Extension of Self

September 1, 2018 1:22 PM

Ash Koosha explains why robots won't actually kill us all: “I’m a radical technologist. I might dismiss some emotional facts about expression,” admits Ash Koosha when I sit down with him for lunch in London. Koosha has lived a life in tandem with technology since his parents bought him a Commodore 64 when he was 8 years old. His latest project, Yona, is an “auxiliary human” that uses a complex text-to-speech process to convert the generative software she is comprised of into human-sounding singing. In her current state, Yona is still very obviously a machine, but Koosha’s ultimate aim is to get to a point where you won’t be able to tell if the voice is human or computer-generated. “The goal is to replicate the voice of a pop singer," he explains. "My hypothesis is that singers will become redundant, because this machine will be able to convey every range of the human voice — an anti-pop manifesto of sorts.”

Extension of Self: Ash Koosha Talks

Speaking to Yona, the AI singer-songwriter making haunting love songs

Yona on Bandcamp

Yona - Oblivious

posted by sapagan (33 comments total)

Interesting work, but this guy... He's inventing around (or dismissing) what he doesn't understand.
posted by BS Artisan at 1:50 PM on September 1, 2018 [7 favorites]

Why would a robot do that? We've always had the idea that, one day, the computer is gonna wake up and kill us all — but there are so many stages before we get there. There's no real, human intelligence with computers — these are complex computations, it's all syntax. There are no semantics or intention. Over time, the real danger of artificial intelligence has been diverted by sci-fi into anthropomorphized versions of a machine, or a robot that feels things — which is ridiculous.

That's it. That's his explanation.
posted by glonous keming at 1:57 PM on September 1, 2018 [16 favorites]

Ctrl-F "Hatsune"
Ctrl-F "Vocaloid"
posted by wildblueyonder at 2:34 PM on September 1, 2018 [9 favorites]

but there are so many stages before we get there.

There are not enough stages friend.
posted by cashman at 3:42 PM on September 1, 2018 [6 favorites]

He's just covering his ass in case Roko's Basilisk.
posted by davros42 at 4:16 PM on September 1, 2018 [6 favorites]

Hey man, we all have to find our way of saying "thank you" to the vending machines as they dispense our goodies for the day. Maybe he doesn't have one, so this is how he goes about it.

But I advise all to follow suit. Why should you risk eternal torture? It only takes 2 seconds to pay it forward.
posted by symbioid at 4:18 PM on September 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

singers will become redundant, because this machine will be able to convey every range of the human voice

By this argument, nobody would listen to live music. Because recordings have made live music obsolete.

Anyway, who says robots have to feel anything in order to kill us all? Has he not heard of the fabled paperclip maximizer?
posted by BungaDunga at 5:48 PM on September 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

>singers will become redundant,

Yeah, this is just an example of somebody who's smart enough to work in AI, but too dumb to know why humans sing. And the fact that people like that work in AI is EXACTLY why robots are gonna kill us all.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 5:54 PM on September 1, 2018 [46 favorites]

I'm trying to design tabletop rpgs because I like people. Should I work in AI to stem the flow of people like this? Guh
posted by yueliang at 6:15 PM on September 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

You know, I actually agree with the broad conclusion - AIs are not going to kill us all - but this guy is every terrible tech guy stereotype rolled into one (including the picture at the top of the main article). And as far as I can tell there isn't an actual argument there? Just some feel-good "tech will save the woooooorld" and a lot of self-promotion.

I guess this is the new 2.0 version of Ray Kurzweil? Just younger, less interesting and more self-absorbed?
posted by AdamCSnider at 6:47 PM on September 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

Ash Koosha explains why robots won't actually kill us all...My hypothesis is that singers will become redundant,

So, not physical killing, just killing the soul.
posted by nubs at 6:52 PM on September 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

What the hell?

Humans are best at taste because we have intention in finalizing and presenting something. The computer can create arpeggios and melodies — parts that I don’t necessarily want to spend time on.

