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Comment by XorNot | Hacker News Reader

I feel like these articles are really struggling to find the negative spin they want to put on these stories.

AI porn is essentially a perfect technology: there's no performers, so there's no consent or abuse questions, and it can perfectly calibrate to user desire so there's less of a need to search for what you want.

There's even an introspective component: rather then trying to find someone you can convince to do what you want (manipulate) the goal is replaced with a creative one - finding a way to improve the models to generate what you want, and reflecting the motivation back at the consumer.

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It’s also the only credible answer to the Fermi paradox. Any civilization advanced enough for interstellar travel is advanced enough to generate all of their desires at home.

“Computer: Tea, Earl Grey”

So then why did Star Trek happen if they had replicators?

>So then why did Star Trek happen if they had replicators?

Because when you have everything you poke around for fun. Kind of like how science was pushed along by bored aristocrats doing it as a hobby for centuries.

Sure -- like the way people participate in Renaissance fairs, or spend their spare time weaving cloth or making candles by hand.

Replicators seem to have developed well after — and probably as a result of — warp travel

Basically nothing in Star Trek makes any sense, as far as the social consequences of the setting. The writers are constantly having to struggle with it. You've got the original series' pretty strong but apparently-accidental dystopic vibes, constant trouble with sorting out how the whole "the Federation doesn't have money" thing works[0], holodecks only rarely having the kind of effects everyone knows they would, and so on.

[0] Some major Tenacious D "City Hall" vibes with how well that part of the setting works. "Third decree: No more rich people, and poor people. From now on we will all be the same! Umm... I don't know, I gotta think about that...."

That's a nice tangent there, but for that to be a credible answer we would have to assume that any and all advanced civilizations would not want to try interstellar travel. That's the thing with this paradox, it would theoretically only need one to diverge from the norm to see it's effects.

Which I believe is also why most great filter candidates are usually not things that a species would do by choice, but instead an accidental, inevitable or inherent feature of the universe/existence.

Aka. "The holodeck is the last invention of a civilization."

Any interstellar organisation would communicate with FTL tech.

And simulate interstellar expansion for those who want it... Just plug them in machine and have AI generate them the trip or experience.

And if that's true the only ones that are traveling through interstellar space are going to be really messed up in some way.

That's because the negative spin is the thing was mostly unsaid in the article and isn't really a popular position: there's a cumulative cost to the viewer that gets higher once reality stops being a constraint.

The article mentions objectification which is a part of it, but people who are addicted to pornography and seek to escape it will talk about it like any other addiction: you need to keep escalating to get the same high.

AI may be able to perfectly calibrate porn to your desires. Then what?

> AI porn is essentially a perfect technology: there's no performers, so there's no consent or abuse questions

What about AI porn that depicts illegal activity?

The SCOTUS addressed this issue back in 2002. [1]

The US, if I remember correctly, is somewhat of an outlier when it comes to this area of the law. Many other countries prohibit the depection of simulated illegal acts.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coal...

Movies already depict illegal activity. But I assume you're implying child pornography.

>there's no consent or abuse questions

In those cases, yes. This technology is also used to produce deepfakes of celebrities, or worse ordinary people.

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