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I’m at the point where I genuinely would like to see this ai stuff heavily regulated to outright banned. Any upside where Disney gets to not pay actors and inst

I’m at the point where I genuinely would like to see this ai stuff heavily regulated to outright banned. Any upside where Disney gets to not pay actors and instead just synthesize Princess Leia or Darth Vader for Star Wars XXIV is vastly outweighed by the sheer amount of fraud that can be committed when we have hyper realistic ai voices calling in our family members voices asking for crypto deposits. Anyone who disagrees join my start up where we generate the voice of dead family members so we can get people to pay indulgences to escape hell.

greesil 4y ago
When AI is outlawed then only outlaws will have GPUs or something
tarr11 4y ago
Banning or regulating AI wouldn’t impact scammers at all.
- throw10920 4y ago
  Or hostile nation-states, for that matter.
- janalsncm 4y ago
  I think it would. There’s a degree of expertise required to create a good deepfake. Banning it will reduce the pool of professional deepfake artists which 1) drives up the price of deepfakes and 2) makes it harder to secure good ones. And since the effectiveness of a deepfake scam depends on the quality of the deepfake, fewer people will be scammed.
  - dattmavis 4y ago
    Drugs are expensive for the same reasons. Most of the people who want to do them still do, just at a higher price. Regulation is fine, but prohibition rarely works.
  - jszymborski 4y ago
    > There’s a degree of expertise required to create a good deepfake. Here's the thing, you're almost most likely to be successful as a scammer with a poor deepfake with a good deepfake. This is why so many scams are so unbelievable in their premise (Nigerian princes , UN Lottery, etc...). Falling for the premise is a good indicator that the leads they get will turn a profit because they indicate vulnerability. This is partly why I don't think regulation would stop much of the scamming.
    - janalsncm 4y ago
      Well, in this case the deepfake is being used to amplify the authority of the product itself. It could work for Nigerian prince scams and dubious supplements. Imagine a deepfake Nigerian prince in the email! In fact the Tinder Swindler used something similar in his scams. So I think it does matter how authentic the deepfake appears. I’m ambivalent on whether banning the technology is a good idea or even how feasible it could be, but to the extent that deepfakes are limited I do think it would be bad for scammers.
  - andrewinardeer 4y ago
    People are up in arms about nation states restricting the application of cryptography which is essentially an application of mathematics. AI is also just another form of an application of mathematics with a different outcome. Seems unreasonable to ban one flavor of maths and not another.
- impalallama 4y ago
  And yet I can’t just Google “how to build a Bomb at home” and click on the first result and get detailed instructions for how to be a little terrorist.
  - dattmavis 4y ago
    Probably can't Google it, no. But there's a thousand other ways to get that exact info, even/especially online.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    I don't know the state of that and I'm not about to put it in my google history, so I'll take your word for it. But even if google gave you good info, it's a lot harder to level a building in the US these days because the AN part of ANFO bombs are a lot more regulated in the wake of the Oklahoma City Bombing.
  - nl 4y ago
    > And yet I can’t just Google “how to build a Bomb at home” and click on the first result and get detailed instructions for how to be a little terrorist. But you can Google "the anarchist cookbook" and get that information just fine (for better or for worse[1]) [1] https://warontherocks.com/2018/09/books-as-contraband-the-strange-case-of-the-anarchist-cookbook/ https://warontherocks.com/2018/09/books-as-contraband-the-st...
teolandon 4y ago
I like how not paying actors is listed as an upside.
- johnsillings 4y ago
  to be fair to the commenter you're replying to, they said it was an upside for Disney
  - teolandon 4y ago
    The commenter said "any upside *where* Disney...", which I took to mean "here's an example of an upside, where...".
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  The AI content will show up on time, not complain, not be a premadonna, not get tired or run afoul of union rules, not try to do their own stunts and then delay a production for months (impacting tons of other staff), not accidentally shoot someone on the crew, and not molest its coworkers. And that's just off the top of my head, there will be plenty more reasons. No surprise Disney (and others) are going to be getting on that bandwagon.
anon_cow1111 4y ago
And now the hard part; how do you ban "AI"? it's so vague, and the law has a hard time with vague concepts. I'd like to ban "social media", but how do you define that in a way that kills what you want (eg twitter, facebook, /r/all) and preserves less detrimental forms of it (eg HN or old phpbb forums) ? edit- Oh and furthermore, how do you deal with every country who decides to not ban it?
- impalallama 4y ago
  Well in my case I specifically mean hyper realistic deep fakes of people created without their consent. Why is it the difficulties of regulating something brought up as if it means it prevents any action taken at all. “Id like to ban murder but how do how do you define murder and ban the cases we want (murder) and allow the cases we do (self defense)? And what about countries who decide not to ban murder?”
  - anon_cow1111 4y ago
    >Well in my case I specifically mean hyper realistic deep fakes of people created without their consent. Seems reasonable on its face, but the real issue then becomes damage done-vs-effort needed to prevent it Your example is murder, but the problem is then a scaling issue; not many people really want to commit murder. It takes effort, and the sample size is so small we can evaluate it on a case-by-case basis. But it's trivial to deepfake one face onto another, so it's likely a lot of people will try it for their own amusement. So basically murder to most people is brutal and ugly. A Deepfake is clicking a few buttons; it's abstract and hard to see as a real crime for most people.(...ya know, kinda like how I'll pirate a song but I'm not going to stuff CDs into my pockets at the local retail store) And now we can expand that idea- what counts as a deepfake? The face editing is obvious here but what about training an AI to replicate someone else's voice? What about using the Lamba character.ai site to replicate Sonic or Indiana Jones? That's where it really gets tricky and where I feel politicians will be at a loss to construct any meaningful legislation.
  - irjustin 4y ago
    Super interesting, how would we regulate this space? Would it be similar to how we regulate the weapon systems and things related to it? From my perspective, seems quite difficult
throwawaylinux 4y ago
This kind of thing -- centralized action to shield and protect people from having their feelings/wallets/egos/etc., hurt always struck me as the complete opposite way to address things and yet it's always so popular. I understand governments want people to be as helpless as possible and reliant on the state controlling others in order to function so I see why it's pushed from the top down. I just don't see how it gets any traction. People should have to learn not to be scammed rather than trying to ban scams. People should be taught that speech is not violence instead of trying to ban speech. If this development is what it takes to finally empower people to not take their health and fitness advice from Joe Rogan and some other internet chumbo, I say it can't come soon enough. That a few additional people might fall for these things is a small price, and one I'm willing to pay.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sneak 4y ago
There are already laws against fraud. What you are talking about is simple prior restraint on computer generated art, in the cases where the speech is not already covered by fraud laws.
nl 4y ago
A call to "ban AI" on HN is one of the lowest point I've seen in my 15 years on this site. Not only is the behavior that is being complained about (people fraudulently pretending to be something they aren't) already illegal in most jurisdictions the unintended consequences of such a poorly thought out policy are complete unconsidered. The objections are obvious but to list some: * Behavior should be regulated, not technologies. Otherwise someone will use an alternative technology to perform the same attack and it won't be covered. * This behavior is already covered by fraud regulations * How would you even "ban AI" when people can't define it * The only approach that could be considered would be to take a licensing approach to writing any software. The downsides to this are considerable and hopefully self-evident to this audience.

