Like the infinite monkeys typing Shakespeare, but with audio instead.

If there was a program that created a series of sounds at random intervals, pitches, amplitudes, etc., how long would it take to produce an output that sounds like music, some sort of recognisable recording (e.g. a bell ring, a dog barking), or perhaps even a human voice?

  • HeroicBillyBishop@lemmy.ca
    3·
    13 hours ago

    Interesting thought experiment!

    How much compute you got?
    Does it have to be a a full song? A snippet? We would also have to determine a “Turing test” style evaluation framework, and it had better be fast too - it cant be you and a pair of headphones determining success :)

    Anyway… So, with LOTS of compute, I suspect you could get a snippet or moment that resembles a song/voice, in relatively short time-frames, but this is only because true randomness is hard and we teach computers based on the past So patterns (snippets of voice or song), based on what the computers had previously learned from likely would emerge “quickly” - something like crypto mining, so applying large volumes of compute for extended periods of time

    Now, in the spirit of what you are asking, the “infinite monkeys on infinite typewrites produce Shakespeare” or in this case, a song…

    So, how long to produce a song/voice in a “truly random” scenario where an infinite number of thinking machines, never having heard a song or human voice … The answer is Undetermined. Infinity is weird

    If we give it infinite time, then an infinite number of songs and plays will eventually be produced, but since we dont have infinite time, the most likely outcome (in my opinion) is that it would never produce anything we would all agree is a voice or song in any sort of human scale timeframes

    Infinity is really really really big - did you know there are “bigger” and “smaller” infinities? This is the example that I found fascinating:

    There are infinite whole numbers 1, 2, 3…Infinity within that set, there are infinite odd numbers, 1,3,5…inifnity also within that same set there are infinite even numbers, 2,4,6…infinity

    Although all are infinite, the first infinity contains both the others, therefore is larger Mind blown when I first thought about that

    Great question and fun to think about