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Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI

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Re: Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI

#91

In the US if I get caught selling you a gram of pure cocaine I get the same punishment as I would if I sold you a gram that’s only 20% pure. If I sold you a gram of some random powder and told you it is cocaine I am likely to be prosecuted all the same whether I knew it was fake or not. That aside, the “fully synthetic CSAM with no children involved at all” idea relies very, very heavily on taking the word of the guy…

Generally in the US, you must be proven guilty, not proven innocent. The prosecution must prove that the defendant actually committed the crime. The defendant absolutely can claim plausible deniability.

Although currently it is not entirely clear whether mere possession should continue to constitute a crime by itself, or it should require actual child abuse (because the former used to imply the latter).

Re: Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it really child abuse if no children were involved? How can you prove that zero children were involved at any point? How does the model generate CSAM without it either being in the training material or fed to the model as an input?

You're asking the wrong question. How can you prove that children were involved? In most developed jurisdictions, you must be proven guilty, not innocent. > How does the model generate CSAM without it either being in the training material or fed to the model as an input? How can a skilled artist (when forced to) draw CSAM without ever having seen CSAM? How can they draw something without having seen the exact thing b…

> How can they draw something without having seen the exact thing before?

There has, in fact, been CSAM found in a version of the training set that was used to make Stable Diffusion 1.5, for example.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/20/csam_laion_dataset/

Re: Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI

#93
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that there is a good bit of data suggesting that access to porn does reduce sexual assault.

I don't think there is. I've seen data suggesting correlation but no causal studies.

Yea, that is moving goalposts.

A causal study in this case is basically impossible.

So at the moment, we have correlation studies compared to your anecdote….

Re: Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI

#94
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is. I've seen data suggesting correlation but no causal studies.

Yea, that is moving goalposts. A causal study in this case is basically impossible. So at the moment, we have correlation studies compared to your anecdote….

>Yea, that is moving goalposts.

No it's not. The comment I replied to was the one suggesting there is a causal relationship.

My anecdote is a counterargument that shows the erroneous logic underlying the original claim.

Re: Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI

#95

In the US if I get caught selling you a gram of pure cocaine I get the same punishment as I would if I sold you a gram that’s only 20% pure. If I sold you a gram of some random powder and told you it is cocaine I am likely to be prosecuted all the same whether I knew it was fake or not. That aside, the “fully synthetic CSAM with no children involved at all” idea relies very, very heavily on taking the word of the guy…

Generally in the US, you must be proven guilty, not proven innocent. The prosecution must prove that the defendant actually committed the crime. The defendant absolutely can claim plausible deniability. Although currently it is not entirely clear whether mere possession should continue to constitute a crime by itself, or it should require actual child abuse (because the former used to imply the latter).

I did not mention conviction, only prosecution.

It’s not unreasonable to think “we should look into this guy that is publishing CSAM even though he’s posted it under hashtag #totallylegal”

I have a legitimate question for the defenders of this specific activity: If a bad actor were to produce real CSAM by harming children and then used an img2img model that creates very similar but distinct outputs, what do you call those outputs? CSAM? Art?

What (if anything) should happen when law enforcement sees those images?

How can the idea of “synthetic CSAM that harms no one” exist without some mechanism to verify that that is the case?

Re: Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it really child abuse if no children were involved? The "harm" principle which is very popular these days to see if things are bad or good or punishable or not, I think it has a lot of problems. There are a lot of things that don't map onto this principle well. Social cohesion is a huge one. Something may not directly harm someone, but it can harm the fabric of society and many other things.

On the other hand, a government that makes victimless actions into major crimes also destroys social cohesion as it means the law is clearly detached from what is just. By all means, fast track the death penalty for child rapists. Even make a constitutional amendment allowing cruel and unusual punishments for that single crime. Treat paying for actual abuse images as a worse crime than commissioning a murder. Sky's t…

Yeah obviously there needs to be a balance. But I think it's popular right now to be unbalanced towards allowing any and all victimless crimes not thinking about the effects they do have on society overall and in the long term vs any particular specific person immediately

Re: Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it really child abuse if no children were involved? The "harm" principle which is very popular these days to see if things are bad or good or punishable or not, I think it has a lot of problems. There are a lot of things that don't map onto this principle well. Social cohesion is a huge one. Something may not directly harm someone, but it can harm the fabric of society and many other things.

You don't want to use that argument, because that's the same argument that has been and will be used for a lot of things, like gay relationships, transsexualism, any and all drugs, violence in media, etc.

But just because it can be taken too far, doesn't mean the argument is bad. Likewise, the argument for a social safety net is good, taken too far you get Communism. Does it mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Re: Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it really child abuse if no children were involved? Does that mean that AI-generated imagery of some protected group being harmed causes actual harm to that protected group? Not saying it doesn't, but it may be worth thinking about. Deepfakes of real children is real children being involved. Outside of that, my response is, “how would you create a compelling CSAM image with nothing resembling the target in the t…

Deepfakes of real children aren’t mentioned here, so you know. The discussion is more general.

From TFA:

> Last year, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received 4,700 reports of generated AI child porn, with some criminals even using generative AI to make deepfakes of real children to extort them.

So, it’s definitely part of the conversation. Also, being a more general conversation means that it encompasses more specifics. Not being able to bring the general conversation back to specifics makes for a fairly useless discussion.

Re: Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it really child abuse if no children were involved? The "harm" principle which is very popular these days to see if things are bad or good or punishable or not, I think it has a lot of problems. There are a lot of things that don't map onto this principle well. Social cohesion is a huge one. Something may not directly harm someone, but it can harm the fabric of society and many other things.

Not saying I agree with legally permitting this kind of thing, but just addressing your comment: If the government can throw you in prison for something, it better be for a good reason. If it's simply doing something "that doesn't harm anyone but is perceived as not conducive to social cohesion", that doesn't seem like a good reason. Many conservatives would say gay marriage, polyamory, tattoos, porn, foul language,…

Many people's instinct was to go here, which is maybe why our current society tips over into permissiveness. But a good balance can be reached without becoming brutal totalitarians.

One example is alcohol, a lot a lot of countries struggle with controlling it. Technically it's a victimless crime. It's easy for people to see how it affects society though. In some places banning it will be impossible due to local preference, but governments have creative ways to reduce usage. It's not totalitarian to run a campaign to try to reduce people's alcohol consumption, or to add taxes onto it which are shown to reduce consumption and related incidents.

Re: Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI

#100
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it really child abuse if no children were involved? I think there is an empirical question one step beyond this. Does a pedophile who sees AI child porn get inured to it and then go on to try to act out fantasies with real victims? Or does this give pedophiles a way to satiate their desires indefinitely with only AI-based content, and lead to a lower portion abusing actual kids? A second order issue is that dist…

Pedophilia seems, to a large degree, to be under-researched. Mostly because of the taboo, but even questions like "what portion of the general population are sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children" do not have good data.

I’m not sure about other countries but in the USA if you even broach the subject that the guilty individuals are often themselves extremely mentally disturbed, probably themselves victims of sexual abuse at a young age, and maybe should get some help while serving out punishment for whatever society deigns as “the proper amount of time” you will be ostracized from just about any group of people
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