questionasker
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User ID: 2119
questionasker
1yr ago
What do you mean, human brains "might" use analog computation? I wasn't aware human brains did any digital computation.
? The conventional view is that human brains are digital computers. Information is represented symbolically in the form of nerve impulses, which is what enables the otherwise uniform computational substrate of the cerebrum to otherwise be able to process such a variety of different things from simple sensation to the considerations involved in complex planning etc.
questionasker
1yr ago
Women's breasts, in particular, come in a variety of shapes, and they are frequently not symmetric. Older women's breasts tend to be flat--think more like those pictures in the old National Geographic depicting women in some far-away hunter-gatherer tribe. The nipples and areolae come in various shapes and sizes, and change with temperature. Some have inverted nipples. Practically all of this variability is hidden by the kinds of clothes women wear, especially if they are into padded bras.
I'm aware of this. The point is that not everyone with good-looking (pornstar-like, if you would) breasts, decides to become a pornstar. Thus, these types of people are vulnerable to having very realistic versions of their breasts recreated with pornstar data, despite never themselves putting images of their actual breasts out onto the internet. Additionally, there's plenty of data of non-pornstar-like breasts out there to train data on. The point is not that AI will always generate topless versions of people that are very much like what their breasts actually look like, its that it can with at least some relatively degree of frequency.
questionasker
1yr ago
With deepfakes I guess it depends on how much verisimilitude something can have before you think it violates your "actual" privacy. If I have a deepfake of Angelina Jolie that, for whatever reason, has serious flaws and inaccuracies have I violated her privacy in the same way?
This is the main thing I am trying to get at with the locker room/fantasizing examples. The current AI can inpaint nudity onto clothed pictures of people without necessarily having serious flaws or inaccuracies. (Not to say, it always succeeds at doing this. Just that it can reasonably often.) And training the AI on the actual person's breasts isn't required for the result to be highly similar to what they actually look like topless, at least for some women, considering at least some people's breasts are visually similar to other people's breasts. Thus a person who has not already consented to having topless photos of themselves present anywhere on the internet can have topless images of them created to what is indeed a very high degree of verisimilitude to their actual naked form, using i.e. pornstar's breasts as training data.
Technically, I suppose, it can't be known by the person operating the AI algorithm if the person has i.e. a mole on the chest, etc. So maybe, because technically uncertainty might remain, i.e. without actually being able to look at a real topless image of the subject, and thus verifying that the nudity-ai-inpainting is highly similar, there is still some sense of privacy maintained? Because even if the inpainted-nudity actually is extremely similar to their topless form, this isn't known to the person creating or viewing the deepfake?
Regardless, overall, the pertinent fact is that the current level of technology is at a level where it is indeed possible to get outputs, at least somewhat often, that the depicted person themselves could or would mistake for real nude photos of themselves. This seems to me to be functionally very similar if not the same as looking at someone changing/naked without their consent or knowledge. You're right in the sense that it doesn't imply other security concerns in the same way as an intruder present in a changing room would, but I'm not sure that's whats actually wrong/disliked about peeping toms; I feel like a significant amount of the dislike of the idea of someone seeing you changing is the actual fact that they know what you look like naked (and maybe also the knowledge or likelihood that they are fantasizing about you sexually). I.e. most people would be as mostly as opposed to a person using X-ray glasses, or more realistically a hole in the wall, to look inside their locker room while they changed, as they would be opposed to someone i.e. hanging from the rafters. I can't know for certain, though, at least personally I guess, because to my knowledge I've never been the victim of any such situations.
I don't think we have an easy rule. I also don't know that this can/should be grounded in privacy. Maybe defamation concerns would be more viable?
Well, as far as legality goes, it seems like copyright is the main way people take down unwanted deepfake porn of themselves. Regardless, though, I'm less so interested in the legality and moreso in what should or shouldn't be generally considered acceptable ethically or morally speaking, for which perhaps privacy or violations thereof, and perhaps other things, do seem like a relevant concern.
questionasker
1yr ago
So discussion of deepfakes should account for the fact that they aren't particularly novel.
