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AI-generated 'poverty porn' fake images being used by aid agencies

theguardian.com

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Re: AI-generated 'poverty porn' fake images being used by aid agencies

#101

Post by ashanoko »

pessimizer wrote: post #58
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. People will adjust. My point, and a subtle one at that, was that it does not bode well for the society of low trust ahead.

What people say to respond to this critique is that high-trust people were always a problem. Low-trust societies have procedures in place that nobody ever considers just skipping because we're both good guys and you're from Boston, too, right? High-trust societies are self-regulating scammers paradises. Filled with people citing Occam's Razor, and affinity fraud. Even worse, for minorities the procedures never get dr…

Trust is a tax , which is low in high thrust societies and high in low thrust societies. All you archieve there costs more, more surveilance, more stress , more guards, more fraud in science, products, services. It naturally appeals to the paranoid subset of society which wants to sell itself as a protector service.

Re: AI-generated 'poverty porn' fake images being used by aid agencies

#102

Post by bonoboTP »

jnovek wrote: post #73
SkyeCA wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can you possibly make due diligence when everyone around you is incentivized to lie? You can't and the correct response is a total lack of trust by default because that's the easiest way to protect yourself. They really are out to get you(r money).

I wouldn’t describe it as the correct response, more like “the best one we can think of right now.” Living this way is that it’s really exhausting, saps quite a lot of joy out of life and makes people more lonely. It’s far from optimal and a more sustainable option would be to work our way back to the community trust we used to enjoy just ~30 years ago.

For that you need repeated interactions and reputation networks. It requires densely networked communities where defection is punished with ostracism and tainted reputation. It works in small communities that have known each other for generations and are expected to rely on each other in the future.

The ability to move into new circles every few years incentivizes defection and low trust interactions.

However tight knit, reputation based groups will tend towards risk aversion and conformity and tall poppy syndrome and nepotism. Low trust enables outlier performance.

Re: AI-generated 'poverty porn' fake images being used by aid agencies

#104

Post by aredox »

bradley13 wrote: post #96

I'm sure that some (few) of these NGOs do good work. However, sooner or later, they all seem to succumb to two problems: (1) excessive staff costs, and (2) a failure of incentives. The second one is more insidious: If they solved the problem they address, they would no longer need to exist. They have no incentive to succeed. So they go around addressing individual problems, taking sad pictures, and avoid addressing s…

[dead]

Re: AI-generated 'poverty porn' fake images being used by aid agencies

#105

Post by dgb23 »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #20
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #6

I was thinking about it, because wife was telling me story from work, where a woman was scammed with AI generated stuff and her colleague was a little too nonchalant about it ( 'it is on her to do her due diligence' ). And it made me annoyed. How can you possibly make due diligence when everyone around you is incentivized to lie? We do have a concept of fraud, but advertising seems to be able to move around its edges…

If you can be beguiled by random images from an unknown solicitor to make rash financial decisions, the root of the problem is probably sitting in front of the screen. "A fool and his money are soon parted" is not a new thing, it's just easier to accomplish than ever before thanks to the dopamine conditioned internet and AI content generation. These victims don't need new legal layers of trust, they need a social med…

That's not the "root" of the problem but just a coping strategy.

The root of the problem has something to do with the scammer.

Re: AI-generated 'poverty porn' fake images being used by aid agencies

#106

Post by tredre3 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #60

Journalists have been manufacturing these types of pictures since the dawn of the camera. It's actually nice to see those unscrupulous types losing their jobs to AI.

Programmers have been manufacturing sloppy and dangerous code since the dawn of the computer. It's actually nice to see those unscrupulous types losing their jobs to AI.

Re: AI-generated 'poverty porn' fake images being used by aid agencies

#107

Post by wisty »

tredre3 wrote: post #98
Aurornis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> her colleague was a little too nonchalant about it ( 'it is on her to do her due diligence' ). I’m always fascinated by victim blaming culture, which has been pervasive long before generative AI. You see it most frequently in cases where the victim is thought to be a safe target: Someone wealthier, an office rival, a corporation. On HN it appears in every thread about someone being scammed, but it was most obvious…

> You see it most frequently in cases where the victim is thought to be a safe target: Someone wealthier, an office rival, a corporation. That must be a representation of your own social circle because I can assure you that poor people are commonly blamed for all the bad things that happen to them.

Do people in your social circle blame poor people?

Re: AI-generated 'poverty porn' fake images being used by aid agencies

#108

Post by gampleman »

umvi wrote: post #54
gampleman wrote: post #49

I don't know how to feel about this entirely. Like I get the whole AI generated images bad angle, but on the other hand as someone running a charity I can see the benefit of not wasting donation money on sending a professional photographer to an actual slum and paying probably tens of thousands of dollars to get good quality photos and instead getting usable pictures for free-ish. When running a charity you need to s…

If you don't get real photos though, how do you know you aren't misrepresenting the people you are aiding? You could very well be exaggerating their plight which will make your donors feel scammed if the truth comes out.

There's a world of difference between a smartphone snapped photo by a volunteer and what a professional photographer would produce. The first will give you a pretty good idea of what's going on, but will be completely unsuitable for what's effectively a display ad.

For instance in the charity I run, we have about a thousand pictures of real operations taken by amateurs. For our posters we still prefer staged professional photos, since they look 100x better and communicate our message much more effectively. And yes, it does annoy me that this is the case, but again, the goal of my charity isn't to pursue truth in advertising, it's to achieve an actual goal (which is the goal people have already entrusted us with their real money, so one does have a healthy fear of wasting it).

On a deeper level it's sort of like why paintings sometimes feel more true than photographs in the sense that they can communicate how we perceive a place and what it means to us in a way that a photo often cannot.

Re: AI-generated 'poverty porn' fake images being used by aid agencies

#109

Post by autoexec »

I can understand that there are some good arguments for using AI generated pics. Using AI means not having to pay for photographers who'd either have to spend a lot of time taking or staging pictures, and not having to pay for their travel expenses which means that money can be spent on aid instead of marketing. Also it can feel a bit exploitative to photograph vulnerable people, especially children.

As long as the images they end up with accurately reflect the situation on the ground and the use of AI is transparent it seems like a good idea to use AI for attention grabbing images and supplement with candid photos from aid workers who aren't professional photographers.

Re: AI-generated 'poverty porn' fake images being used by aid agencies

#110

Post by dgb23 »

boxed wrote: post #39
jncfhnb wrote: post #25

I have suspected that I have seen some of these for Palestine in recent months. Not saying this has any implication on the broader reporting of it but… shit we’re really kind of screwed if media starts portraying everything via fictitious dramatization imagery. Especially on social media.

That picture of the skeletal kid that went around shows they can spread some pretty wrogn ideas with real photos too. Context is everything.

If we're thinking of the same picture: That kid is real, it has a severe condition that needs medical attention. It's not the general case, but an extreme one, but that doesn't make the problems any less urgent.
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