greesil 4y ago

When AI is outlawed then only outlaws will have GPUs or something

tarr11 4y ago

Banning or regulating AI wouldn’t impact scammers at all.

throw10920 4y ago
Or hostile nation-states, for that matter.
janalsncm 4y ago
I think it would. There’s a degree of expertise required to create a good deepfake. Banning it will reduce the pool of professional deepfake artists which 1) drives up the price of deepfakes and 2) makes it harder to secure good ones. And since the effectiveness of a deepfake scam depends on the quality of the deepfake, fewer people will be scammed.
- dattmavis 4y ago
  Drugs are expensive for the same reasons. Most of the people who want to do them still do, just at a higher price. Regulation is fine, but prohibition rarely works.
- jszymborski 4y ago
  > There’s a degree of expertise required to create a good deepfake. Here's the thing, you're almost most likely to be successful as a scammer with a poor deepfake with a good deepfake. This is why so many scams are so unbelievable in their premise (Nigerian princes , UN Lottery, etc...). Falling for the premise is a good indicator that the leads they get will turn a profit because they indicate vulnerability. This is partly why I don't think regulation would stop much of the scamming.
  - janalsncm 4y ago
    Well, in this case the deepfake is being used to amplify the authority of the product itself. It could work for Nigerian prince scams and dubious supplements. Imagine a deepfake Nigerian prince in the email! In fact the Tinder Swindler used something similar in his scams. So I think it does matter how authentic the deepfake appears. I’m ambivalent on whether banning the technology is a good idea or even how feasible it could be, but to the extent that deepfakes are limited I do think it would be bad for scammers.
- andrewinardeer 4y ago
  People are up in arms about nation states restricting the application of cryptography which is essentially an application of mathematics. AI is also just another form of an application of mathematics with a different outcome. Seems unreasonable to ban one flavor of maths and not another.
impalallama 4y ago
And yet I can’t just Google “how to build a Bomb at home” and click on the first result and get detailed instructions for how to be a little terrorist.
- dattmavis 4y ago
  Probably can't Google it, no. But there's a thousand other ways to get that exact info, even/especially online.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I don't know the state of that and I'm not about to put it in my google history, so I'll take your word for it. But even if google gave you good info, it's a lot harder to level a building in the US these days because the AN part of ANFO bombs are a lot more regulated in the wake of the Oklahoma City Bombing.
- nl 4y ago
  > And yet I can’t just Google “how to build a Bomb at home” and click on the first result and get detailed instructions for how to be a little terrorist. But you can Google "the anarchist cookbook" and get that information just fine (for better or for worse[1]) [1] https://warontherocks.com/2018/09/books-as-contraband-the-strange-case-of-the-anarchist-cookbook/ https://warontherocks.com/2018/09/books-as-contraband-the-st...

