5 ms·

I'm curious how you feel about images, because it seems we have the same problem: I draw a stick figure with genitals. All good. I put a little line and write

by 0x3f 9mo ago

I'm curious how you feel about images, because it seems we have the same problem: I draw a stick figure with genitals. All good. I put a little line and write '10 year old child', then... illegal? In some places, anyway. The difference with text I suppose is that text is _never_ real. The provenance of an image can be hard to determine.

cultofmetatron 9mo ago
I think the ethics here get complicated. for me the line would be if the AI itself was trained on actual CSAM. as long as no one was sexually violated in the course of creating the final image, I see no problem with it from an ethical perspective; all the better if it keeps potential predators from acting on real children. Wether it does or not is a complex topic that I won't claim to have any kind of qualifications to address.
- croes 9mo ago
  > all the better if it keeps potential predators from acting on real children. The big question is if, those pictures could have the opposite effect.
  - pdpi 9mo ago
    And the followup big question is — how do you measure which effect, if any, occurs in practice?
  - chii 9mo ago
    So do you believe violent video games induce more violent crimes then?
    - pdpi 9mo ago
      The issue is a fair bit subtler than that. The analogous question here isn't "do violent video games induce violent behaviour in the general population?" but rather "do violent video games induce violent behaviour in people who already have a propensity for violence?" Or, even more specifically, "does incredibly realistic-looking violence in video games induce violent behaviour in people who already have a propensity for violence?". I'm not talking about the graphics being photorealistic enough or anything, I mean that, in games, the actual actions, the violence itself is extremely over the top. At least to me, it rarely registers as real violence at all, because it's so stylised. Real-world aggression looks nothing like that, it's much more contained.
      - tosti 9mo ago
        Yep. It can definately go both ways. A game like Doom can be a nice way to put off some steam.
  - delecti 9mo ago
    That's a valid and interesting question to ask and study, but I don't think it's relevant to the decision of whether it should be illegal.
    - bmicraft 9mo ago
      I think that's the most, if not only relevant part to base your decision on
    - Insanity 9mo ago
      It is incredibly relevant. If murder is prevented by having people play violent games and live out their fantasy there, isn’t that a good thing? I’m not convinced that it would be, but it’s an interesting hypothesis.
      - delecti 9mo ago
        The comment I replied to was proposing the opposite equivalent, that fake CSAM (written fiction, AI generated images not trained on real CSAM) could increase risk of action. I don't think violent video games should be banned, whether they increase or decrease IRL violence (I personally suspect they don't have a significant effect either way). And I don't think "simulated CSAM" (where no actual minors were involved in any part of the creation) should be banned on that basis either (though I don't know enough to guess whether it would tend to increase or decrease actual violations).
  - mrighele 9mo ago
    If there is no proof there should be no ban. What if parent is right (more widespread porn caused people to have less sex after all) ? This means that a ban caused more harm on real children.
- hansvm 9mo ago
  IIRC, violent crime is increased in people pre-disposed to it when they use outlets and substitutes (consuming violent media, etc). That might not translate to pedophilia, but my prior would be that such content existing does cause more CSA to happen.
  - alexgieg 9mo ago
    That's incorrect. There have been studies on this. In a few cases seeing depictions of violence causes an urge to act violently, but in the majority of people predisposed to violence it causes a reduction in that impulse, so on average there's a reduction. The same has been shown to be the case with depictions of sexual abuse. For some it leads the person to go out and do it. For the majority of those predisposed to be sexual predators it "satisfies" them, and they end up causing less harm. Presumably the same applies to pedophiles. I remember reading a study on this that suggested this to be the case, but the sample size was small so the statistical significance was weak.
    - hansvm 9mo ago
      This review [0] is a bit reductionist and overconfident with some of its adjacent claims, but it includes a decent overview of the studies we've done on the topic and references those for further reading. The effect is weak enough at a societal level that it mostly doesn't make sense to consider (and those effect directions are not supportive of your claim of overall reduction if you want to interpret them as strong enough to matter), but when restricted to groups pre-disposed to violence you do see a meaningful increase in violent behaviors. [0] https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/3/4/491 https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/3/4/491
amiga386 9mo ago
Like this sketch where Chris Morris tries to get a (former) police officer to say what is and what isn't an indecent photograph? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC7gH91Aaoo&t=1014s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC7gH91Aaoo&t=1014s

by 0x3f 9mo ago

cultofmetatron 9mo ago

I think the ethics here get complicated. for me the line would be if the AI itself was trained on actual CSAM. as long as no one was sexually violated in the course of creating the final image, I see no problem with it from an ethical perspective; all the better if it keeps potential predators from acting on real children. Wether it does or not is a complex topic that I won't claim to have any kind of qualifications to address.