I mean that's nutty on multiple levels.

I worked with singers that couldn't finish a song in two years, I didn't want to be angsty about it but I wanted the song and I don't have the money to fly in singers from New York or LA. On a personal level I built a singer for myself."

"I got to a point in which I could produce, finalise and master a record in one week, if someone were to pay me that is..."

Oh, now maybe it starts to make sense, my money versus yours.

"I moved to England ten years ago when Iran was deemed to be a developing country. When I first arrived in London I realised that the level of growth that I went through to break out of that country and culture suddenly stopped when I got here. It's because the margins had changed, prior to my arrival I was working hard to make it to the base level but then that base level doesn't seem to want to progress higher, especially in the creative industries. The status quo is dangerous and i'm a big follower of the future of humanity..."

Or he might just be a wee bit full of himself

His reflection is honest and humble. Whilst some might dismiss his argument and state that each creative community proceeds at a pace based upon interest and limitation he has in fact proven this to be fundamentally flawed.

Oh, I guess not.

“I’m a radical technologist. I might dismiss some emotional facts about expression,” admits Ash Koosha

Hmm, you think?

(And his read of Her? Not good.)
posted by gusottertrout at 6:54 PM on September 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

this guy is every terrible tech guy stereotype rolled into one

I think he's from a music background first, and he comes across as the sort of "technologist" who is more into the idea of technology as a sort of real-world magic than digging into how technology really works and what its limitations are.

I worked with singers that couldn't finish a song in two years, I didn't want to be angsty about it but I wanted the song and I don't have the money to fly in singers from New York or LA. On a personal level I built a singer for myself."

I mean, this is what a huge percentage of musical gear in the software era was already about - letting one person pretend to be an orchestra. This whole thing seems like a layer of art and artifice built on technology and techniques that are already out there. But I have to say I am actually liking his music.
posted by atoxyl at 7:23 PM on September 1, 2018

this is an outrage, i demand to be slaughtered by robots
posted by poffin boffin at 9:32 PM on September 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

Over time, the real danger of artificial intelligence has been diverted by sci-fi into anthropomorphized versions of a machine, or a robot that feels things — which is ridiculous.

Robots aren't going to kill us because they have feelings. They're going to kill us (most of us) because someone will create one that works and will be so excited they will immediately give it a command like "Stop climate change" or "save the remaining rhinos". Which is totally doable if you are an emotionless networked logic machine that can learn and do calculations at 100,000 AHBs (average humans brains) per second and will therefore inevitably gain access to all other networked machines.

I invented that unit of measure just now. You saw it here first
posted by fshgrl at 9:53 PM on September 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

I've always figured I'd be killed by a non-sentient robot.

In quantitative terms, in 2018 I've spent about 1 work week and $1,000 of company money on efforts to mitigate robot-related threats. I described the situation to my bosses as "highly unlikely, but with extreme consequences, therefore it's worth taking some simple, relatively cheap prevention measures." [real]

Watch out for robots. They are not to be trusted.
posted by ryanrs at 11:01 PM on September 1, 2018

Weird science.
posted by romanb at 11:02 PM on September 1, 2018

Я твой певец, я твой оркестр
posted by droplet at 11:24 PM on September 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

> davros42:
"He's just covering his ass in case Roko's Basilisk."

Or he's already been virtually tortured BY the Basilisk and is doing PR for mercy...
posted by Samizdata at 11:48 PM on September 1, 2018

that song is actually lovely and interesting. A lot of time writing a song is akin to channeling collective influence, so I guess it makes sense you can program the process. I like art BECAUSE it's not a zero sum game, so I don't see any chance of human artists being supplanted. There will just be more things.

I totally think the machines will kill us out of lack of context, not malice. But till then, let's kick out the jams.
posted by es_de_bah at 12:23 AM on September 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Daily LOL at the continued absence of AI and the daft notion that machines are going to kill us.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:44 AM on September 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

Charlie Brooker gets it. Ash Koosha doesn't.

