4 ms·

even if it is victim free, it can affect mental health in a way that a consumer will be more compelled to do a criminal act and create a real victim. let's say

by slt2021 1y ago

even if it is victim free, it can affect mental health in a way that a consumer will be more compelled to do a criminal act and create a real victim. let's say you publish a Steam game how to be a school shooter and shoot kids, wouldn't that lead to real school shootings ? who can definitely say that computer generated content about criminal behavior, won't lead to real crime with real victims? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Shooter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Shooter

ses1984 1y ago
Who can say that it does?
kristopolous 1y ago
I view it more like methadone. Let's be specific: Rape, incest, necrophilia, bestiality, and pedophila ideation. I think we can all agree (1) these are harmful, anti-social behaviors that we do not want in our society, (2) people don't choose to have these desires, (3) most people who have them have no desire to actually traumatize others, (4) people who have these struggle with it. These multi-media AI role-play environments would allow that type of engagement without any harm. Now given all this, I am not a psychologist and do not know if that's part of how someone unfortunate enough to have those inclinations can deal with it healthily. But if it is, now it exists and hopefully we can see less of it in the real world. I'm all for harm reduction if this is a way to get there.
- landl0rd 1y ago
  It’s not unreasonable to suspect that engaging in high-fidelity simulations of these behaviors will further entrench and worsen paraphilias. This is pretty evident with the progression of many pornography addictions that don’t include these sorts of things that still follow the pattern of increasing novelty seeking leading to increasingly deviant stuff. I am at a principled level uneasy with what’s fundamentally a sort of prior restraint (you haven’t yet hurt anyone but this may increase the likelihood and/or be an effective proxy to lock up those who are more likely to do so) but also see a really strong case for doing it given the fact that these are arguably the most antisocial behaviors one can imagine.
  - kristopolous 1y ago
    Right, I'm just a technologist. The psychological and sociological parts aren't my bailiwick Typing a prompt in an AI box to make art has fewer real-world victims than performing the acts, filming them, and then sharing the videos. I think that's inarguable. Maybe it's still unadvisable and someone should be in talk therapy. I have no idea. But at least nobody is actually getting molested and retraumatized in the ai art scenario. If someone is spending their time using comfyUI drawing pictures instead of stalking the local middleschool, I'd hesitate to say mission accomplished ... but maybe I should? People's time is finite. They can't be doing both. If the real is substituted for the imaginary then the real can no longer happen because that time is spent.
    - Aeolun 1y ago
      The model has to be trained on something though. It’s easy to see how this works for art art, because people have been drawing that shit for years, and most people wouldn’t feel to bad about training on it. I don’t think that’s true for the photorealistic models though.
      - kristopolous 1y ago
        sure but those features have been generalized over very large datasets. Yes, you can have Loras with specific people, convincingly voice clone with higgs, use latentsync, wan, flux kontext, face swap, lots of things ... sure. This all falls flat on me though. It's like showing me the lewdest most shocking story and then saber rattle about keyboards and word processors. I'm fully aware of the wild things people do with drawing programs. We're all adults here. It's fine.
  - School-Cotton 1y ago
    Are there any actual studies on this? Does access to simulations of illegal or objectionable material make pedophiles, rape fetishists, etc. more or less likely to try to access the real thing (or even worse, to try to commit crimes in the real world)? Because both possibilities are plausible, it’s hard to know which is correct.
- UncleMeat 1y ago
