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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2809 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 26, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Suno, the AI song generator, just released version 5. And now I think we are 100% past the uncanny audio valley. Version 4/4.5 was at the level of "Convincing, occasionally incredible, but still flawed enough to notice." Version 5 is 'tricking' my ear 9 times out of 10. Studio quality. We have a fully functional infinite music machine available for the monthly cost of a cheeseburger.

A few examples:

https://suno.com/s/N86w28eQjBWbI6fA

https://suno.com/s/BsKe5OnQpUhPj2Zx

https://suno.com/s/voPPxtsXxRjFRF93

https://suno.com/s/Yqe3pzUQHIPAQ4g4

I think people get too focused on the apparent 'slowing' of progress in the LLM space and think its proof that Machine Learning itself is not living up to the hype.

Meanwhile stuff like Video generation, Music, and Protein Folding/Drug Discovery are still improving rapidly.

Arguably LLMs are just the interface by which we can access these other powerful Djinns to provide us with the particular services we want, as we await the "one true superintelligence" that can do anything to arise.

There's probably a small window right now to write a Sci-Fi novel that features humanity invoking individual AI patrons that specialize in particular aspects of the world, in the same vein as 'old gods' (Stockfish God of Chess, Suno God of Music, Midjourney God of Aesthetics).

Anyway, if there was ONE arena you would want AI to reach superhuman capability, one particular application that would improve your life even if AI progress stalled out otherwise, what would that be?

For our purposes, lets just grant "customized pornography" as the killer app.

Me, I think I want the ability to produce bespoke episodes of older TV shows that I enjoyed but were cancelled or went off the rails and/or had horrible conclusions. GoT and Firefly are obvious examples there. But I have several others in mind.

It'd be cool to live in a world where the "Canon" of a given series was not defined by any particular "official" source, but instead you had a whole library of 'forks' in the plot and character development that fans can choose from, or generate their own as they like, with maybe some curation done by the rights holder to identify the entries they deem 'high quality' and consistent with the original vision.

https://suno.com/song/106b0e6b-6345-42ba-91b6-0e2e0d6c5d82

This is a jam - they would play second stage at Ozzfest cut a 1999-2003 and have a following.

Color me impressed.

My favorite ways to use the tech thus far:

  1. Producing truly weird Genre mashups. Japanese Folk Music + Bagpipes? Mariachi Sea Shanties? Oops, almost forgot: Heavy Metal Ska.

  2. Producing novel content in the vein of certain genres or bands of the past that I miss/wish had more content.

  3. Converting songs between genres with as few changes to the melody as possible to hear how the emotional tenor of the song changes even if the lyrics and melody (mostly) don't.

Strange sense of nostalgia to hear something that very easily could have come out during your childhood, even though you know with 100% certainty that you never heard it before this moment.

Your sea shanty sounds Irish more than anything, at least the vocals.

I specifically requested an Irish accent for maximum dissonance.

I haven't played too much with asking it to do different languages with different accents, but it does a pretty good job of adding Indian-accented English to songs.

Oh, neat.

Also, strong argument that almost all the well-known Sea Shanties are directly derived from Irish musical heritage.

Does this melody sound familiar?

(About 6-7 years ago I went on a kick researching European Maritime culture and learned a lot of interesting stuff).

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