Thanks for sharing this talk here, I enjoy your point of view a lot and appreciate how you consider AI critically without dismissing it entirely as an artist.
The point about images of child abuse is definitely one I need to mull over. There's a fair bit of discussion in writing spheres about depictions of trauma/abuse that reminds me of this. One of the points is that agency and ownership are extremely important in preventing exploitation of stories of abuse. For example, questioning if there is a meaningful difference between a survivor sharing their story to raise awareness, or depictions of trauma by someone who hasn't experienced it for shock entertainment value (discussion around the treatment of women in Game of Thrones for example). This ties in neatly to what you're suggesting about the human element and context in archives. What does it mean for these images to be included in databases? What does it mean to generate this kind of content from an AI database? How do we feel about this as a society?
I sadly don't really have an argument to make here, just wanted to say it's an extremely difficult topic I try to be mindful of. It's great when these tricky ethical questions are brought up, so thanks for your open mind and honesty.
That is a nice speech. However, I continue to bother you by emphasizing that images of abuse can be created even without abuse images in the dataset, and that the existence of these images is not just a problem because they are in a dataset, but because they exist and are online (indeed, if they had not been in an open dataset, we would not have noticed). As for the use of a public good (data) to promote a private benefit, it is undoubtedly a problem. More than the roof of copyright, which would allow only those with substantial financial means to build datasets, perhaps we should impose open source on those who use our data, and maybe even some tax for the common good... Very true what you say about the responsibility of our archives, I consider it a very important point.
Thanks for sharing this talk here, I enjoy your point of view a lot and appreciate how you consider AI critically without dismissing it entirely as an artist.
The point about images of child abuse is definitely one I need to mull over. There's a fair bit of discussion in writing spheres about depictions of trauma/abuse that reminds me of this. One of the points is that agency and ownership are extremely important in preventing exploitation of stories of abuse. For example, questioning if there is a meaningful difference between a survivor sharing their story to raise awareness, or depictions of trauma by someone who hasn't experienced it for shock entertainment value (discussion around the treatment of women in Game of Thrones for example). This ties in neatly to what you're suggesting about the human element and context in archives. What does it mean for these images to be included in databases? What does it mean to generate this kind of content from an AI database? How do we feel about this as a society?
I sadly don't really have an argument to make here, just wanted to say it's an extremely difficult topic I try to be mindful of. It's great when these tricky ethical questions are brought up, so thanks for your open mind and honesty.
That is a nice speech. However, I continue to bother you by emphasizing that images of abuse can be created even without abuse images in the dataset, and that the existence of these images is not just a problem because they are in a dataset, but because they exist and are online (indeed, if they had not been in an open dataset, we would not have noticed). As for the use of a public good (data) to promote a private benefit, it is undoubtedly a problem. More than the roof of copyright, which would allow only those with substantial financial means to build datasets, perhaps we should impose open source on those who use our data, and maybe even some tax for the common good... Very true what you say about the responsibility of our archives, I consider it a very important point.