4 ms·

Is this better than abuse images being made with real children? Or does it just feed an addiction.

kromem 3y ago
It probably depends on if the correlation between consumption of the media and going on to actually harm children is causative to any degree. There's probably a benefit to devaluing the market for the material, but I'm skeptical how common that people who wouldn't have been harming children suddenly began harming children just to turn a profit with generating media of it. So even with artificial CSA material undermining a market for real CSA materials, there's probably no net change to actual victimization at best and an increase at worst. There'd need to be a casual inverse relationship between consuming CSA materials and acting out on those urges (controlling for the urges existing in the first place) for this to actually reduce children being harmed, which AFAIK is the exact opposite of much of the limited data to date.
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  >the exact opposite of the limited data to date The data I’ve seen shows a positive relationship between possessing child porn and being a sexual predator. You will also find that regular rapists possess more and more extreme porn than usual. Thing is, it’s hard to tell the direction of causation here, is it that porn creates sexual abusers or is it that sexual abusers like porn? On the other hand, the prevalence of porn in general tracks with less sexual abuse, and I find this much more compelling than the former since you know, in my experience, porn kills your sex drive instead of making it more voracious. There’s support forums online for men rendered impotent by porn. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201601/evidence-mounts-more-porn-less-sexual-assault https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201601... So no, I would say the effect would probably be a net decrease in the abuse of children simply because the best explanation for the evidence is that porn reduces sexual abuse but is enjoyed by sexual abusers. However there is a novel concern here. People being able to easily use AI to make porn of and groom the children around them is maybe a novel concern there’s no real research on and those issues might make AI generated CSAM more negative than what we've seen before, but who knows.
- gizmo686 3y ago
  In a typical illicit market, producers are motivated by money, so craahing the (black) market value essentially stops the problem. I suspect, as I think you do, that this is not the case with CSA, where most producers are primarily motivated by their own urges. Having said that, the current (legal) theory of CSA is that each act of consumption re-victimizes the original victim. If you believe that framework, then artificial CSA could plausibly be a net positive by reducing the secondary damage done by distributing recordings of actual abuse. More speculativly, there may be social dynamics at play in the production of CSA. If you have a group of pedophiles dedicated to CSA, they group likely provides social pressure on its members to produce it. With easy access to artificial CSA, those social pressures could be lessened, which could result in less actual abuse.
metalcrow 3y ago
This is an open research question, and will likely never be tested (imagine the ethics board questions). However, dimensionally correlated questions like "do violent video games cause real world violence" have been tested and seem to not cause real world effects, but that's no guarantee this particular case doesn't have specifics that sway the outcome to the opposite direction.
- cyanydeez 3y ago
  The better analogy is "do violent video games _displace_ violent behaviors" as what the q is, is whether it can act as a substitute like a nicotine patch.
exodust 3y ago
It's obviously "better" as there is no victim. I'm guessing in many cases the addict would be satisfied with artificial images, and no longer seek real images. > "Justice Department officials who investigate child exploitation have said those images are still illegal even if they’re AI-generated" The amount of surveillance, censorship and rules needed in society to catch a few sickos making bad AI image choices, is not worth the price. Go after the real abuse images all day, but artificial images can only ever be at the extreme end of distasteful, similar to horror-themed images. A sick arrangement of pixels. It has more in common with a pencil sketch than a real photo.

It probably depends on if the correlation between consumption of the media and going on to actually harm children is causative to any degree. There's probably a benefit to devaluing the market for the material, but I'm skeptical how common that people who wouldn't have been harming children suddenly began harming children just to turn a profit with generating media of it. So even with artificial CSA material undermining a market for real CSA materials, there's probably no net change to actual victimization at best and an increase at worst. There'd need to be a casual inverse relationship between consuming CSA materials and acting out on those urges (controlling for the urges existing in the first place) for this to actually reduce children being harmed, which AFAIK is the exact opposite of much of the limited data to date.

faeriechangling 3y ago
>the exact opposite of the limited data to date The data I’ve seen shows a positive relationship between possessing child porn and being a sexual predator. You will also find that regular rapists possess more and more extreme porn than usual. Thing is, it’s hard to tell the direction of causation here, is it that porn creates sexual abusers or is it that sexual abusers like porn? On the other hand, the prevalence of porn in general tracks with less sexual abuse, and I find this much more compelling than the former since you know, in my experience, porn kills your sex drive instead of making it more voracious. There’s support forums online for men rendered impotent by porn. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201601/evidence-mounts-more-porn-less-sexual-assault https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201601... So no, I would say the effect would probably be a net decrease in the abuse of children simply because the best explanation for the evidence is that porn reduces sexual abuse but is enjoyed by sexual abusers. However there is a novel concern here. People being able to easily use AI to make porn of and groom the children around them is maybe a novel concern there’s no real research on and those issues might make AI generated CSAM more negative than what we've seen before, but who knows.
gizmo686 3y ago
In a typical illicit market, producers are motivated by money, so craahing the (black) market value essentially stops the problem. I suspect, as I think you do, that this is not the case with CSA, where most producers are primarily motivated by their own urges. Having said that, the current (legal) theory of CSA is that each act of consumption re-victimizes the original victim. If you believe that framework, then artificial CSA could plausibly be a net positive by reducing the secondary damage done by distributing recordings of actual abuse. More speculativly, there may be social dynamics at play in the production of CSA. If you have a group of pedophiles dedicated to CSA, they group likely provides social pressure on its members to produce it. With easy access to artificial CSA, those social pressures could be lessened, which could result in less actual abuse.

metalcrow 3y ago

This is an open research question, and will likely never be tested (imagine the ethics board questions). However, dimensionally correlated questions like "do violent video games cause real world violence" have been tested and seem to not cause real world effects, but that's no guarantee this particular case doesn't have specifics that sway the outcome to the opposite direction.

cyanydeez 3y ago
The better analogy is "do violent video games _displace_ violent behaviors" as what the q is, is whether it can act as a substitute like a nicotine patch.

exodust 3y ago

It's obviously "better" as there is no victim. I'm guessing in many cases the addict would be satisfied with artificial images, and no longer seek real images. > "Justice Department officials who investigate child exploitation have said those images are still illegal even if they’re AI-generated" The amount of surveillance, censorship and rules needed in society to catch a few sickos making bad AI image choices, is not worth the price. Go after the real abuse images all day, but artificial images can only ever be at the extreme end of distasteful, similar to horror-themed images. A sick arrangement of pixels. It has more in common with a pencil sketch than a real photo.