this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
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This right here.
I'm so fucking sick of the "it's just a tool" or "sO YoU wANna BAn EvErYthiNG?!" bullshit. It's all bad faith garbage that people hide behind because they want the results of these "tools." They want the AI porn fakes of teenagers and celebrities (because they're pathetic creeps and incels with no concept of dignity or consent). They want to be able to rip off actual artists so they can pretend like they've done something "creative" so they can get social media clout. They're completely unserious people who can't be reasoned with. They need to be shunned and shamed.
That's a lack of vision.
I want... people to put on a VR set, and fuck off to their fantasy world instead of messing up IRL. I want creepy incels, rapists, and similar, to have a means to act out their creepiness without impacting real people's lives. Even more, I want them to prefer their virtual fantasies, because they can control them with a push of a button, instead of brainwashing, gaslighting, grooming, drugging, and finding other ways to control real people.
The faster that AI+VR gets more realistic and easier to use, the better for everyone.
I don't believe that there are any studies that have shown that acting out fantasies in virtual spaces will reduce actions being taken out on real people.
Since it seems like your argument rests on that, do you have anything you can reference to back up the claim?
Are you asking for studies about virtual spaces that don't exist yet? Seriously?...
For an approximation, you can check some like these:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222552404_The_pleasure_is_momentarythe_expense_damnable_The_influence_of_pornography_on_rape_and_sexual_assault
https://www.psypost.org/violent-video-games-decrease-stress-hormones-study-finds/
Well, if you are going to argue that we need to figure out a way to get virtual kiddie porn to pedophiles so that we can protect kids, you should be sure it won't lead to more kids being abused first.
Did I misinterpret your position?
"Be sure first"... like how? Do you suggest running an experiment, then counting the abuses...? 🙄
Unethical human experimentation is kind of frowned upon, so the only before-the-fact information that's ever going to be available, is the behavior of component elements present in other studies.
My position, is that we should follow those studies. Right now, they indicate that realizing fantasies in more controllable virtual environments, correlates to a decrease in the incidence of the same behaviors in less controllable IRL settings. Meaning: if you want to see less of a behavior IRL, give it an easier to control virtual outlet.
Do you want to protect kids? Well, given that those who were to listen have already listened, and those who were to be deterred by punishments have already been deterred... and lacking an effective method of detecting future abusers... there don't seem to be many options left other than luring the remaining abusers towards a decoy.
You seem to not understand the scale at which these things operate. We're not talking about niche tools that only incels and creeps will use to jerk off to CP, we're talking about tools that can be used to manipulate, spread mis- and disinformation, and imitate actual people doing things they wouldn't normally do, and can do so at a scale that is exponentially greater than anything we've ever seen.
Go take a look at Facebook. Log out of YouTube and look at the front page. Try to do a Google search. Look at the absolute flood of AI generated shit. I know a lot of authors of short fiction, and the publications that they submit to that normally see a couple hundred to a couple thousands of submission per month have been flooded with hundreds of thousands of submissions per month, all AI garbage.
Now imagine it becomes so good that it's indistinguishable from the real. Pics, vids, articles. The scale and speed at which people can create society-level harm and destroy lives is incomprehensible. This is not a "think of the children" thing. This is an inflection point where you will never know if the video you just saw of a political candidate calling for the extermination of X group is real or not. But the harms and consequences will be real. You will see revenge porn not just of nudes, but of videos of people seemingly doing horrific acts, and having their lives ruined because of it. And it will happen so fast and in such a flood that nothing will be able to stop it or counter it, because no one will see the truth buried in the inundation.
Again, we could do some of this now, but not at the unimaginable scale or speed that AI generation allows for.
This is not a good thing. And if this is the world you want, then there is no reasoning with you. You are truly lost.
Was about to respond to your arguments, when...
"My way or the highway", huh? Ok, guess there is no reasoning with you. 🛣️