  I don't think desires are created from nothing. Exposure can amplify things. Somebody with an interest in dubious consent could move towards ever more violent nonconsent in their porn choices via its availability. In a much less extreme way, we do see changes in people's real life choices regarding sex acts being influenced by pornography as these sex acts have become more accessible in porn (choking, anal sex, and facials are commonly cited). This suggests that porn is changing behavior rather than simply responding to preexisting desires.
jahsome 1y ago
What about two consenting adults engaging in age play. By your logic, wouldn't that also lead to "real crime"?
- landl0rd 1y ago
  There’s probably some difference between someone who is visibly an adult and mature vs more deeply entrenching pathways of arousal in response to someone who is visibly a child. I still find the adult fetish version repellent but it’s also really hard to police in a way that’s remotely ethically permissible. Ie yes it’s bad and in an ideal world nobody would do it. I see trying to restrict or ban it as the greater of two evils.
  - numpad0 1y ago
    An ideal world with less speeches and acts than we have today is a monastery, and monasteries are definitely not a model of an ideal world.
jameslk 1y ago
> let's say you publish a Steam game how to be a school shooter and shoot kids, wouldn't that lead to real school shootings ? > who can definitely say that computer generated content about criminal behavior, won't lead to real crime with real victims? I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic but there has been no found link between violent video games to violent crimes, despite it being researched extensively: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/03/violent-video-games-behavior https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/03/violent-vide... https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-019-01069-0 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-019-01069-0 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6756088/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6756088/ https://elifesciences.org/articles/84951 https://elifesciences.org/articles/84951 Of course, that hasn’t stopped video games being blamed for violence by the “think of the children” crowd and certain politicians: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Entertainment_Protection_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Entertainment_Protect... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/video-game-violence-became-partisan-issue/595456/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/video... Especially when shootings occur by white perpetrators: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/09/video-games-school-shootings https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/09/video-games-... The same narrative plays out for porn, despite the research findings being the same: https://www.utsa.edu/today/2020/08/story/pornography-sex-crimes-study.html https://www.utsa.edu/today/2020/08/story/pornography-sex-cri... But blaming violent video games or pornography is an easy scapegoat
torton 1y ago
Grand Theft Auto 5 sold over 200 million copies, and military/crime/shooter games have always been incredibly popular. Yet crime has been decreasing over the past few decades in the United States, where both cars and guns are easily accessible.
- jjmarr 1y ago
  The most popular activity in GTA V isn't stealing cars. It's getting a 5-star wanted level as a mass shooter. And to this day, military recruiters use the AC130 mission in CoD to convince people to become aerial gunners.
vunderba 1y ago
There are hundreds of games designed to simulate criminal activities: hitman, the thief series, GTA, etc. I have yet to see a single reputable study that shows playing these games somehow results in an increase in that actual activity in real life. Feels like you're falling into the same trap that Senator Lieberman did in the 90s, and just another spiritual successor to Satanic panic.
vidarh 1y ago
I think you ask valid questions, but I don't think there is any credible evidence to answer those questions "yes".
antonvs 1y ago
Found Tipper Gore’s HN account.