croes 9mo ago
> all the better if it keeps potential predators from acting on real children. The big question is if, those pictures could have the opposite effect.
- pdpi 9mo ago
  And the followup big question is — how do you measure which effect, if any, occurs in practice?
- chii 9mo ago
  So do you believe violent video games induce more violent crimes then?
  - pdpi 9mo ago
    The issue is a fair bit subtler than that. The analogous question here isn't "do violent video games induce violent behaviour in the general population?" but rather "do violent video games induce violent behaviour in people who already have a propensity for violence?" Or, even more specifically, "does incredibly realistic-looking violence in video games induce violent behaviour in people who already have a propensity for violence?". I'm not talking about the graphics being photorealistic enough or anything, I mean that, in games, the actual actions, the violence itself is extremely over the top. At least to me, it rarely registers as real violence at all, because it's so stylised. Real-world aggression looks nothing like that, it's much more contained.
    - tosti 9mo ago
      Yep. It can definately go both ways. A game like Doom can be a nice way to put off some steam.
- delecti 9mo ago
  That's a valid and interesting question to ask and study, but I don't think it's relevant to the decision of whether it should be illegal.
  - bmicraft 9mo ago
    I think that's the most, if not only relevant part to base your decision on
  - Insanity 9mo ago
    It is incredibly relevant. If murder is prevented by having people play violent games and live out their fantasy there, isn’t that a good thing? I’m not convinced that it would be, but it’s an interesting hypothesis.
    - delecti 9mo ago
      The comment I replied to was proposing the opposite equivalent, that fake CSAM (written fiction, AI generated images not trained on real CSAM) could increase risk of action. I don't think violent video games should be banned, whether they increase or decrease IRL violence (I personally suspect they don't have a significant effect either way). And I don't think "simulated CSAM" (where no actual minors were involved in any part of the creation) should be banned on that basis either (though I don't know enough to guess whether it would tend to increase or decrease actual violations).
- mrighele 9mo ago
  If there is no proof there should be no ban. What if parent is right (more widespread porn caused people to have less sex after all) ? This means that a ban caused more harm on real children.
hansvm 9mo ago
IIRC, violent crime is increased in people pre-disposed to it when they use outlets and substitutes (consuming violent media, etc). That might not translate to pedophilia, but my prior would be that such content existing does cause more CSA to happen.
- alexgieg 9mo ago
  That's incorrect. There have been studies on this. In a few cases seeing depictions of violence causes an urge to act violently, but in the majority of people predisposed to violence it causes a reduction in that impulse, so on average there's a reduction. The same has been shown to be the case with depictions of sexual abuse. For some it leads the person to go out and do it. For the majority of those predisposed to be sexual predators it "satisfies" them, and they end up causing less harm. Presumably the same applies to pedophiles. I remember reading a study on this that suggested this to be the case, but the sample size was small so the statistical significance was weak.
  - hansvm 9mo ago
    This review [0] is a bit reductionist and overconfident with some of its adjacent claims, but it includes a decent overview of the studies we've done on the topic and references those for further reading. The effect is weak enough at a societal level that it mostly doesn't make sense to consider (and those effect directions are not supportive of your claim of overall reduction if you want to interpret them as strong enough to matter), but when restricted to groups pre-disposed to violence you do see a meaningful increase in violent behaviors. [0] https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/3/4/491 https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/3/4/491

amiga386 9mo ago

Like this sketch where Chris Morris tries to get a (former) police officer to say what is and what isn't an indecent photograph? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC7gH91Aaoo&t=1014s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC7gH91Aaoo&t=1014s