In most cases commenting on votes is boring and pointless, as per the guidelines. However, rather unusually, I've found it really quite interesting to watch the votes on this comment. It paints a picture that people are actually quite split on this matter. I kind of figured it might wind up in the gray (I don't say "am I the only one" without good cause usually) but on the other hand it leaves me genuinely curious exactly how people disagree with this. (To be clear, I'm probably not actually going to engage much more since this is not really a topic I care deeply about but it's more a morbid curiosity.)
I describe what I have learned in later life about what was done to me in earlier.
One may "groom" a child to accept sexual abuse in large part by portraying this as an entirely normal aspect of their present phase of life. To do so requires the presentation of what appears to be true evidence.
Such images are invariably lies, but remember that the victim is a child as naïve to lies as to all else, yet. What he sees he will also believe, and not notice all the lies behind it.
AI-generated CSAM makes this a much, much easier process. It relieves the prerequisite of acquiring genuine child pornography. Now, all that's required is unsupervised access, not even both at once, to both an AI and a child. You have now expanded the threat radius by several orders of magnitude.
This alone suffices to justify AI-generated CSAM as a crime. In the US you may own many types of rifle. You may not, though, own an artillery rifle. It is far too dangerous a weapon, and you no more than any other civilian can have any possible lawful use of such a thing. Therefore its simple possession is a crime. The same principle applies here.
There is one particular US citizen that owns a private fleet of ICBMs. Those missiles are typically used to do things like launch low-cost satellite internet and ferry astronauts to and from the ISS; but the only difference between those missiles and the ones intended to make an arbitrary chunk of the Earth explode is a matter of programming the flight computers slightly differently.
Provided you pay the taxes you can own pretty much whatever you want (even in countries less free than the US); all you have to do is be fabulously wealthy. (Or in the NFA's case, pay a 200 dollar transfer tax.)
The NFA seems to do a good enough job limiting what it regulates. We discuss law, not code or science; as in any human endeavor, even theoretical perfectibility is impossible to achieve and dangerous to pursue.
If you mean to suggest the same law should regulate both you and I, and men with all the power and armament of a James Bond movie villain, I refer you to my prior statement, and to the final argument of a king who wishes to remain so.
So, you seem to believe that generative AI in this case is mostly just a force multiplier, but the force multiplication is so great that it should be considered dangerous analogous to a firearm.
I do appreciate hearing your perspective. I'll admit that I am not personally convinced by this reasoning but I think it is at least a sensible line of argument.
If you mean to say we should seek to set the same bar on AI that generates CSAM, then that seems to me a very fine place to start - grandfather clause and all.
I think the main issue with regulating computer programs and the Internet the way we regulate physical objects is that replication on the internet is roughly free. I think if we really wanted regulation like this to be meaningful, it would have to involve regulating the sale of compute power, something I personally really hope doesn't happen.
That said, we're probably about to see a very similar issue crop up in the real world with 3D printed firearms, and I'm personally not looking forward to the consequences of it pretty much regardless of what the outcome is.
I might have been more clear that my analogy was specific to the theory of the crime, and not intended to speak to methods of abating it. You are of course correct that these would need to differ.
I don't like the idea of such regulation being made in ignorance, either. Engineers should have a seat at that table, which requires first that we have earned it. I don't see where we have begun to do that, and I did my first paid work in this profession twenty-nine years ago.
If that failure on the part of our profession proves to have consequences for us or for society, then I don't think any one of us is free to consider the blame for those entirely undeserved.
Since I started working we went from unwavering optimism about the power of software and the Internet to free and enrich us, as a nearly purely positive force. Obviously it was not true, and we've woken up with quite a hangover. At least that's how I feel.
> Engineers should have a seat at that table, which requires first that we have earned it.
I don't love this mentality. Leaving aside the issue of trying to quantify whether a seat at the table is earned or not, software developers are not a monoculture, even this thread shows that there is actually quite a lot of disagreement. Not having software developers at the table will probably just ensure the regulation is unnecessarily stupid and pointless, a lot like what seems to happen for firearms regulation.
That said, I'm not even really concerned so much about whether engineers are allowed at the table. Instead I suspect the regulation will be skewed by interests with a lot of money, e.g. OpenAI wanting to pull up the ladder behind them.
> Again, I don't require to have convinced you.
Sorry if my previous comment came off as condescending. Anyway, I'm only commenting here because it is an interesting discussion topic to me, not trying to force a consensus.
Oh, no worries at all. I only wanted to disclaim any force with which I'd seemed to make my argument.
Please excuse me if I seem a little hard to pin down today. I spoke earlier of what was done to me before. Of those responsible, I learned yesterday by far the worst has ceased forever to trouble this earth: the police officer on whom he fired first has brought home to him all his sins. The corpse of him now enriches the soil of a potter's field - more worth by far than he ever had in his life, which he did not so lead as to earn even the most vacuous performance of mourning.
I have for decades expected such news to change me when it came. I did not at all expect this wealth of peace and joy. I may not yet have begun to encompass it.
These are thoughtful points you've made. I may find a more substantive response to offer here, but possibly not before the reply window closes.
The article we are talking about wants to be about CSAM stories. That alone is a topic that most people have a strong opinion about. A strong enough opinion to say that anything even adjacent to the topic is not worth even a little consideration. CSAM is the penultimate taboo subject, and for good reason.
But this article isn't really about CSAM. It's about the taboo itself. This article taunts the reader: if CSAM truly deserves to be taboo, then it logically follows that anything resembling CSAM should be censored, and its creators punished.
If we take this argument seriously, then we must actually consider what it means to resemble CSAM. That's a path that no one is interested in exploring, so the argument itself just vanishes.
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The real argument is about the threat of story. Every writer has the power to write any story that they can imagine. There is nothing new about this: it's been true since prehistory, since language itself.
