> What if it turned out it were the only effective way to prevent people engaging in real paedophilia?
Paedophilia is not synonym for child sex abuse, and to the extent that conjecture hasn't been ruled out by study already, that's at most an argument that its an appropriate function for tightly-controlled research-supporting tools, not a general public business.
No real disagreement there. Ultimately my biggest concern is that real children are not exploited and damaged by experiences they're clearly not ready for - if using AI-generated pornography turned out to be a particularly effective way to achieve that (with no obvious negative side-effects, and to be clear I doubt that's particularly likely to be the case), then I would think we shouldn't dismiss it out of hand as something that must be banned just because it intuitively seems so awful.
You’re suggesting that perhaps allowing people to explore an urge that should be fought and suppressed might dissuade them from pushing that urge further resulting in real-world action? Fascinating, do tell me more.
Blatant disregard for children aside, the larger issue here is the presupposition that we should someone permit all urges. Not every thought that passes through your brain should be “explored”; some thing are just bad and should be fought.
Not suggesting either, just putting forward a hypothetical possibility. The idea of using AI to generate kiddy porn is off-putting to me in the extreme, and I can think of plenty of reasons why it's almost certainly a bad idea to permit it, but I'd be wary of relying primarily on my instinctual aversion to it to be so certain it should be banned outright.
While I agree it’s probably a good idea to avoid instinctual aversion in many things, I believe some things in life are too sacred to rely on “data”. Some things we just know to be true, and have to trust that whatever story data might tell isn’t a story we’re interested in.
Keep in mind that science can tell any story you want it to tell as long as you interpret the data in the way you need. That’s why some things, such as our children, cannot be left to slippery slopes such as this.
We’ve already got more than enough data proving that pornography is absolutely destructive and a net negative on all of humanity. I don’t think we need additional data to prove that bringing kids into the mix would somehow make it better.
