4 ms·

Plenty of actions are crimes without real victims. Not having insurance while driving is an example. Possession of explosives is another one.

• chatmasta 3y ago
  In fact, you might even argue that possessing real CSAM has no victim. After all, the person possessing the image isn't the one who committed the abuse and took a picture of it, right? But we've collectively decided that it's worth punishing that crime, because every viewer is an enabler of the abuser. The same logic should extend to AI-generated content. To put it another way, consider a thought experiment where a police officer generates CSAM with AI and then sells it to someone who thinks it's a real picture of a real victim. We should arrest the buyer, right? They thought they were committing a crime.
  • Eisenstein 3y ago
    You have literally proposed 'thought crimes'.
    • chatmasta 3y ago
      There's plenty of precedent where police officers pretend to be an underage person and some shmuck replies to them and agrees to meet at a hotel. Then they get arrested, and much of the time they also get prosecuted and convicted. You could argue it's entrapment but the fact is that most of society supports that sort of preemptive law enforcement. If you looked at it through a purely ethical framework then you could never convict the person because there was never any "real victim." But is that the right way to look at it? It's certainly not the way most people look at it.