Douglas McLennan
@AJDoug
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Journalist, editor of ArtsJournal, author of the AJ blog diacritical
Seattle
Joined March 2009
Thoughts on AI and creativity: There’s no question we lose something when tools make what was previously special, commonplace. But if the extraordinary becomes generic then extraordinary has to be, by definition, redefined. And that usually means up.
artsjournal.com
Throughout the digital age, Big Tech has promised us products that will make us more efficient and save time, which, it is assumed, is always an obvious good. It’s a cliché that tools shape the thi…
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Four supreme court justices think not only is it okay for government not to pay bills for work already contracted, approved and COMPLETED, but that it's OK for government to ignore District Court ruling to comply with an order. Translation: laws no longer apply. Do what you want.
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“What we’re witnessing in Washington isn’t about ‘efficiency’ or ‘cutting waste.’ It’s a calculated, ideologically driven purge of federal agencies perceived as liberal — a playbook lifted directly from modern authoritarian regimes.”
nytimes.com
Vengeance is his.
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It’s important to note the distinction between what are skills and what is creativity. One will most certainly be largely taken over by AI. The other will make its humans more powerful. https://t.co/wovloQzDdX
artsjournal.com
Art that is primarily skill-based — graphic design, stock music or images, text and marketing, etc — can be created faster and often better than human artists, and at lower cost. This i…
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At the Univision town hall, Trump was asked tonight if he still believes climate change is a hoax. his response
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Yesterday I was asked if I thought AI-created art would ever be copyrighted. Answer: How would you know? Art either speaks to you or it doesn't. Copyright is a way of defining ownership. Ownership is different than value. And value will most certainly change w/ the reality of AI.
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How he's answered every pertinent question over the last 8 years.
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@brianklaas @TheRickWilson „In Springfield, they‘re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats.“
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Biden failed to do his job properly last night. Democrats failed to head off that failure. But the reason the failure matters so much - as it wouldn't in a Biden-Haley race - is that one of the two great parties is ratifying an attempted coup d'etat. END.
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As we saw last night, the conventions and habits of mass-market media coverage are inadequate to the crisis at hand. A coup against the constitution - first mentioned at minute 41 of the debate - dwindles to one issue among many, alongside food prices and climate change.
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We've got to reframe debates about what's ailing culture. There's not less creativity, there's way more. There's not less arts education, it's flourishing, just not where it traditionally lived. @MattLehrman and I chat on his podcast.
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If data is just data and interchangeable, the “creation” data (artist, ownership, payment rights etc.) will be able to interact with the “listener” data that could tell us how the track is being used, remixed, built on, etc. https://t.co/3UiVTJ1dXJ
artsjournal.com
Classical music has lost a generation’s worth of music lovers beginning in the late-90s with the rise of file-sharing and Napster. A significant part of the reason might be: metadata. Metadat…
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We’ve been stuck in a tech era in which because something technically works (for example that all music has metadata), it functionally also works (music is easily found). Social media and metadata have proved over and over that this is not true.
artsjournal.com
Classical music has lost a generation’s worth of music lovers beginning in the late-90s with the rise of file-sharing and Napster. A significant part of the reason might be: metadata. Metadat…
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To an AI, a picture is data, sound and music are data, as is traditional spoken or written language. Data is translatable, interchangeable, and most important, linkable and actionable. That means video, music, sound, image can interact in common language.
artsjournal.com
Classical music has lost a generation’s worth of music lovers beginning in the late-90s with the rise of file-sharing and Napster. A significant part of the reason might be: metadata. Metadat…
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Classical music has lost a generation’s worth of music lovers beginning in the late-90s with the rise of file-sharing and Napster. A significant part of the reason might be: metadata. Metadata are the tags that travel with every audio recorded track. https://t.co/3UiVTJ1dXJ
artsjournal.com
Classical music has lost a generation’s worth of music lovers beginning in the late-90s with the rise of file-sharing and Napster. A significant part of the reason might be: metadata. Metadat…
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Useful to be sure. But when artist streaming compensation is based on volume of plays, this is a problem.
artsjournal.com
“Content” is a Silicon Valley weasel word that suggests that nothing has any intrinsic worth or quality — every digital byte is equal and interchangeable — until it draws at…
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