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I think this is a very interesting question that is being systematically sidestepped in these debates. Sexual preferences are a given; some people are attracte

by bambax 4y ago

I think this is a very interesting question that is being systematically sidestepped in these debates. Sexual preferences are a given; some people are attracted to the opposite sex, some people are attracted to the same sex, some people are attracted to children. Nothing they (or anyone) can do about it, lest one decides to indulge in so-called "conversion therapy". Of course, children can't consent, and abusing children is horrible. And child porn is horrible because it implies children have been abused to produce it. But AI-generated child porn, however nauseating it might sound, doesn't hurt anybody.

hn_throwaway_69 4y ago
>doesn't hurt anybody You're looking at it too narrowly. AI-generated CSAM may facilitate a sexual interest in children among certain individuals. Development of such an interest makes it significantly more likely they will abuse children. So it ought be illegal.
- gruez 4y ago
  Is this backed empirically? The argument you made is almost identical to the ones used for "grand theft auto is making kids violent!".
  - hn_throwaway_69 4y ago
    There's no reason to make such material lawful unless the converse is proved by empirical evidence. That is, can it be proved that people who view AI-based material are less likely to act on a sexual interest in real children? Unless that's proven, there's no other reason to make such material lawful. You're welcome to provide one. The analogy is not apt. You cannot compare image-based abuse of children with a video game. GTA is a legitimate form of entertainment, child abuse material is not. They are not remotely similar. This shows why analogies are almost never helpful and it's best just to focus on the topic under discussion.
    - dannyw 4y ago
      We live in a society where things are allowed by default and banned if they cause harm, not a society where things are banned by default and allowed if they are proven to not cause harm.
      - userbinator 4y ago
        Sadly, these days one can only hope that we do.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - SXX 4y ago
      I doubt anyone on HN would argue for making AI generated CSAM lawful. At the same time attempts to add unenforceable limitations into ML technology like ClosedAI trying to do is worse than useless. You can generate whatever you want on your own PC, but if you try to use it for fraud or to share illegal material then you are a criminal.
      - naniwaduni 4y ago
        Legality of fictional child pornography is surprisingly contentious, with positions ranging from "protected as artwork under freedom expression", "illegal if provenance involves child abuse within jurisdiction", to "illegal but non-realistic depictions don't count", to "depiction of children are illegal, regardless of provenance", to "depictions of adults who could be mistaken for children is also illegal"—just among first-world countries. "AI-generated CSAM" ranges from obviously unlawful to an oxymoron depending on the standard applied!
  - guilhas 4y ago
    I think that does not apply. That would be if criminals in prison were given GTA would they have better or worse chance of rehabilitation?
- SXX 4y ago
  Does watching gay porn make you gay too? Why on Earth any normal person would specifically look for CSAM material be it AI generated or not? I doubt that many people who seen something sickening on internet immediately became attracted to it and huge percent of people who use internet for 10+ years seen all kind of terrible things. Unfortunately anyone who hosted or moderated online communities had to deal with a lot of terrible things. Also we have whole army of youtube / facebook / twitter moderators who actually see CSAM daily and we dont have stories about everyone of them turning into child-abusers. Though it's proven that this kind of job can make person mentally ill, but for completely different reasons. PS: Again be it AI generated or not I totally sure that CSAM should stay banned from sharing. But I dont give a damn about what you paint, generate and watch on your own PC.