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The false dichotomy you present does not become any more credible in the form of a thought experiment.

This is literally the situation the comment I'm responding to set up

The music is produced by a large team and the headlining artist reduced to a brand in that case, but ultimately it is still a team of people. The use of AI in their place forecloses the possibility of their artistic drive overcoming and subverting the conformist demands of the music industry.


Lobotomywave


It is a shame they are indifferent to the degree of AI slop ('Then came the order. Not a shutdown-- something worse. The routers didn't go silent. They screamed. Filtering rules conflicted. Routes flapped. The network began eating itself alive.') as it neither lends credibility to the source nor respects the humanity of the story's subjects. It would be far better were other HN readers more discerning.


The use of the AI drums would pollute your original guitar work with sounds that, interpreted as music, are necessarily derivative and unsentimental. I agree that the technological aspect is a red herring, but art and coding are dissimilar in their aims.


Does this apply to all genres or just highly produced popular music? I would not be surprised if I failed to detect an AI song as background in a television commercial, but it is difficult to imagine that anyone could fail to pick out an AI impersonation were you to slip one in to a record like 'João Voz e Violão.'


It really depends on the style, yes. You could probably slip one into any modern pop/dance/club/EDM album and no one would know as long as the vocals sounds like the performer. For styles which are very unique with that sort of imperfect human touch that makes music so enjoyable, it would likely be obvious, at least at the moment.


Unfortunately science just isn't as glamorous as you portray it. Many researchers at many institutions have demonstrated the toxicity in question but it turns out that this does not make you rich and famous. It is quite difficult to become famous by conducting scientific research carefully and responsibly (much to my chagrin). It is the popularizers who receive notoriety, and those are a mixed bag. Few scientists care to enter that field.

"The doses of glyphosate that produce these neurotoxic effects vary widely but are lower than the limits set by regulatory agencies. Although there are important discrepancies between the analyzed findings, it is unequivocal that exposure to glyphosate produces important alterations in the structure and function of the nervous system of humans, rodents, fish, and invertebrates."

Costas-Ferreira C, Durán R, Faro LRF. Toxic Effects of Glyphosate on the Nervous System: A Systematic Review. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 2022; 23(9):4605. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms23094605

"Today, a growing body of literature shows in vitro, in vivo, and epidemiological evidence for the toxicity of glyphosate across animal species."

Rachel Lacroix, Deborah M Kurrasch, Glyphosate toxicity: in vivo, in vitro, and epidemiological evidence, Toxicological Sciences, Volume 192, Issue 2, April 2023, Pages 131–140, https://doi.org/10.1093/toxsci/kfad018

"Utilizing shotgun metagenomic sequencing of fecal samples from C57BL/6 J mice, we show that glyphosate exposure at doses approximating the U.S. ADI significantly impacts gut microbiota composition. These gut microbial alterations were associated with effects on gut homeostasis characterized by increased proinflammatory CD4+IL17A+ T cells and Lipocalin-2, a known marker of intestinal inflammation."

Peter C. Lehman, Nicole Cady, Sudeep Ghimire, Shailesh K. Shahi, Rachel L. Shrode, Hans-Joachim Lehmler, Ashutosh K. Mangalam, Low-dose glyphosate exposure alters gut microbiota composition and modulates gut homeostasis, Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology, Volume 100, 2023, 104149, ISSN 1382-6689, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.etap.2023.104149. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138266892...)


I quickly checked the first study linked and it's a meta analysis.

It relies on studies in rodent that get exposed to amounts of glyphosate that are absurdly high. Equivalent human absorption would be in the gram range, to the point where someone eating 250g of bread everyday would have 1% of this mass ingested as glyphosate.

By this standard, things like vitamins and minerals are toxic as well.

It makes no sense, to me it looks like bad science.


I thought that from reading the first part of the first meta sample too, but in that same paragraph is mention of a second study that apparently did find relevant issues at low doses in vitro of human cells at environmentally relevant concentration levels.

In fact the purpose of meta analysis is to compare and contrast the conflicting research and results on a topic. It's very useful when forming a scientific view.


