If music was broadly consumed for a personal want or need, then there'd be nothing to add. But Tailor Swift isn't famous because her songs are unprecedented in "sonic" qualities or deeply thought-provoking in the lyrics department. She's famous because her looks, personality, music, background and marketing are, as a single unit, iconic to countless people today. In other words she famous for the exactly opposite reason of why you like The Bells. Famous for the same reason a God or any other popular figure is. Because her existence gives people a reason to talk and bond over something, to feel part of a group. She synchronizes the emotions of large groups of people, who now are not so alone anymore.
You like music as an individual as a side-effect of your own role in a larger group. If you think of yourself as someone apart from the group, you will like more personal music, like The Bells. But ultimately any famous music will have to produce that synchronizing effect. If Suno or similar services replaced popular music we'd indeed have the end of culture. But the AI wouldn't be operating the transformation, it would be our deeply individualistic values here in the west leveraging AI as a tool to only like something only we know, while jealously and irrationally keeping it only for ourselves. After all, "no one else could ever like it."
Also, i must further note that like so many people living today you've fallen for the "there’s no stopping it" fallacy, nothing more then "learned helplessness", a psychological phenomenon our culture embraced with post-modern "end of history" fatalism and is reminiscent of the peasant slave mentality of feudal systems. Everything and anything created by humans can obviously be stopped. In fact if it isn't stopped it will destroy society if society cannot adapt to it fast enough. The Amish as a collective decided to abandon these dangerous tools long ago, and only grow in number while we perish at below half of the population replacement rate we need for our economies and societies to survive past the next 3-4 decades, even with rampant immigration. Soviet Communism barely a century ago phased out the free market as a whole just like that. There are still people alive who lived through most of that. Just like demographics is reaching an inflexion point, so is technology. And past that, change is not only possible, it's inevitable. Watch what happens when the founding myth of our civilization, that technology frees us, is turned on its head.
Your first point is extremely interesting. It's something I'm not surprised I hadn't considered, but I feel is very important. If "pop" precedes "culture" in pop culture, then it might not matter, for a lot of people, how good AI tools become at supplanting human artists in cultural production. The participation in popularity is as important as the product itself. There would be no reason to AI generate a new Marvel movie for personal use, because a Marvel movie is "good" because people like it.
I wanted to reply to address the second point, though, which I feel is very naive, and both of your examples are perfect illustrations of why. For both the Amish and the USSR, a group of people--communities or nations--did something radical, while the rest of the world watched on. They said, "What if we all just...."
The problem with "What if we all just..." is that we won't all just. Ever. There's no such thing. The rest of the world didn't "just" give up free markets. Everyone else didn't "just" adopt the Amish way of life. They were never going to. A group of highly ethical people can gather among themselves and agree to no longer use AI tools. They can ban further research. They can decide not to go down this path. But the genie is out of the bottle. We have seen how tremendously dangerous and powerful these tools are. The incentive to use them is extraordinary. The idea that everyone, everywhere, across the planet, will ethically and consensually agree not to use these powerful tools and will then keep to their word is just ridiculous, quite frankly. The government is going to use AI if normal people can't. China is going to use AI even if our government doesn't. If China doesn't, corporations will. If it's globally illegal for corporations to do so (as if such a thing exists), criminals will. If not them, terrorist groups.
The technology already exists. Why wouldn't they use it? How could you possibly stop them? It makes no sense.
Then you will find yourself at the mercy of the people who dared to keep using the tools that you were too ethical to pursue developing yourself.
If music was broadly consumed for a personal want or need, then there'd be nothing to add. But Tailor Swift isn't famous because her songs are unprecedented in "sonic" qualities or deeply thought-provoking in the lyrics department. She's famous because her looks, personality, music, background and marketing are, as a single unit, iconic to countless people today. In other words she famous for the exactly opposite reason of why you like The Bells. Famous for the same reason a God or any other popular figure is. Because her existence gives people a reason to talk and bond over something, to feel part of a group. She synchronizes the emotions of large groups of people, who now are not so alone anymore.
You like music as an individual as a side-effect of your own role in a larger group. If you think of yourself as someone apart from the group, you will like more personal music, like The Bells. But ultimately any famous music will have to produce that synchronizing effect. If Suno or similar services replaced popular music we'd indeed have the end of culture. But the AI wouldn't be operating the transformation, it would be our deeply individualistic values here in the west leveraging AI as a tool to only like something only we know, while jealously and irrationally keeping it only for ourselves. After all, "no one else could ever like it."
Also, i must further note that like so many people living today you've fallen for the "there’s no stopping it" fallacy, nothing more then "learned helplessness", a psychological phenomenon our culture embraced with post-modern "end of history" fatalism and is reminiscent of the peasant slave mentality of feudal systems. Everything and anything created by humans can obviously be stopped. In fact if it isn't stopped it will destroy society if society cannot adapt to it fast enough. The Amish as a collective decided to abandon these dangerous tools long ago, and only grow in number while we perish at below half of the population replacement rate we need for our economies and societies to survive past the next 3-4 decades, even with rampant immigration. Soviet Communism barely a century ago phased out the free market as a whole just like that. There are still people alive who lived through most of that. Just like demographics is reaching an inflexion point, so is technology. And past that, change is not only possible, it's inevitable. Watch what happens when the founding myth of our civilization, that technology frees us, is turned on its head.
Your first point is extremely interesting. It's something I'm not surprised I hadn't considered, but I feel is very important. If "pop" precedes "culture" in pop culture, then it might not matter, for a lot of people, how good AI tools become at supplanting human artists in cultural production. The participation in popularity is as important as the product itself. There would be no reason to AI generate a new Marvel movie for personal use, because a Marvel movie is "good" because people like it.
I wanted to reply to address the second point, though, which I feel is very naive, and both of your examples are perfect illustrations of why. For both the Amish and the USSR, a group of people--communities or nations--did something radical, while the rest of the world watched on. They said, "What if we all just...."
The problem with "What if we all just..." is that we won't all just. Ever. There's no such thing. The rest of the world didn't "just" give up free markets. Everyone else didn't "just" adopt the Amish way of life. They were never going to. A group of highly ethical people can gather among themselves and agree to no longer use AI tools. They can ban further research. They can decide not to go down this path. But the genie is out of the bottle. We have seen how tremendously dangerous and powerful these tools are. The incentive to use them is extraordinary. The idea that everyone, everywhere, across the planet, will ethically and consensually agree not to use these powerful tools and will then keep to their word is just ridiculous, quite frankly. The government is going to use AI if normal people can't. China is going to use AI even if our government doesn't. If China doesn't, corporations will. If it's globally illegal for corporations to do so (as if such a thing exists), criminals will. If not them, terrorist groups.
The technology already exists. Why wouldn't they use it? How could you possibly stop them? It makes no sense.
Then you will find yourself at the mercy of the people who dared to keep using the tools that you were too ethical to pursue developing yourself.