Short Reports

Music Similarity Measures for MIR and Shazam Case Study

Gautham Koorma

Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is an interdisciplinary research area that uses learnings from diverse fields such as musicology, psychoacoustics, signal processing, computer science, and machine learning to organize and retrieve information from music. For the first update on the survey of MIR techniques, I will be covering the concept of music similarity as it pertains to music information retrieval by summarizing how music similarity measures have evolved in the field, a few typical applications of music similarity measures, followed by a case study on the use of a particular similarity technique called audio fingerprinting by the music identification app Shazam.

Humans vs. AI: Detecting AI-Created Textual Content Using ChatGPT

Sarah Barrington

Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AIs, such as ChatGPT and DALL-E from OpenAI, are becoming increasingly prevalent in western technology culture. These models can generate seemingly human responses to a range of complex tasks; including answering philosophical natural language questions, writing fully-functioning computer code and producing new forms of art and graphics. As a result, questions are now being raised regarding the implications of these technologies on a range of fields, from plagiarism in education to displacement of the white-collar workforce. This presentation will provide an update on the foundational research questions exploring the weaknesses and potential for adversarial manipulation in LLMs such as ChatGPT.

Stewardship in the Digital Age: The Scope of the Challenge

Clifford Lynch

In this talk, I hope to conclude the survey of the scope of the challenge for stewardship in the digital age. We’ll first examine the question of “abandoned” materials (introduced in my last talk) in the cultural record (both physical and digital) as a cross-cutting issue. I’ll then conclude with some overall comments about stewardship in an age of abundance and issues related to acquisition/appraisal/collection development and de-acquisition policies and processes. Future talks (to be announced) on Stewardship in the Digital Age will move beyond the scope of the challenge to consider legal and policy issues, institutional and individual (including collector) roles, and transitions of stewardship responsibilities, among other topics.

This seminar will be held both online & in person. You are welcome to join us either in South Hall or via Zoom.

For online participants

Online participants must have a Zoom account and be logged in. Sign up for your free account here. If this is your first time using Zoom, please allow a few extra minutes to download and install the browser plugin or mobile app.

Join the seminar online