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Comment by ethanbond | Hacker News Reader

OP doesn’t sound like it’s talking exclusively about image generation. Sounds like a general, “I should be able to build, propagate, and use whatever tech however I want no matter the negative externalities.”

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I think even the phrase "negative externalities" is overstating it. There's a big difference between "I push this button and now the woods behind my house are destroyed" and "I push this button and I have what looks like a photograph of some important person naked." Photo generating AIs are not a big deal IMO. We might be talking about these things more generally but I doubt we are talking about McNukes here.

The problem with extremely powerful forces (like new technologies) is that you can’t always predict what effects they’ll have.

This is doubly true with regard to technologies that seem not only powerful, not only adaptable to new domains, but also rapidly improving on both of those dimensions. I don’t know what is the right level or type of limitation, but there is nothing confusing or weird at all about wanting to be careful with such a technology.

If technology keeps advancing (it will), new developments will approach “looks kind of alarming” status faster and faster. This is because they will also approach “could destroy everything we know and love” status faster and faster.

At it's core, the argument for caution can be articulated as "utility and availability of this technology must be limited to incumbent actors in the industry for our protection" and that's very fishy. It's particularly fishy considering this technology cannot even so much as break a fingernail or cut a blade of grass. Is it consequential? Obviously or neither one of our arguments would exist. Does it have the potential to hurt people? Only if those people let it. To me it's overblown moral panic that's suspiciously convenient for the big players in the industry and software in general.

The scenario that worries people is less "photograph of some important person naked" and more "photograph of you naked". State of the art image tech is more than capable of allowing people to create convincing porn of their enemies (or creepy crushes). I don't know if that genie can be put back into the bottle, but it's hard to complain that researchers aren't interested in providing the genie as a service.

If someone wants to crank it to what amounts to a high tech doodle of me doing naughty things to myself I don't see how that's any of my business. There are people in the world how put real legit porn of themselves on the internet, I'm sure they'd find this fearmongering about fake pictures and videos of themselves on the internet laughable. It is the closest to inconsequential you can get, posting yellow pages information on twitter is far more damaging.

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