Maybe. Couldn't it be true that these types of images were unethical to create/consume for as long as they've existed, and there just wasn't proper recognition of the problem?
Another commenter brought up the fact that perhaps a significant reason as to why at least distributing deepfake porn is immoral could be because, by nature of the fact that one makes them openly accessible on the internet in order to be distributed, one makes it likely that whomever the deepfakes depict will find out that such porn is being made of them, and it is specifically the psychological harm inflicted by knowing porn like this exists of oneself that accounts for (or accounts for the majority) of why such porn is unethical for people to make or consume. This would also explain why previous iterations of 'fake nudes' weren't as highly debated: because they weren't as commonly distributed until now (perhaps because they weren't as realistic, and thus not as popular).
What if the AI is so good at being photoshop+ that, using a picture of what you look like clothed, it is able to create a nude comprised of the exact same pixels/information that would be present in an actual photograph you took of yourself while in the same pose except naked? In that case I actually am accessing the information that you call 'your' information, which is to say, that information which you agree is wrong for me to access.
To pre-empt any disputes you have about how possible this is, although I'm sure it is actually possible, lets retreat the capability of this AI just to a level of detail that could be at least good enough to trick even the depicted subject into thinking it was a real nude of themselves. (This is where the technology is actually at, right now. Boobs aren't exactly the most difficult thing to draw, especially at 512x512 resolution.) In this case, even if it's not the exact same information, then, it seems to me to be functionally the same information, for all intents and purposes. So is it okay for me to use an AI to access what is for all intents and purposes the same as information which is otherwise immoral for me to access?
Regardless of whether or not transwomen should coinhabit women's prisons, whether or not they do or do not seems like a problem of minuscule ultimate importance.
Then why do trans activists push for it so hard? Just concede it then.
I should clarify that what I mean is that it seems like a problem of minuscule ultimate importance to a person who claims to care about women's issues generally. It's clear why this would be a significant issue for trans activists, but not clear to me why it should be a problem of similar magnitude to women's rights activists in general, as Rowling claims to be.
To put it another way, trans activists care about issues that trans people face. They believe that one of the main issues that trans people face is the fact that elements of society do not recognize them as their chosen gender. They believe that this lack of recognition is expressed in many ways, for example in the prison system, via being compelled to inhabit the prison of their biological sex rather than their chosen gender. They might also believe that i.e. trans women who are made to inhabit men's prisons suffer greatly at an individual level, and care specifically about alleviating the suffering of members of their tribe. Thus it seems clear to me how this issue slots into the greater project of trans activists of having society recognize them as their chosen gender rather than assigned at birth gender.
However, JK Rowling claims to be interested first and foremost in women's rights in general. If she perceived the most important problem facing society to be the potential advancement of trans rights, and thus stated that her main mission was the frustration of the advancement of trans rights, in just the same way that trans activists have as their central mission being pro-advancement of trans rights, it would make sense for her to care about i.e. 'should they be assigned to the prison of their chosen gender or not' just as much as trans activists do but in an equal and opposite sense. But JK Rowling doesn't claim to be an anti-trans-rights-activist, or proclaim that the potential increase in trans acceptance is of significant importance in general. She even claims to be for trans-rights in some sense. What she most specifically claims to be is a feminist, and that her main mission is women's rights in general. Yet, she makes an almost disproportionate amount of her online presence and activism about combating these specific areas like trans people being admitted to womens prisons and etc.
A rational person who cared most about women's rights but did not specifically support some areas of trans-rights would still not spend as much time caring or thinking about these specific trans issues as Rowling does: there are bigger fish to fry facing women even in her home country, but especially around the world.
questionasker
1yr ago
except in the very narrow sense of being able to, for example, coinhabit women's prisons.
Regardless of whether or not transwomen should coinhabit women's prisons, whether or not they do or do not seems like a problem of minuscule ultimate importance. Do you really think Rowling would dedicate as much effort and energy into her activism if she thought problems on this magnitude were the main issues of the trans movement?
Are there really a lot of ways in which the trans movement harms cis women? Do you mean because of women's prison issues and things like transgender women's participation in sports? Or are you thinking of a different set of problems/potential problems trans movement might pose to women
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