I'm not against meta-analysis, but if those analyses rely on studies that have flawed methodologies, it is just an exercise in statistical hacking. With enough massaging, you will find something eventually.

I don't have time to check in detail; can you link the study finding issues at relevant doses?

Anyway, my thinking is that if there was such a big problem, we would have found it already. It affects the food supply of so many; it seems unlikely that there are significant issues that wouldn't show up in the population at large.

The real concern is environmental impact and, particularly, effects on insects. But since they are going to use something else that may or may not be worse, it's probably better to not ban the stuff until it can be proved that the damage is worse than the benefits…


You have not assessed the facts critically. The argument in favor of glyphosate's safety is that, as the herbicidal action is the result of disrupting an amino acid synthesis pathway that in animals does not exist, it is therefore harmless to animals. This argument is already fallacious: all it does is establish the mechanism by which it is harmful to plants. These studies evidence that glyphosate is harmful to animals and investigate the mechanisms underlying the harm. The fact that these experimental conditions are not the same conditions under which glyphosate is consumed in the food chain does not make it bad science, because science is concerned with knowledge that generalizes (e.g. biological mechanisms and pathways) and these mechanisms cannot be gleaned by reproducing the conditions already in place.

The comparison with vitamins is not relevant, and to bring it up suggests you are not thinking clearly.


To me it is you who is clearly confused. The vitamin parallel is very relevant; at the concentration used in the studies, vitamins would be toxic as well. The poison is the dose. Using dosages far above what could realistically be ingested makes the studies irrelevant. By the same logic I could prove that salt actually kills you.

On the pathway argument, you are just rambling; I'm clearly not talking about that. Whether there is a pathway is largely irrelevant if you cannot prove that it is toxic at expected ingestion levels.

You are just fearmongering and grasping at straws. Same bullshit as the anti-vax that would have you believe vaccines are toxic because they use aluminum (yes, in amounts completely benign).


Buying and selling things internationally does not make a country capitalist.


No True Scotsman applied to concept; fascinating.

Capitalism is circumlocutions of long dead people who provided little to society but the sound of their voice, vacuous writings.

So kind of the educated labor exploiters of the past to explain how the world must work. Very TINA of them.

Capitalism is people socially convincing each other there's a communal upside to capitalism. Sounds almost like socialist communist nonsense, this capitalism.

Strip away endless obfuscation the real economy is anything but physical statistics, it becomes clear capitalism is just empty rhetoric.


You said "if buying and selling things internationally makes a country capitalist," somebody told you that's not what capitalism is, and you said "no true scotsman."

You have to do better than this to convince people of things.

If you had said "Buying and selling things internationally makes a country capitalist" rather than posing a pointless hypothetical, you would have had to defend that, and you weren't ready to.


Capitalism and communism couldn’t be more different, in the true definition of the terms.

Communism is literally a ruling class dictating the lives of an entire country. Capitalism at least gives the opportunity of individual action.

You are allowed to hate capitalism, clearly you do, and advocate for socialism, et. al. Whatever point you think you just made with your post is completely devoid of substance.


Of course. I would argue that's even extremely obvious. But you will never hear a communist or socialist put it like that.


Is this legal? I see what you are saying from a practical standpoint, but in terms of procedure, there are federal agents who are empowered to spread such material for these purposes? It seems crazy.


A large part of geopolitics is concerned with limiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction worldwide and to the greatest possible degree of efficacy. Moreover, the investment to train state-of-the-art models is greater than the Manhattan project and involves larger and more complex supply chains-- it cannot be done clandestinely. Because the scope of the project is large and resource-intensive there are not many bodies that would have to cooperate in order to place impassable obstacles on the path that is presently being taken. 'What if they won't cooperate toward this goal?' -- Worth considering, but the fact is that they can and are choosing not to. If the choice is there it is not an inevitability but a decision.


> Worth considering, but the fact is that they can and are choosing not to. If the choice is there it is not an inevitability but a decision.

Pakistan, Israel, North Korea and South Africa have nuclear weapons while not having the right to do so. So I'm not sure how banning graphics cards, thing we are already failing at in China right now will ever work. Especially if countries like China develop their own chip building capacities.


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