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There seems to be continued demand for CSAM-related LLM chats. Apart from being a very depressing reflection of humanity, I wonder if we're simply seeing humani

There seems to be continued demand for CSAM-related LLM chats. Apart from being a very depressing reflection of humanity, I wonder if we're simply seeing humanity as it is, or if the availability of CSAM pulls people into such crimes?

pjc50 2y ago
CSAM is probably the least available category of material on the Internet. Almost all but the most "free speech" diehard services consider it a bannable offence. It's very illegal in almost every jurisdiction and hugely unpopular with the public. The demand for it lurks nonetheless. CSAM is extremely illegal because making it is a crime against a child. Textual material describing fictional child abuse isn't quite in the same category. Deepfake material that purports to be of a specific real child may or may not be illegal depending on jurisdiction but really ought to be.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Why should it “really ought to be” if it is fictional? Isn’t it like the text material?
  - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
    Because the whole point of laws 'n shiet existing at all is to legislate morality.
  - throwway120385 2y ago
    Because making it legal creates a situation where someone makes real CSAM and then argues that it is an AI fake in court. And it's really not a pretty thing to require the affected children to testify as to what happened to them. It's also a gateway, stoking interest in the real thing.
    - BobbyJo 2y ago
      Neither of these two arguments hold any water. I see them all the time, but they really just feel like justification after the fact, as both can be applied to such a large swath of information as to be useless. The first would require we outlaw generating depictions of any illegal activity. The second would require we ban undesirable men from legal adult content. I think it's ok if society, and our legislature, classifies the information as illegal, in isolation, with no useless A->B gymnastics. Thats pretty much what the law already does.
      - ensignavenger 2y ago
        The first would only require banning fictional depictions of heinous crimes against children (When the children look like real ones), as it is intended to protect children from having to testify to what happened to them. One could argue that adults shouldn't have to testify to being the victim of various terrible crimes either, but that is a different argument than what was being made.
        throwway120385 2y ago
        Adults are not children. We often afford special protections to children that we wouldn't afford to adults, because they aren't fully developed humans. Nowhere did I talk about adults or say adults shouldn't be required to testify to provide evidence. But I think children need to be allowed to be children. You can look at the law in some US states around crimes against children, and a lot of them do permit either CCTV or recorded testimony with the assistance of a child psychologist or similar. The law already treats children as different. It sound like you're arguing that they should be treated like adults in this specific instance? Slippery Slope is a fallacy if the person you're arguing with has no intention of going further than exactly what they've said.
        rightbyte 2y ago
        > as it is intended to protect children from having to testify to what happened to them. What do you mean? You don't have to show the child in fake CSAM the CSAM to figure out if it happened or not. If there is no crime commited against the child in reality, there is nothing for it to testify.
  - BobbyJo 2y ago
    CSAM is unique in that society, almost uniformly, classifies it as wrong, even when there is no relationship to any material harm. I think parent's argumentative basis is simply that the information itself is evil at face value, an the vast majority of people (in the U.S. at least) would agree.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      They would agree, or they would be afraid to disagree?
  - BizarroLand 2y ago
    There is some part of me that can rationalize that an AI is not a child and therefore there is no child abuse happening in the interaction, but that tiny part of my brain is shouted down immediately by the rest of my brain screaming, "PEOPLE ARE HORRIBLE. YOU CANNOT GIVE THEM THE OPPORTUNITY TO FANTASIZE ABOUT CSA IN A COMMUNITY AS PEOPLE WILL INEXORABLY ESCALATE INTO REAL LIFE CSA!" Even if there are people who can indulge in imaginary CSAM without ever bringing it into real life, those are not the people you can set the bar against. You have to set it against the average person and deduce from there what percentage of them when given free access to this material would be tempted into committing crimes. If that number goes up, your rule is too loose. Giving everyone unlimited access to this without judgement will almost certainly increase child sex crimes. Therefore it must be restricted.
    - qball 2y ago
