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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

#81

Post by AnimalMuppet »

zdragnar wrote: post #75
at-fates-hands wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You can't and the correct response is a total lack of trust by default because that's the easiest way to protect yourself. This has slowly eaten away at the idea that we used to live in a high trust society that has now completely transformed into a society where you cannot trust anything, ever, in any capacity. I felt like I had kind gained back some control from not clicking on any links in emails and using my p…

Communities used to be smaller, even in big cities, so the number of scammers you encountered was fewer. Now that long distance calls are free, the Internet connects you to everyone else on it, and paperwork is digitalized across entire populations, the reach - and therefore statistical likelihood of encountering- scammers is much higher.

Scammers have more incentive to reach widely than anyone else (well, except advertisers, but that's something of a fine line). So the ratio of scams to non-scams went way up.

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

#82

Post by mothballed »

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.

You can gain a little bit of it back by living in a low population density area.

I live in a small enough town that if I screw somebody, my name will be hosed until the day of my funeral.

End result is I've left $10s of K of easily pawnable construction materials out for years (sorry any thieves reading, it is gone now) and no one touched it. There are several houses around me that have been abandoned for years, no one has ever touched them, except as a free service to help maintain their road.

If I go into 'town' it's a good bet almost everywhere I go, my wife or I will see someone we know. If you do not hold a door for someone, they will remember. If you cut them off in traffic, they will remember. If we lie to others, it will be known by everyone in short order, and we will never have any halfway decent job here again, unless the money can somehow be made in a trustless service.

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

#83

Post by dahart »

phkahler wrote: post #21

I've always hated when even real images are used to promote something, but the image is unrelated. Example: a horrific image of a smashed car to show the result of drunk driving or phone use but where that wasn't the actual cause of the crash in the picture. Claiming "this is a result of xxx" is a lie. There are plenty of real cases out there so if you're making stuff I can't trust you - particularly for those asking…

Like, I agree, but at some level I’d actually rather see a fake picture of a drunk driving crash (or no picture) and know this is what the aftermath might look like but nobody died in this particular shot.

For drunk driving in particular, the pictures typically come from the police and aren’t exposed or composed with an artistic purpose. The opposite is true for a bunch of the famous pictures of poverty; these are composed for their (often powerful) emotional effect. Whether it’s a good thing or not, I can imagine that being able to add a little of the art direction after the fact to drunk driving photos might be tempting, i.e., having some control over angle & exposure, and maybe avoid gore in the shot…

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

#84

Post by Hilift »

philipallstar wrote: post #10

> “It saddens me that the fight for more ethical representation of people experiencing poverty now extends to the unreal,” she said. This is an odd way of saying "people aren't aware of poverty amongst white people".

Countries providing much of the foreign aid are sometimes in denial of poverty in their own country. The UK is projecting 22% in 2024/25 to 23% in 2029/30. Bangladeshi and Pakistani households are 53% and 47%. Families with three or more children 44%.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07...

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

#85

Post by andy99 »

This was published in 2019

  Visualizing the Consequences of Climate Change Using [GANs]
https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.03709

I always found it very hypocritical, the idea that deepfakes are ok if they mock up something we support.

I generally don’t think it’s a big deal to make a synthetic image, just the double standard.

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

#86

Post by thinkingtoilet »

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…

I was recently thinking about this. One of the only benefits of this AI slop is that maybe it will teach the generations growing up with it not to trust anything they see on the internet without verifying it. If you're older and not technologically savvy, I understand why it's so easy to get scammed. Hopefully younger generations will learn the lesson that you need to assume everyone is lying on the internet, that pictures, and more importantly, video are no longer reliable without verifying the source.

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

#87

Post by raincole »

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…

But trust is necessary for the society to run efficiently. High-trust environments are more efficient.

Technically, we can read the banks' financial reports, the executives' background checks, the video recordings of their gold reserves... to decide which banks are less likely to run away with your money. But no one wants to live in such a place.

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

#88

Post by amanaplanacanal »

floundy wrote: post #19
philipallstar wrote: post #10

> “It saddens me that the fight for more ethical representation of people experiencing poverty now extends to the unreal,” she said. This is an odd way of saying "people aren't aware of poverty amongst white people".

[flagged]

"Go back to Reddit" isn't really advancing the conversation here.

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

#89

Post by dahart »

andy99 wrote: post #85

This was published in 2019 Visualizing the Consequences of Climate Change Using [GANs] https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.03709 I always found it very hypocritical, the idea that deepfakes are ok if they mock up something we support. I generally don’t think it’s a big deal to make a synthetic image, just the double standard.

There’s nothing wrong with using synthetic images when you say you’re using synthetic images. The issue is when synthetic images are implied or claimed to be real without disclosing the image provenance.

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

#90

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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.

There is an alternative. Remain open - cautiously, but open.

This may mean you get scammed. (I mean, be more careful with larger amounts...) But when you get scammed, remain open anyway. Yeah, you can lose some money that way. But the alternative is "really exhausting, saps quite a lot of joy out of life and makes people more lonely", so even losing some money could be a net win overall.

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