4 ms·
The question of whether or not machine generated CP is ethical or not is a confusing one to me, since the crux of problem of CP is that it's violating the right
by nikkwong 4y ago
The question of whether or not machine generated CP is ethical or not is a confusing one to me, since the crux of problem of CP is that it's violating the rights of a child. If you get rid of that fact, CP becomes a 'victimless crime', in a sense, and it becomes hard to pinpoint what the actual perpetration is. (Ignoring the fact that a CP model has to be trained on real images, which destroys this argument outright, for now).
Nobody wants to be a pedophile, but if you are unfortunately hardwired that way the impulses are impossible to ignore—similar to any other sexual impulse that 'healthy' adults have.
I think the goal is how to create the least amount of harm for children, and it's theoretically interesting to consider the possibility that machine generated CP could be used to ultimately end the real-life CP black market.
I'm sure this won't ever happen because nobody wants to touch this subject with a 10-foot pole; and our species tends to favor solutions that are idealistic rather than rational in many ways. But the European approach to criminal justice is something like: "humans are not perfect, and we can't fix them, so let's try to engineer solutions which make living together more pleasant". Nobody likes an icky solution like this, but the alternative is a lot of children suffering (although I'm not saying those two options are perfectly substitutable).
On the other hand, it could be a completely stupid idea outright. Just an interesting thing to think about.
- girvo 4y agoI don’t think you can ignore the fact that the model would have to be trained on child sexual abuse material, though. That’s pretty important.
- nikkwong 4y agoI view that currently as a technical limitation that will likely be lifted as the technology progresses. Our species has been hard at work on the field of AI-image generation for only a decade, and we have thousands of years to go. So I would posit that this barrier is probably a short-term one.
- girvo 4y agoI agree. But what do we do about the models that are trained on CSAM prior to this inevitable breakthrough? Because you and I both know it’s likely to happen.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Alex7845 4y ago>(Ignoring the fact that a CP model has to be trained on real images). that's not how this tech works. Did you think actual guinea pigs had to be trained to do household chores for these pictures to be generated? (dailywrong.com/new-course-teaches-guinea-pigs-household-chores/) I had a lot of fun creating pictures of llamas in space. I'm pretty sure no llamas have ever walked on the moon.
- nikkwong 4y agoI think it is how the tech works; though. The model knows what a guinea pig looks like, and it knows what household chores looks like, so it can concatenate the two. I don't think the model knows how children look like unclothed, and I don't think it can posit that by looking at nude human adults. But I could be very incorrect there; and these techniques will certainly evolve over time.
- Alex7845 4y agoI think generating CP with AI would be 10000x easier than most of what I have personally made with with dall-e. creating a llama wearing a space suit and walking on the moon is a lot harder than filling out the very limited amount of skin hidden by a swimming suit.
- mc32 4y agoQuestion is does it reduce demand from the real world or does it serve as demand multiplier in the real physical world?
- nikkwong 4y agoI think these are the right questions to ask; and these types of things would need to be studied in order to pose a potential solution. But I can't imagine any modern day institution beginning to pose these questions without facing public outlash. The sensationalized headlines that would spin out of this would probably stop any research in this area in its tracks. In that way our species is very primitive. We're trigger happy in our outrage and often unable to focus on a larger shared goal, much to our own demise.
- mc32 4y agoWe can study near-like issues to get a hint of the phycological effects. Have people into bestiality to play in their VR worlds and see if it suffocates demand or increases demand and we see spillover into the real world. (find a jurisdiction where the above is tolerated) Maybe Thailand can produce some data given their apparent tolerance for certain behaviors.
- Viliam1234 4y agoI think the research shows that availability of normal porn reduces rape. (Don't have a link at hand, sorry.) So I would guess the effect would probably be the same here.
- wraptile 4y agoIt's not entirely a new issue, see the discussions around "loli erotic japanese manga" etc. Though I agree with you, nobody is touching this tech anytime soon (at least publically) even though you can easily imagine safe applications like MRI with AI generated images to study exact brain patterns for potential treatments and so on.
- bhedgeoser 4y agoWhat about writing a blog post about raping and killing people. We have to draw the line somewhere and for CP the line is at the first step.