      >but that tiny part of my brain is shouted down immediately by the rest of my brain screaming Your gut feeling is simply wrong. General pornography availability and sexual assault are negatively correlated; you'll notice the former increased dramatically and the latter decreased dramatically over the past 20 years in Western societies where that is true. Despite what you might be led to believe crime rates were not increasing (well, before 2020 anyway).
    - welshwelsh 2y ago
      Wow. Honestly, no part of my brain is screaming about possible escalation, it's something I'm not worried about in the slightest. Why would someone risk their freedom and harm another person IRL by committing a serious crime, when they could get the same stimulation from a computer program? But let's say we do live in a world where fictional crimes often escalate to real ones. Suppose that playing DOOM increases the chance that an unstable person will buy a gun and shoot real people. Even in that universe, I would not be OK with laws that restrict me from playing DOOM, because that violates my freedom. I do not want the law to treat everyone as a potential criminal.
      - iphoneisbetter 2y ago
        [dead]
  - BobaFloutist 2y ago
    I'm far from an expert but last I checked the consensus was that attraction to minors is a disordered behavior, and if you feed it with (even fictional) visual depictions it increases the paraphilia. It might seem like a harmless outlet, but it doesn't actually function that way, and so it's better for everyone if it's just made illegal.
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    Textual CSAM can be very illegal too: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-man-sentenced-40-years-prison-running-child-obscenity-website https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-man-sentenced-40-years-...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wkat4242 2y ago
I think the CSAM is mainly used for effect here, to make it sound more sensational. Of course it's one of the things uncensored models can be used for but it's calling out the extreme. Uncensored models are also required for normal adult erotic fiction and even to discuss many sexual topics, because the public models are so hypersensitive on this topic. They're mirroring American sensibilities which can be annoying here in Europe where we a are a lot more open about consensual adult sexuality.
- anon11100 2y ago
  A sensational truth. The sexy AI chatbot sites with community bots public are full of horrible stuff. A dispassionate AI will happily engage in genocide, or suicide, or snuff, etc.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Yeah I'm sure they can and are used for that sometimes but I doubt this is what most people are using them for. The problem is that AI bots are so heavily censored, and uncensoring them means removing all protections. By seeking the slighter things past the barrier, you will open it up to all kinds of things. But in my opinion the models are currently really too censored to be useful right now. For example, I partake in BDSM and sex-positive parties. All very consensual and adults-only stuff (you'd be surprised how big a thing consent is in BDSM) and all very legal and above board. I'm in a lot of chatgroups about these things but don't have time to monitor them, so I use a LLM to summarise them (a local one for privacy reasons, not just my own but the other group participants' as well obviously). But if I try to use a normal uncensored model like llama for it, it will immediately close up and complain about 'explicit' content. This is just BS. There should be models which are more open like this. I use an uncensored version of llama now which works great. And it's never recommending genocide, homicide or suicide. Because I'm not interested in those things and don't ask for it. I'm sure it can tell me but I don't want to know. Most of the people who need uncensored models will have these kind of usecases. Calling out the one extreme idiot is just sensationalism. It should really be possible to customise models' censorship rather than going for the strictest common denominator. If there are just a few public models that can create some normal adult smut incorporating all sexual practices that are legal, 99% of those current customers of these hacked-cloud-hosted chatbots will be very happy with that. And the mainstream AI industry will make more money. The problem is that they don't want to be associated with it which is aligned with American morale but not European. Sex is a normal part of life here (and the SexTech industry is growing rapidly).
123yawaworht456 2y ago
AI hallucinations are not CSAM. the attempt to stoke a moral panic in this article (and the forbes article from january it's referencing) is baffling. you can go to any booru or hentai site and see far more graphic things than boring LLM slop, and it's all on clearnet, because terrible things are not illegal as long as they are imaginary (in all but the most ass-backwards jurisdictions). it reads like boomer bullshit about violent video games from 20+ years ago. "A Single Unattended Computer Can Feed a Crowd of Violent Teenagers. We left a computer unattended, and guess what? They were playing Doom on it! Just like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold!"

