Is that the Gallaghers’ house from Shameless? That does feel like the sort of stance Frank would take.

… K.

Seems like a stretch of a joke, but aiight.

“Ford Dodger”? Are you intentionally messing up the make and model of his car? Is this a sort of joke I’m not getting? Ford and Dodge are different car manufacturers and the Dodgers are a baseball team. I dont even know why you’re are referring to its make and model (twice) in your post in the first place. I know it doesn’t really matter, but it sounds like an old person calling every video game console a “Nintendo Genesis”. If that’s the goal, kudos.

No it’s a tool, created and used by people. You’re not treating the tool like a person. Tools are obviously not subject to laws, can’t break laws, etc… Their usage is subject to laws. If you use a tool to intentionally, knowingly, or negligently do things that would be illegal for you to do without the tool, then that’s still illegal. Same for accepting money to give others the privilege of doing those illegal things with your tool without any attempt at moderating said things that you know is happening. You can argue that maybe the law should be more strict with AI usage than with a human if you have a good legal justification for it, but there’s really no way to justify being less strict.

It’s pretty simple as I see it. You treat AI like a person. A person needs to go through legal channels to consume material, so piracy for AI training is as illegal as it would be for personal consumption. Consuming legally possessed copywritten material for “inspiration” or “study” is also fine for a person, so it is fine for AI training as well. Commercializing derivative works that infringes on copyright is illegal for a person, so it should be illegal for an AI as well. All produced materials, even those inspired by another piece of media, are permissible if not monetized, otherwise they need to be suitably transformative. That line can be hard to draw even when AI is not involved, but that is the legal standard for people, so it should be for AI as well. If I browse through Deviant Art and learn to draw similarly my favorite artists from their publically viewable works, and make a legally distinct cartoon mouse by hand in a style that is similar to someone else’s and then I sell prints of that work, that is legal. The same should be the case for AI.

But! Scrutiny for AI should be much stricter given the inherent lack of true transformative creativity. And any AI that has used pirated materials should be penalized either by massive fines or by wiping their training and starting over with legally licensed or purchased or otherwise public domain materials only.

Well, first I gotta ask, is any of this really necessary or worth it? You want to resolve some limitations with the standard MIDI format, but are those limitations worth this much trouble to fix? “Buy dont build” is an important principle for any developer to take to heart because we all want to just do it ourselves, dive into the challenge, fix the little gripes, etc. But sometimes good is good enough and there’s no reason to retread the same ground someone else has. If you absolutely need something standard MIDI format can’t give you or available editors dont meet your needs, then sure, build away. But otherwise, save yourself the trouble, put your focus on the more important aspect of your project and just use the standard format.

And dont fall for the sunk cost fallacy. You have already invested time into this, and that time is gone. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should sink in more time if the outcome is not going to justify the additional time cost. It is okay to just shelf it for now. You can always come back to it if you need to later as well.

“You can fucking try…” 🙃

Narrator: “It wasn’t B.”

Say when…

I had a manager once tell me during a casual conversation with complete sincerity that one day with advancements in compression algorithms we could get any file down to a single bit. I really didn’t know what to say to that level of absurdity. I just nodded.

If they required me to work in office (at minimum, they would need to pay me 30k more, 5-10k just to make up for gas and wear and tear on my car, 10k+ for the commute time, and 10k+ for the inconvenience, stress, clothes, eating out more for lunch, dealing with traffic, etc.)

Also, if my leadership was abusive and/or demanded prioritizing work over family and health.

I don’t have the highest paid job in the world, but we’re comfortable and I’m pretty happy with my company right now. Those are the things that would make me start looking elsewhere.