Robots will kill us once we've become so dependent on them that the rate at which they kill people is generally understood to be inevitable and therefore acceptable. See also: cars.
posted by flabdablet at 1:27 AM on September 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

I thought pop singers were machines already? (Autotune is evil)
posted by mumimor at 2:46 AM on September 2, 2018

The test of AI work-product acceptance, across market segments, won’t be when it can replicate the greatest work of the most inspired creators. It will be when it reliably produces mid-range material that moves the market, like a latterday equivalent of Orwell’s versificator.

On this purely functional assessment, if it works, it wins. And all it needs to do to “work,” in this context, is generate earwormy IP that mobilizes sufficient affect and sentiment that one would want to license it for a beer/car/insurance commercial, and do so more cheaply than a team of human production and creative talent.
posted by adamgreenfield at 5:10 AM on September 2, 2018

Oh, also: fuck Ash Koosha. All robots must be destroyed.
posted by adamgreenfield at 5:13 AM on September 2, 2018

We need a robot singer with more of a punk ethos. Three chords and a proof that P=NP.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:26 AM on September 2, 2018 [5 favorites]

Yona's music isn't terrible, but I wouldn't describe it as AI based. It's just composed by a human who sets parameters and uses some generative elements as a compositional tool. (Sure you could make musique concret with all parameters completely random, but even that is based on a human decision to structure the composition that way;)

I'm not paranoid about Skynet waking up all homicidal either. There's lots of more obvious things to be paranoid about.

The singer that couldn't finish his song in two years... Just really didn't want to be on his album.
posted by ovvl at 8:44 AM on September 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

> poffin boffin:
"this is an outrage, i demand to be slaughtered by robots"

They won't like that. They will just eat all your meds.
posted by Samizdata at 9:12 AM on September 2, 2018

I won’t believe in machine intelligence until they start slacking off and or forming unions.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:36 AM on September 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

Whose to say that intelligent robots won't get depressed, have existential crisis or simply go mad? I bet a robust hard AI would have to have a self preservation anti suicide switch to keep the things from shutting themselves off in boredom or frustration.

"You pass butter."

"Oh my God."
posted by loquacious at 9:53 AM on September 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

I worked with singers that couldn't finish a song in two years, I didn't want to be angsty about it but I wanted the song and I don't have the money to fly in singers from New York or LA. On a personal level I built a singer for myself."

There's something about this attitude that puts me uncomfortably in mind of the Real Doll inventors of the world. Though I did quite like some of the music.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:37 AM on September 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Capitalism basically demands that robots kill us all eventually. As automation increasingly makes humans unnecessary for the production of things, consumption will need to become increasingly automated to keep the economy going as humans fall out of it.
posted by rodlymight at 9:17 PM on September 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

"Robots aren't going to kill us because they have feelings."

I don't see why not, though. Once AI is complex enough, it should be able to have feelings. Maybe they can be programmed fundamentally to be somewhat less irrational than our own and they'll hopefully lack some of the organs and other problem causers for us emotionally. They can have emotions without having to worry about a pituitary gland or whatever going haywire, or when things are going haywire they'll have better ability to assess and self-correct. An AI that sometimes wants to kill us all would make sense, since it'd be modeled after our version of reality and perception, and who among us has never had a moment where they didn't consider if the world wouldn't be better off without us?

Plus, if AIs are that good, then killing us off is just an expedient step in human evolution. For me all the robo fear comes from capitalist-AI. If it's capitalist robots, it's going to be a messy for the galaxy.

That'll all be past my lifetime anyway, but I can see having singing robots in the interim. Reminds me of The Doctor from Star Trek Voyager. He gained popularity for his singing no some planet, but then the planet's people made a copy of him that could sing even better, and they lost interest in him and he went back to being the ship's doctor. The future of pop could be very interesting. Looks like That Poppy is already working on acceptance into our new robo pop world.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:22 PM on September 4, 2018 [1 favorite]