pjc50 2y ago

CSAM is probably the least available category of material on the Internet. Almost all but the most "free speech" diehard services consider it a bannable offence. It's very illegal in almost every jurisdiction and hugely unpopular with the public. The demand for it lurks nonetheless. CSAM is extremely illegal because making it is a crime against a child. Textual material describing fictional child abuse isn't quite in the same category. Deepfake material that purports to be of a specific real child may or may not be illegal depending on jurisdiction but really ought to be.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Why should it “really ought to be” if it is fictional? Isn’t it like the text material?
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  Because the whole point of laws 'n shiet existing at all is to legislate morality.
- throwway120385 2y ago
  Because making it legal creates a situation where someone makes real CSAM and then argues that it is an AI fake in court. And it's really not a pretty thing to require the affected children to testify as to what happened to them. It's also a gateway, stoking interest in the real thing.
  - BobbyJo 2y ago
    Neither of these two arguments hold any water. I see them all the time, but they really just feel like justification after the fact, as both can be applied to such a large swath of information as to be useless. The first would require we outlaw generating depictions of any illegal activity. The second would require we ban undesirable men from legal adult content. I think it's ok if society, and our legislature, classifies the information as illegal, in isolation, with no useless A->B gymnastics. Thats pretty much what the law already does.
    - ensignavenger 2y ago
      The first would only require banning fictional depictions of heinous crimes against children (When the children look like real ones), as it is intended to protect children from having to testify to what happened to them. One could argue that adults shouldn't have to testify to being the victim of various terrible crimes either, but that is a different argument than what was being made.
      - throwway120385 2y ago
        Adults are not children. We often afford special protections to children that we wouldn't afford to adults, because they aren't fully developed humans. Nowhere did I talk about adults or say adults shouldn't be required to testify to provide evidence. But I think children need to be allowed to be children. You can look at the law in some US states around crimes against children, and a lot of them do permit either CCTV or recorded testimony with the assistance of a child psychologist or similar. The law already treats children as different. It sound like you're arguing that they should be treated like adults in this specific instance? Slippery Slope is a fallacy if the person you're arguing with has no intention of going further than exactly what they've said.
      - rightbyte 2y ago
        > as it is intended to protect children from having to testify to what happened to them. What do you mean? You don't have to show the child in fake CSAM the CSAM to figure out if it happened or not. If there is no crime commited against the child in reality, there is nothing for it to testify.
- BobbyJo 2y ago
  CSAM is unique in that society, almost uniformly, classifies it as wrong, even when there is no relationship to any material harm. I think parent's argumentative basis is simply that the information itself is evil at face value, an the vast majority of people (in the U.S. at least) would agree.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    They would agree, or they would be afraid to disagree?
- BizarroLand 2y ago
  There is some part of me that can rationalize that an AI is not a child and therefore there is no child abuse happening in the interaction, but that tiny part of my brain is shouted down immediately by the rest of my brain screaming, "PEOPLE ARE HORRIBLE. YOU CANNOT GIVE THEM THE OPPORTUNITY TO FANTASIZE ABOUT CSA IN A COMMUNITY AS PEOPLE WILL INEXORABLY ESCALATE INTO REAL LIFE CSA!" Even if there are people who can indulge in imaginary CSAM without ever bringing it into real life, those are not the people you can set the bar against. You have to set it against the average person and deduce from there what percentage of them when given free access to this material would be tempted into committing crimes. If that number goes up, your rule is too loose. Giving everyone unlimited access to this without judgement will almost certainly increase child sex crimes. Therefore it must be restricted.
  - qball 2y ago
    >but that tiny part of my brain is shouted down immediately by the rest of my brain screaming Your gut feeling is simply wrong. General pornography availability and sexual assault are negatively correlated; you'll notice the former increased dramatically and the latter decreased dramatically over the past 20 years in Western societies where that is true. Despite what you might be led to believe crime rates were not increasing (well, before 2020 anyway).
  - welshwelsh 2y ago
    Wow. Honestly, no part of my brain is screaming about possible escalation, it's something I'm not worried about in the slightest. Why would someone risk their freedom and harm another person IRL by committing a serious crime, when they could get the same stimulation from a computer program? But let's say we do live in a world where fictional crimes often escalate to real ones. Suppose that playing DOOM increases the chance that an unstable person will buy a gun and shoot real people. Even in that universe, I would not be OK with laws that restrict me from playing DOOM, because that violates my freedom. I do not want the law to treat everyone as a potential criminal.
    - iphoneisbetter 2y ago
      [dead]
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  I'm far from an expert but last I checked the consensus was that attraction to minors is a disordered behavior, and if you feed it with (even fictional) visual depictions it increases the paraphilia. It might seem like a harmless outlet, but it doesn't actually function that way, and so it's better for everyone if it's just made illegal.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  Textual CSAM can be very illegal too: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-man-sentenced-40-years-prison-running-child-obscenity-website https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-man-sentenced-40-years-...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

