and communicate abstract concepts, such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will,[1][2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

You can't grasp the concept of personal identity, let alone internalize it and actually have one, if the concept for it doesn't exist in the language.

Orwell could not be more clear about this stuff. To the point where my teenage (before witnessing it first hand in the US) self found those parts to be boring and far fetched. Boy was I wrong.

From the book:

the lexicologist character Syme discusses his editorial work on the latest edition of the Newspeak Dictionary:

By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of The Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like Freedom is Slavery when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.[1]

[–] petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I haven't read the book in a while, no. But I'm not above disagreeing with Orwell.

You can't grasp the concept of personal identity, let alone internalize is and actually have one, if the concept for it doesn't exist in the language.

I just do not believe it works this way.

Think about the implications of this: how does our language have this concept of identity now when it didn't used to?

What I see Orwell gesturing at in these paragraphs you've shown me is an intentionally poor education. A poor vocabulary would be a component of that, an important vector, but it's not of the same kind as the colloquial usage of 'literally'.

What you're suggesting (charitably, I think) is that the corrosion of 'objective' and 'subjective' leads to a person's inability to distinguish lies, not to be able to rediscover the concept—and rediscover it quite easily, I might add—which I find ridiculous. You don't need the word 'lies' to identify that something that was said is not something that was, even if you have trouble expressing it.

Or more to the point, people who believe that freedom is slavery do not believe so because they think those words mean the same thing. Either, they have never been taught what freedom is and don't care to invent it, or they have been convinced that freedom is only the power to choose sin intentionally, which is a sentimental lesson, not a linguistic one.

The only thing that bothers me is the idea that words carry this moralistic baggage themselves, or the vague suggestion that a person unaware of the Orwellian state could still be led by the phrase "freedom is slavery" into the same lobotimized world view that its people have.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I mean you can think what you want, or even write a dissertation about it and have it published. But what I'm saying is established fact among people who dedicate their lives to this.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379404191_The_Semiotics_of_Newspeak_Language_Power_and_Thought_Control_in_Orwell's_1984

https://journal.ijarms.org/index.php/ijarms/article/view/757

https://www.academia.edu/721095/Orwell_and_the_Power_of_Language

And here's Orwell himself defending his use of language as a means of control in the novel:

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

This last one is actually really interesting, I recommend reading the entire thing.

[–] DonkeyStar@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I object to the death of literal, as well. These things only happen if we collectively allow it, and I’d rather not. Especially with the declining literacy rate.

[–] Vespair@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago

You're welcome to do so, honestly probably even right to, but know that unfortunately to the majority who have integrated the colloquial use you're probably going to come off similar to the guy who insists on using the "Þ" instead of "th."