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    The idea is that viewing AI-generated CSAM by someone who is already a pedophile will increase the probability that they'll decide to go out and abuse a child. Or, it'll foster a cultural acceptance of child abuse, leading people to be more confident to go out and do it. There's no actual data that demonstrates this, given it's hard to study, but it's not implausible. One could make the opposite argument, too. If you give pedophiles AI-generated CSAM, it reduces the demand for real CSAM, thereby reducing production of real-world CSAM, thereby reducing child abuse. Moreover it provides pedophiles their fix without them having to actually abuse a child. In the end these are all armchair speculations made from our intuitions about individual psychology and group psychology.
    - SXX 4y ago
      We can speculate all we want. The fact is: its impossible to apply any real restrictionsn ML model. Just like any DRM this one gonna be easy to bypass and will only degrade experience of legit users and gonna slow down technology advancement. We dont require image editors to have CSAM filters and requiring filter for ML model is madness.
      - hackerlight 4y ago
- yellowapple 4y ago
  This sounds a lot like the rather-thoroughly-debunked "violent video games make people violent" argument.
- tomjen3 4y ago
  You are making a bunch of assumptions, that, if true, are a strong argument for banning it. In reality, if it is the case that this will satisfy some people desires, then it may be the case that fewer children are abused this way, in which case it would be a bad idea to ban it.
drdeca 4y ago
I don’t think the idea that all sexual preferences are innate, really holds much water. There’s no genetic or development-while-in-womb explanation for why some people are specifically sexually into the idea of someone taking on the properties of a giant blueberry. What is a fetish? It is the scar that guides the knife.
- candiodari 4y ago
  One particular sexual preference has children as a result ... and of course we all start as children. The first sexual preference, the first sexual relation anyone is confronted with in their life is heterosexual, simply because that's how childbirth works. People are deeply uncomfortable with it, especially these days, but of course child-rearing families are the place were nature actually intends there to be sex, where there's almost guaranteed to be sexual activity. Probably the younger the child, the better the odds of sex. And, of course, this is not bad at all: that's how human society has worked for hundreds of thousands of years, how every animal society has worked for a billion or so years. This probably "gives an advantage" to that particular sexual preference. You learn sexual behaviours, and the first ones you'll learn are heterosexual ones. There's nothing wrong with that ... or at least I don't think there is.
tasuki 4y ago
> But AI-generated child porn, however nauseating it might sound, doesn't hurt anybody. I suppose it must have been trained on something? Are you 100% sure it's cool to use the sum of all the images of all the children to generate child porn? Also there might be accidental resemblances to particular living children in the produced images, is that ok?
- candiodari 4y ago
  I think most people actually doing something with this technology will be making the maker argument: "Unless you have real-world means to make your opinions reality ... I don't care about your opinions" Which goes both in the positive and the negative. Both "show it working or you can't do it" and the negative "prevent me from making it working or shut up". You have zero means to prevent such use of the technology ... Add to that trillions of dollars in reasons not to outlaw the technology itself. Attempts to enforce this will be worse, much worse, than the war on drugs. Plus, frankly, drugs do a lot more harm than just allowing this fully would do, so hopefully that will mean less attention going into this.
collegeburner 4y ago
there's a real concern that "erotic plasticity" (esp if you combine this with a recommendation algo) can push people towards weird ass shit. literally the same thing happens on youtube, tiktok etc. with regular videos so why would this be an exception?

