Spotify CEO Daniel Ek investing €100million in AI defence technology

With what I found out today about Daniel Ek investing €100million in AI warfare development, I’m delighted I can’t access it with Roon-and have closed my listening account, and am in the process of removing my own artistic output from the platform. I appreciate that other people may feel differently, but I for one can no longer contribute to their coffers if that’s how the money will end up getting spent!

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From that article:

Helsing says it will use “world-leading AI technology for defence and national security” to provide “information advantage for democratic governments” and “keep liberal democracies from harm.”

What could possibly go wrong? Well, where to start?

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The Spotify data grab is gross, but this is an arms race and it includes nearly all of tech. Unless buyers care enough to not sponsor it then it’s inevitable it will be aggregated into one of the big players hand and everything ends up weaponised somehow - just weird to think it would be something so healing as music. Makes me very sad, and my wife would really like Spotify in Roon (although I think it’s the search results as with time and effort I can normally find what she gets from Spotify - so unexpected to see they ‘intentionally ruin their searches’ to encourage playlist use)

One of the great things about Roon for me is that it’s from a passionate company that really digs the pursuit and ethics aren’t put to one side to turn a coin.

If it weren’t for Roon I wouldn’t have tried Qobuz and Tidal. I stuck with Tidal in the end (because it has more music, particularly newer releases) but I love them both and they owe my custom to Roon. I’m sure many other Roon listeners too.

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Yes, considering they are investing in actual weapons tech now too.

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I have experience with both Tidal and Qobuz too. I think Qobuz has the same amount of new music like Tidal but you have to search for them. Unlike Tidal, Qobuz is very slow in updating playlists and pushing out new albums on their home page, but those new music may already exist in their catalogue.

Qobuz curation is way behind the others, it’s only recently starting doing recommendations with the weekly playlists.

See if you can find Boyz N Da Club by Shermanology. I might have been beaten by Roon’s implementation of search, but I found it when I was connected to Tidal and not with Quboz.

Edit. Checked myself and it’s there. Now I’m wondering if I just failed the search or I need some other new tunes to test.

I cancelled my subscription as soon as I found this out, and am in the process of removing my own artistic output from there (my distributor Ditto is being painfully slow).
If you are on Facebook I also started a group to raise the noise level about this outrageous investment with 518 like minded souls in the space of a few days. Feel free to join if you want, and thanks for spreading the word too! The more noise we all make about this, the louder our voice!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/331589451688169/

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What is wrong? It’s fully justified, the world is now in danger more than any time throughout the human history.

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We clearly have different viewpoints on what is right, and what is wrong. In my opinion the world is in danger from investments like these, you clearly feel differently-and good luck to you.

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Maybe now’s a good time then to familiarise yourself with Russian and Chinese music?

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Yes. I have already thought about that thanks. For all of its dubious moves, as far as I’m aware Facebook and/or Mark Zuckerberg aren’t directly investing in AI warfare tech, whereas, as widely reported, Daniel Ek is (via an investment company, but with profits from Spotify). That investment is the focus.