teolandon 4y ago

I like how not paying actors is listed as an upside.

johnsillings 4y ago
to be fair to the commenter you're replying to, they said it was an upside for Disney
- teolandon 4y ago
  The commenter said "any upside *where* Disney...", which I took to mean "here's an example of an upside, where...".
red-iron-pine 4y ago
The AI content will show up on time, not complain, not be a premadonna, not get tired or run afoul of union rules, not try to do their own stunts and then delay a production for months (impacting tons of other staff), not accidentally shoot someone on the crew, and not molest its coworkers. And that's just off the top of my head, there will be plenty more reasons. No surprise Disney (and others) are going to be getting on that bandwagon.

anon_cow1111 4y ago

And now the hard part; how do you ban "AI"? it's so vague, and the law has a hard time with vague concepts. I'd like to ban "social media", but how do you define that in a way that kills what you want (eg twitter, facebook, /r/all) and preserves less detrimental forms of it (eg HN or old phpbb forums) ? edit- Oh and furthermore, how do you deal with every country who decides to not ban it?

impalallama 4y ago
Well in my case I specifically mean hyper realistic deep fakes of people created without their consent. Why is it the difficulties of regulating something brought up as if it means it prevents any action taken at all. “Id like to ban murder but how do how do you define murder and ban the cases we want (murder) and allow the cases we do (self defense)? And what about countries who decide not to ban murder?”
- anon_cow1111 4y ago
  >Well in my case I specifically mean hyper realistic deep fakes of people created without their consent. Seems reasonable on its face, but the real issue then becomes damage done-vs-effort needed to prevent it Your example is murder, but the problem is then a scaling issue; not many people really want to commit murder. It takes effort, and the sample size is so small we can evaluate it on a case-by-case basis. But it's trivial to deepfake one face onto another, so it's likely a lot of people will try it for their own amusement. So basically murder to most people is brutal and ugly. A Deepfake is clicking a few buttons; it's abstract and hard to see as a real crime for most people.(...ya know, kinda like how I'll pirate a song but I'm not going to stuff CDs into my pockets at the local retail store) And now we can expand that idea- what counts as a deepfake? The face editing is obvious here but what about training an AI to replicate someone else's voice? What about using the Lamba character.ai site to replicate Sonic or Indiana Jones? That's where it really gets tricky and where I feel politicians will be at a loss to construct any meaningful legislation.
- irjustin 4y ago
  Super interesting, how would we regulate this space? Would it be similar to how we regulate the weapon systems and things related to it? From my perspective, seems quite difficult

throwawaylinux 4y ago

This kind of thing -- centralized action to shield and protect people from having their feelings/wallets/egos/etc., hurt always struck me as the complete opposite way to address things and yet it's always so popular. I understand governments want people to be as helpless as possible and reliant on the state controlling others in order to function so I see why it's pushed from the top down. I just don't see how it gets any traction. People should have to learn not to be scammed rather than trying to ban scams. People should be taught that speech is not violence instead of trying to ban speech. If this development is what it takes to finally empower people to not take their health and fitness advice from Joe Rogan and some other internet chumbo, I say it can't come soon enough. That a few additional people might fall for these things is a small price, and one I'm willing to pay.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sneak 4y ago

There are already laws against fraud. What you are talking about is simple prior restraint on computer generated art, in the cases where the speech is not already covered by fraud laws.

nl 4y ago

A call to "ban AI" on HN is one of the lowest point I've seen in my 15 years on this site. Not only is the behavior that is being complained about (people fraudulently pretending to be something they aren't) already illegal in most jurisdictions the unintended consequences of such a poorly thought out policy are complete unconsidered. The objections are obvious but to list some: * Behavior should be regulated, not technologies. Otherwise someone will use an alternative technology to perform the same attack and it won't be covered. * This behavior is already covered by fraud regulations * How would you even "ban AI" when people can't define it * The only approach that could be considered would be to take a licensing approach to writing any software. The downsides to this are considerable and hopefully self-evident to this audience.