ses1984 1y ago

Who can say that it does?

kristopolous 1y ago

I view it more like methadone. Let's be specific: Rape, incest, necrophilia, bestiality, and pedophila ideation. I think we can all agree (1) these are harmful, anti-social behaviors that we do not want in our society, (2) people don't choose to have these desires, (3) most people who have them have no desire to actually traumatize others, (4) people who have these struggle with it. These multi-media AI role-play environments would allow that type of engagement without any harm. Now given all this, I am not a psychologist and do not know if that's part of how someone unfortunate enough to have those inclinations can deal with it healthily. But if it is, now it exists and hopefully we can see less of it in the real world. I'm all for harm reduction if this is a way to get there.

landl0rd 1y ago
It’s not unreasonable to suspect that engaging in high-fidelity simulations of these behaviors will further entrench and worsen paraphilias. This is pretty evident with the progression of many pornography addictions that don’t include these sorts of things that still follow the pattern of increasing novelty seeking leading to increasingly deviant stuff. I am at a principled level uneasy with what’s fundamentally a sort of prior restraint (you haven’t yet hurt anyone but this may increase the likelihood and/or be an effective proxy to lock up those who are more likely to do so) but also see a really strong case for doing it given the fact that these are arguably the most antisocial behaviors one can imagine.
- kristopolous 1y ago
  Right, I'm just a technologist. The psychological and sociological parts aren't my bailiwick Typing a prompt in an AI box to make art has fewer real-world victims than performing the acts, filming them, and then sharing the videos. I think that's inarguable. Maybe it's still unadvisable and someone should be in talk therapy. I have no idea. But at least nobody is actually getting molested and retraumatized in the ai art scenario. If someone is spending their time using comfyUI drawing pictures instead of stalking the local middleschool, I'd hesitate to say mission accomplished ... but maybe I should? People's time is finite. They can't be doing both. If the real is substituted for the imaginary then the real can no longer happen because that time is spent.
  - Aeolun 1y ago
    The model has to be trained on something though. It’s easy to see how this works for art art, because people have been drawing that shit for years, and most people wouldn’t feel to bad about training on it. I don’t think that’s true for the photorealistic models though.
    - kristopolous 1y ago
      sure but those features have been generalized over very large datasets. Yes, you can have Loras with specific people, convincingly voice clone with higgs, use latentsync, wan, flux kontext, face swap, lots of things ... sure. This all falls flat on me though. It's like showing me the lewdest most shocking story and then saber rattle about keyboards and word processors. I'm fully aware of the wild things people do with drawing programs. We're all adults here. It's fine.
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  Are there any actual studies on this? Does access to simulations of illegal or objectionable material make pedophiles, rape fetishists, etc. more or less likely to try to access the real thing (or even worse, to try to commit crimes in the real world)? Because both possibilities are plausible, it’s hard to know which is correct.
UncleMeat 1y ago
I don't think desires are created from nothing. Exposure can amplify things. Somebody with an interest in dubious consent could move towards ever more violent nonconsent in their porn choices via its availability. In a much less extreme way, we do see changes in people's real life choices regarding sex acts being influenced by pornography as these sex acts have become more accessible in porn (choking, anal sex, and facials are commonly cited). This suggests that porn is changing behavior rather than simply responding to preexisting desires.

jahsome 1y ago

What about two consenting adults engaging in age play. By your logic, wouldn't that also lead to "real crime"?

landl0rd 1y ago
There’s probably some difference between someone who is visibly an adult and mature vs more deeply entrenching pathways of arousal in response to someone who is visibly a child. I still find the adult fetish version repellent but it’s also really hard to police in a way that’s remotely ethically permissible. Ie yes it’s bad and in an ideal world nobody would do it. I see trying to restrict or ban it as the greater of two evils.
- numpad0 1y ago
  An ideal world with less speeches and acts than we have today is a monastery, and monasteries are definitely not a model of an ideal world.

jameslk 1y ago

> let's say you publish a Steam game how to be a school shooter and shoot kids, wouldn't that lead to real school shootings ? > who can definitely say that computer generated content about criminal behavior, won't lead to real crime with real victims? I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic but there has been no found link between violent video games to violent crimes, despite it being researched extensively: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/03/violent-video-games-behavior https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/03/violent-vide... https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-019-01069-0 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-019-01069-0 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6756088/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6756088/ https://elifesciences.org/articles/84951 https://elifesciences.org/articles/84951 Of course, that hasn’t stopped video games being blamed for violence by the “think of the children” crowd and certain politicians: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Entertainment_Protection_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Entertainment_Protect... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/video-game-violence-became-partisan-issue/595456/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/video... Especially when shootings occur by white perpetrators: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/09/video-games-school-shootings https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/09/video-games-... The same narrative plays out for porn, despite the research findings being the same: https://www.utsa.edu/today/2020/08/story/pornography-sex-crimes-study.html https://www.utsa.edu/today/2020/08/story/pornography-sex-cri... But blaming violent video games or pornography is an easy scapegoat

torton 1y ago

Grand Theft Auto 5 sold over 200 million copies, and military/crime/shooter games have always been incredibly popular. Yet crime has been decreasing over the past few decades in the United States, where both cars and guns are easily accessible.

jjmarr 1y ago
The most popular activity in GTA V isn't stealing cars. It's getting a 5-star wanted level as a mass shooter. And to this day, military recruiters use the AC130 mission in CoD to convince people to become aerial gunners.

vunderba 1y ago

There are hundreds of games designed to simulate criminal activities: hitman, the thief series, GTA, etc. I have yet to see a single reputable study that shows playing these games somehow results in an increase in that actual activity in real life. Feels like you're falling into the same trap that Senator Lieberman did in the 90s, and just another spiritual successor to Satanic panic.

vidarh 1y ago

I think you ask valid questions, but I don't think there is any credible evidence to answer those questions "yes".

antonvs 1y ago

Found Tipper Gore’s HN account.