Gaming

God that would sound so dystopian and futuristic...but to be honest, most articles about AI today would sound like that back then. Damn people would freak out about privacy.

BOINC came out 21 years ago, so it wouldn't be that unreasonable.

Porning@home

Can we at least see it?

This... This was inevitable.

No no, they're getting copies of digital images out of it. It's a totally fair trade!

It isn't too much to ask. According to Dr. K of HealthyGamerGG (Harvard Psychiatrist/Instructor), research shows that the release of non-consensual porn makes the unwilling subjects suicidal over half the time. Non-consensual porn = deepfakes, revenge porn, etc. It's seriously harmful, and there are other effects like depression, shame, PTSD, anxiety, and so on. There is functionally unlimited porn out there that is made with consent, and if someone doesn't want to be publicly sexually explicit then that's their choice.

I'm not against AI porn in general (I consider it the modern version of dirty drawings/cartoons), but when it comes to specific likenesses as with deepfakes then there's clear proof of harm and that's enough for me to oppose it. I don't believe there's some inherent right to see specific people naked against their will.

I think the key is a lot of people don't want to pay for porn. And in the case of deep fakes, it's stuff they literally cannot pay money to get.

Ai porn isn't deepfake porn. The default is just a random ai generated face and body. Unless you want to it's difficult to deepfake someone.

So I’m not disagreeing with you, but you’re assuming they’re making deepfake images, and the article doesn’t specify that. In fact I’d bet that it’s just AI generated “people” that don’t exist.

What about AI porn of a person that doesn’t exist?

I know someone who’s into really dark romance stuff, like really hardcore stuff, but she’d never do some of this due to safety reasons. I can totally see her generating scenes of herself in those situations.

Based on the rewards, I'm assuming it's being done by very young people. Presumably the value of rewards is really low, but these kids haven't done the cost-benefit analysis. If I had to guess, for the vast majority it costs more in electricity than they get back, but the parents don't know it's happening.

This could be totally wrong. I haven't looked into it. This is how most of these things work though. They prey on the youth and their desire for these products to take advantage of them.

so what exactly are they doing wrong besides providing service to potentially questionable companies?

Well I think that is the main point of what is wrong. I think the big question is whether the mature content toggle is on by default or not. The company says it's off, but some users said otherwise. Dunno why the author didn't install it and check.

The problem is that they are clearly targeting minors who don't pay their own electricity bill, and dont even neccessarily have awareness that they are paying for their fortnite skins with their parents money. Also: there is a good chance that the generated pictures are at some point present on in the filesystem of the generating computer, and that alone is a giant can of worms that can even lead to legal troubles, if the person lives in a country where some or all kinds of pronography are illegal.

This is a shitty grift, abusing people who don't understand the consequences of the software.

I'd rather have a wealth of new porn around rather than thousands random Blockchains going around.

At least the porn will probably be useful for someone long term haha

On its own, it's just the same as hate for porn. But there's also deep fake porn, ai porn of real people, and that's potentially far more problematic.

One ethics quandary is AI child porn. It at least provides a non-harmful outlet for an otherwise harmful act, but it could also feed addictions and feel insufficient.