In this post, https://mastodon.social/@jasonkoebler/111528504674470914 https://mastodon.social/@jasonkoebler/111528504674470914 the following assertion is mad

In this post, https://mastodon.social/@jasonkoebler/111528504674470914 https://mastodon.social/@jasonkoebler/111528504674470914 the following assertion is made, wrt generated images: "the thing I want to stress is that generative AI is hurting people today" I've been discussing this today. TL;dr IMO this assertion is not true as written. Whether and how synthetic content, harms real people in any sense (moral, legal, emotional, psychic, reptutationally, etc.) is appropriately a matter of societal debate. One thing we can say is that historically, there has been great societal ambivalence about whether and how harm is done in cases where the nominal victim is unaware of the harm—especially when it's not simply a case of ignorance, e.g. while one's peers or circles or employer are privy to different information—but ones in which the simple fact of some potentially harmful document existing. Or, as in this case, of there often being I assume no actual individuals involved, so harm such as it is, is inferred from class identification—to apply to all members of a class. (To put a point on that, is harm done to all children, or any child, should someone generate AI images which correspond to no single child?) "What you don't know, can't/doesn't hurt you" is often the refuge of those acting in bad faith. This case is more complicated, in as much as there has been an argument made that generated images provide societal benefit by acting as a relief valve for fetishes or pathologies which cannot ever be expressed or engaged with in a non-harmful way. I am not making that argument. But that argument has been made. And it's not obviously false, any more than the author's assertion is obviously true. We really should be clear about the way we reason as a society about these things. And the specific case of CSAM is not a good place to start, in as much as it is all but impossible to reason dispassionately about anything adjacent. We should find some non-triggering analogous case, and sort out our societal consensus there—and only thereafter attempt to either apply it cases more toxic and radioactive only later. In the meantime, statements like these are actively harmful to urgently needed (and non-trivial) debate.