wkat4242 2y ago

I think the CSAM is mainly used for effect here, to make it sound more sensational. Of course it's one of the things uncensored models can be used for but it's calling out the extreme. Uncensored models are also required for normal adult erotic fiction and even to discuss many sexual topics, because the public models are so hypersensitive on this topic. They're mirroring American sensibilities which can be annoying here in Europe where we a are a lot more open about consensual adult sexuality.

anon11100 2y ago
A sensational truth. The sexy AI chatbot sites with community bots public are full of horrible stuff. A dispassionate AI will happily engage in genocide, or suicide, or snuff, etc.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Yeah I'm sure they can and are used for that sometimes but I doubt this is what most people are using them for. The problem is that AI bots are so heavily censored, and uncensoring them means removing all protections. By seeking the slighter things past the barrier, you will open it up to all kinds of things. But in my opinion the models are currently really too censored to be useful right now. For example, I partake in BDSM and sex-positive parties. All very consensual and adults-only stuff (you'd be surprised how big a thing consent is in BDSM) and all very legal and above board. I'm in a lot of chatgroups about these things but don't have time to monitor them, so I use a LLM to summarise them (a local one for privacy reasons, not just my own but the other group participants' as well obviously). But if I try to use a normal uncensored model like llama for it, it will immediately close up and complain about 'explicit' content. This is just BS. There should be models which are more open like this. I use an uncensored version of llama now which works great. And it's never recommending genocide, homicide or suicide. Because I'm not interested in those things and don't ask for it. I'm sure it can tell me but I don't want to know. Most of the people who need uncensored models will have these kind of usecases. Calling out the one extreme idiot is just sensationalism. It should really be possible to customise models' censorship rather than going for the strictest common denominator. If there are just a few public models that can create some normal adult smut incorporating all sexual practices that are legal, 99% of those current customers of these hacked-cloud-hosted chatbots will be very happy with that. And the mainstream AI industry will make more money. The problem is that they don't want to be associated with it which is aligned with American morale but not European. Sex is a normal part of life here (and the SexTech industry is growing rapidly).

123yawaworht456 2y ago

AI hallucinations are not CSAM. the attempt to stoke a moral panic in this article (and the forbes article from january it's referencing) is baffling. you can go to any booru or hentai site and see far more graphic things than boring LLM slop, and it's all on clearnet, because terrible things are not illegal as long as they are imaginary (in all but the most ass-backwards jurisdictions). it reads like boomer bullshit about violent video games from 20+ years ago. "A Single Unattended Computer Can Feed a Crowd of Violent Teenagers. We left a computer unattended, and guess what? They were playing Doom on it! Just like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold!"