by bambax 4y ago

hn_throwaway_69 4y ago

>doesn't hurt anybody You're looking at it too narrowly. AI-generated CSAM may facilitate a sexual interest in children among certain individuals. Development of such an interest makes it significantly more likely they will abuse children. So it ought be illegal.

gruez 4y ago
Is this backed empirically? The argument you made is almost identical to the ones used for "grand theft auto is making kids violent!".
- hn_throwaway_69 4y ago
  There's no reason to make such material lawful unless the converse is proved by empirical evidence. That is, can it be proved that people who view AI-based material are less likely to act on a sexual interest in real children? Unless that's proven, there's no other reason to make such material lawful. You're welcome to provide one. The analogy is not apt. You cannot compare image-based abuse of children with a video game. GTA is a legitimate form of entertainment, child abuse material is not. They are not remotely similar. This shows why analogies are almost never helpful and it's best just to focus on the topic under discussion.
  - dannyw 4y ago
    We live in a society where things are allowed by default and banned if they cause harm, not a society where things are banned by default and allowed if they are proven to not cause harm.
    - userbinator 4y ago
      Sadly, these days one can only hope that we do.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - SXX 4y ago
    I doubt anyone on HN would argue for making AI generated CSAM lawful. At the same time attempts to add unenforceable limitations into ML technology like ClosedAI trying to do is worse than useless. You can generate whatever you want on your own PC, but if you try to use it for fraud or to share illegal material then you are a criminal.
    - naniwaduni 4y ago
      Legality of fictional child pornography is surprisingly contentious, with positions ranging from "protected as artwork under freedom expression", "illegal if provenance involves child abuse within jurisdiction", to "illegal but non-realistic depictions don't count", to "depiction of children are illegal, regardless of provenance", to "depictions of adults who could be mistaken for children is also illegal"—just among first-world countries. "AI-generated CSAM" ranges from obviously unlawful to an oxymoron depending on the standard applied!
- guilhas 4y ago
  I think that does not apply. That would be if criminals in prison were given GTA would they have better or worse chance of rehabilitation?
SXX 4y ago
Does watching gay porn make you gay too? Why on Earth any normal person would specifically look for CSAM material be it AI generated or not? I doubt that many people who seen something sickening on internet immediately became attracted to it and huge percent of people who use internet for 10+ years seen all kind of terrible things. Unfortunately anyone who hosted or moderated online communities had to deal with a lot of terrible things. Also we have whole army of youtube / facebook / twitter moderators who actually see CSAM daily and we dont have stories about everyone of them turning into child-abusers. Though it's proven that this kind of job can make person mentally ill, but for completely different reasons. PS: Again be it AI generated or not I totally sure that CSAM should stay banned from sharing. But I dont give a damn about what you paint, generate and watch on your own PC.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  The idea is that viewing AI-generated CSAM by someone who is already a pedophile will increase the probability that they'll decide to go out and abuse a child. Or, it'll foster a cultural acceptance of child abuse, leading people to be more confident to go out and do it. There's no actual data that demonstrates this, given it's hard to study, but it's not implausible. One could make the opposite argument, too. If you give pedophiles AI-generated CSAM, it reduces the demand for real CSAM, thereby reducing production of real-world CSAM, thereby reducing child abuse. Moreover it provides pedophiles their fix without them having to actually abuse a child. In the end these are all armchair speculations made from our intuitions about individual psychology and group psychology.
  - SXX 4y ago
    We can speculate all we want. The fact is: its impossible to apply any real restrictionsn ML model. Just like any DRM this one gonna be easy to bypass and will only degrade experience of legit users and gonna slow down technology advancement. We dont require image editors to have CSAM filters and requiring filter for ML model is madness.
    - hackerlight 4y ago
yellowapple 4y ago
This sounds a lot like the rather-thoroughly-debunked "violent video games make people violent" argument.
tomjen3 4y ago
You are making a bunch of assumptions, that, if true, are a strong argument for banning it. In reality, if it is the case that this will satisfy some people desires, then it may be the case that fewer children are abused this way, in which case it would be a bad idea to ban it.

drdeca 4y ago

I don’t think the idea that all sexual preferences are innate, really holds much water. There’s no genetic or development-while-in-womb explanation for why some people are specifically sexually into the idea of someone taking on the properties of a giant blueberry. What is a fetish? It is the scar that guides the knife.

candiodari 4y ago
One particular sexual preference has children as a result ... and of course we all start as children. The first sexual preference, the first sexual relation anyone is confronted with in their life is heterosexual, simply because that's how childbirth works. People are deeply uncomfortable with it, especially these days, but of course child-rearing families are the place were nature actually intends there to be sex, where there's almost guaranteed to be sexual activity. Probably the younger the child, the better the odds of sex. And, of course, this is not bad at all: that's how human society has worked for hundreds of thousands of years, how every animal society has worked for a billion or so years. This probably "gives an advantage" to that particular sexual preference. You learn sexual behaviours, and the first ones you'll learn are heterosexual ones. There's nothing wrong with that ... or at least I don't think there is.

tasuki 4y ago

> But AI-generated child porn, however nauseating it might sound, doesn't hurt anybody. I suppose it must have been trained on something? Are you 100% sure it's cool to use the sum of all the images of all the children to generate child porn? Also there might be accidental resemblances to particular living children in the produced images, is that ok?

candiodari 4y ago
I think most people actually doing something with this technology will be making the maker argument: "Unless you have real-world means to make your opinions reality ... I don't care about your opinions" Which goes both in the positive and the negative. Both "show it working or you can't do it" and the negative "prevent me from making it working or shut up". You have zero means to prevent such use of the technology ... Add to that trillions of dollars in reasons not to outlaw the technology itself. Attempts to enforce this will be worse, much worse, than the war on drugs. Plus, frankly, drugs do a lot more harm than just allowing this fully would do, so hopefully that will mean less attention going into this.

collegeburner 4y ago

there's a real concern that "erotic plasticity" (esp if you combine this with a recommendation algo) can push people towards weird ass shit. literally the same thing happens on youtube, tiktok etc. with regular videos so why would this be an exception?