This is silly and beautiful and profound. I have never heard rationalist music before, and I find it quite moving to hear it for the first time. Several songs brought tears to my eyes (although I’ve practiced opening those emotional channels a bit, so this is a less uncommon experience for me than for most)
I think this says something about the potential of AI to democratize art and allow high quality art aimed at small minority subgroups.
I want more. Thank you to all of those who made this happen.
I like it. And I “bought” it to support more similar work by humans.
But I was far more moved by hearing the best rationalist writing set to music. I’m kind of shocked at how well that worked, in terms of both the AI creating music to human-selected lyrics, and the emotional impact.
Hunches: you ended up near the top, due to having commented on something that was highly upvoted. you were sharing something good, so getting seen a lot resulted in being upvoted more.
Oh yeah—this is different in that it’s actually good! (In the sense that it was made with substantial skill and effort, and it appeals to my tastes.)
I’m not sure it’s actually helpful for AI safety, but I think popular art is going to play a substantial role in the public dialogue. AI doom is a compelling topic for pop art, logic aside.
2.0 is now my current favorite album; I’ve listened to it at least five times through since you recommended it. Thanks so much!! The electro-rock style does it for me. And I think the lyrics and music are well-written. Having each lyricist do only one song is an interesting approach that might raise quality.
It’s hard to say how much of it is directly written about AI risk, but all of it can be taken that way. Most of the songs can be taken as written from the perspective of a misaligned AGI with human-similar thinking and motivations. Which I find highly plausible, since I think language model agents are the most likely route to agi, and they’ll be curiously parahuman.
I’m glad you like it! I was listening to it for a while before I started reading lesswrong and AI risk content, and then one day I was listening to “Monster” and started paying attention to the lyrics and realised it was on the same topic.
What I’ve done is to notice exactly what the emotion feels like when it’s happening; then, when I want to encourage that emotion, I try to remember that feeling, and imagine it’s happening now as vividly and intensely as I can.
I’ve thought of this as “direct emotional induction” but I’ve never written about it. It seems to work remarkably well.
I came up with this after studying the precise mechanisms the brain uses to control attention for my dissertation. I’m certain there are other names for this and that it’s been discovered through other means, but oddly I haven’t come across it.
This is silly and beautiful and profound. I have never heard rationalist music before, and I find it quite moving to hear it for the first time. Several songs brought tears to my eyes (although I’ve practiced opening those emotional channels a bit, so this is a less uncommon experience for me than for most)
I think this says something about the potential of AI to democratize art and allow high quality art aimed at small minority subgroups.
I want more. Thank you to all of those who made this happen.
FYI if you’d like more (human-generated) rationalist music, here is some:
https://humanistculture.bandcamp.com/album/secular-solstice-official-version
I like it. And I “bought” it to support more similar work by humans.
But I was far more moved by hearing the best rationalist writing set to music. I’m kind of shocked at how well that worked, in terms of both the AI creating music to human-selected lyrics, and the emotional impact.
Scott Alexander wrote some music a decade ago.
youtube.com/qraikoth
“Mary’s Room” and “Somewhere Prior To The Rainbow” are most likely to make you cry again.
“Mathematical Pirate Shanty”, if you can cry laughing.
Why has my comment been given so much karma?
Hunches: you ended up near the top, due to having commented on something that was highly upvoted. you were sharing something good, so getting seen a lot resulted in being upvoted more.
It isn’t quite the same but the musician “Big Data” has made some fantastic songs about AI risk.
Oh yeah—this is different in that it’s actually good! (In the sense that it was made with substantial skill and effort, and it appeals to my tastes.)
I’m not sure it’s actually helpful for AI safety, but I think popular art is going to play a substantial role in the public dialogue. AI doom is a compelling topic for pop art, logic aside.
2.0 is now my current favorite album; I’ve listened to it at least five times through since you recommended it. Thanks so much!! The electro-rock style does it for me. And I think the lyrics and music are well-written. Having each lyricist do only one song is an interesting approach that might raise quality.
It’s hard to say how much of it is directly written about AI risk, but all of it can be taken that way. Most of the songs can be taken as written from the perspective of a misaligned AGI with human-similar thinking and motivations. Which I find highly plausible, since I think language model agents are the most likely route to agi, and they’ll be curiously parahuman.
I’m glad you like it! I was listening to it for a while before I started reading lesswrong and AI risk content, and then one day I was listening to “Monster” and started paying attention to the lyrics and realised it was on the same topic.
i’m curious, what did you do to open those emotional channels?
What I’ve done is to notice exactly what the emotion feels like when it’s happening; then, when I want to encourage that emotion, I try to remember that feeling, and imagine it’s happening now as vividly and intensely as I can.
I’ve thought of this as “direct emotional induction” but I’ve never written about it. It seems to work remarkably well.
I came up with this after studying the precise mechanisms the brain uses to control attention for my dissertation. I’m certain there are other names for this and that it’s been discovered through other means, but oddly I haven’t come across it.
Agreed, this is very nicely done.
I agree! I’ve been writing then generating my own LW inspired songs now.
I wish it was common for LW posts to have accompanying songs now.