The difference is who gets paid, and whether this particular “who” is a person or a corporation. It’s not great that people are allowed to exploit other people’s needs for intimacy but it’s also not possible for society to really intervene. I guess you’d say onlyfans profits by mediating such interactions but not by driving/initiating one whole side of the interaction, which is a bit slimy but basically ethical. They run a legit market in the sense that they don’t control both sides of supply/demand and connect real buyers/sellers, even if the good is some kind of somewhat fake experience.
Selling AI girlfriends to lonely people at scale and simply to profit the board and shareholders is a different animal, way more ethically suspect than mediating an actual human interaction.
> It’s not great that people are allowed to exploit other people’s needs for intimacy but it’s also not possible for society to really intervene
> Selling AI girlfriends to lonely people at scale and simply to profit the board and shareholders is a different animal
Its just that to me if you consider the AI unethical then the onlyfans model has to be unethical as well because I see it as very similar. The only difference is the scale and the fact its a human doing the faking. Supposing of course the Onlyfans model does not use AI.
Now of course you can agree that both are unethical but consider that the AI with its scale does more harm or exceeds an acceptable threshold, and therefore deserves a ban. Maybe we define it as an exclusive prerogative of humans.
I definitely agree that the company delivering the AI has way more levers to pull for scummy behavior than onlyfans. They can hold the Boyfriend hostage and forcing people to pay as much as they can bear. With onlyfans, the platform depends on the models to provide the service. If they take it to far, the models leave and they are left with nothing.
> if you consider the AI unethical then the onlyfans model has to be unethical as well because I see it as very similar. The only difference is the scale and the fact its a human doing the faking
This difference seems important, indeed primary. To me, authenticity of the experience being sold is separate, secondary. (Tangent but lots of onlyfans customers are probably buying a feeling of power, and not a feeling of intimacy, so maybe they authentically get what they pay for anyway?)
What I'm trying to say is that humans are going to exploit human needs/weaknesses in ways that are sometimes really gross. To a certain extent that is unavoidable, or rather trying to avoid it would involve society inserting itself between a lot of person-to-person interactions in a way that is probably a net harm. Even though this is true there is no reason to additionally allow corporations (or organizations of any kind really) to get deeply involved in the business of exploiting human needs/weaknesses.
As an analogy, I'd say there's a major difference between tolerating gambling/confidence tricks from individual hustlers working the local park vs allowing the entire finance industry to scale up those same games. Both are exploiting people's desire to get rich quick, but scale, level of organization, and who profits matters. Maybe the hustler empties a few wallets to improve his own life, whereas finance as an industry can just about wreck the world. Also the hustler or the mark will eventually move on, or the hustler might feel bad, and at least in the process of exploitation there it's a somewhat fair fight in that it's 1v1. Meanwhile corporations are legion, are fiendishly patient, are intrinsically disinclined to feel bad about anything ever, etc. Difference seems clear to me
> As an analogy, I'd say there's a major difference between tolerating gambling/confidence tricks from individual hustlers working the local park vs allowing the entire finance industry to scale up those same games
The thing is that both of these are still illegal on paper. Even if the police might turn a blind eye to some of it, in a court of law you would get convicted. In this specific example we are saying if you stay below a certain scale it is legal and intermediaries can profit. If you go above a certain scale it is illegal and banned.
> Difference seems clear to me
It is clear yes that one is more unethical than the other. As you say the difference between small crime and big crime. But both are still unethical to different degrees then.
My worry do worry about unintended consequences. If you start banning companies on this basis, that you cannot sell fake intimacy, can you also sue individuals on the same basis or intermediaries?
Maybe like gambling you can go for a middle ground approach. You accept people will engage in the behavior but you make companies go through a licensing process. I do not know what the AI Boyfriend equivalent to disclosing odds is but maybe certain predatory practices would be forbidden.
> They run a legit market in the sense that they don’t control both sides of supply/demand and connect real buyers/sellers, even if the good is some kind of somewhat fake experience.
I mean, I'm not opposed to the idea of regulating this too though. My mind goes less to OnlyFans creators and more to things like the alternative medicine space, which is flagrantly just... fake. Like going to a chiropractor is just a shitty version of getting a massage, oftentimes with tons of wild fucking claims about the ability to heal all manner of medical maladies that there is absolutely zero evidence for.
OnlyFans creators may fake the intimacy they're selling but the brain in question has a hard time differentiating the fake intimacy from real intimacy, so at least there is probably actual measurable improvement in that, which one can't even remotely say for shit like Reiki healings.
See also my reply to sibling, which I think speaks to this as well. Exploiting the naive with snake-oil is bad, but the question is do we really want to try and regulate every kind of sale of anything for authenticity, and if we did then would it even work? I'm generally fine with snake-oil salesmen at the local farmer market, and even a small cottage industry for homeopathic nonsense or whatever kinds of disinformation.
The problem always comes when the manipulation involved crosses a certain threshold of being organized, industrialized, weaponized. Is a union, guild, or weird new accreditation/certification for snake oil practitioners crossing such a threshold? Probably not, unless they are throwing millions at advertising, lobbying, making sly deals with doctors.
To understand the line in the sand for "being evil", one can usually ask something like "what happens if the business model succeeds beyond the owners wildest dreams". For a cottage-industry of grift/manipulation/exploitation, you get to pay for the cottage and maybe buy a boat? If the corporate AI girlfriends scale up well then I guess not only are the cam girls out of a job, but human relations in general are devalued, hell, maybe the species corporations evolved to exploit even dwindles and disappears?
> Exploiting the naive with snake-oil is bad, but the question is do we really want to try and regulate every kind of sale of anything for authenticity, and if we did then would it even work?
I mean, I don't think you could get it all, but I think there's a lot of flagrantly bullshit things that we could easily set a very low standard of like... you can't just lie to people to get their money.
Homeopathy for example, is just straight bullshit. Just through and through, there's no argument to be had here, the science is in and it is complete horse dung, absolutely debunked 100%. Yet homeopathic remedies are still sold every day, amounting to an almost 1 billion dollar per year industry. Why? This is a huge amount of business being done, money being made, productive time being wasted creating incredibly slightly dirty water, shipping it around, contributing to climate change, and it's just, I'm sorry, no disrespect meant to any individual believer in this stuff, but it's just a waste, it's 100% waste. It's products that do not do anything that are sold to people who are being tricked.
Like, if it was an inert just kind of cultural nonsense that wasn't really hurting anything, I'd be more blase about it? But it's measurably impacting our world. I'm sure it isn't the sole reason for climate change of course, but it's a non-zero contributor to it and from the sounds of things, it's pretty non-zero at that. I don't know what the total, for example, emissions are of the global homeopathic industry but again, all it is is little bottles of water being packed, shipped worldwide, with nozzles and etc. to accomplish nothing. I think that bears consideration as we look for ways to reduce our global impact, you know? Do less... ridiculous nonsense. Anything above zero emissions for that industry is that amount too much.
> The problem always comes when the manipulation involved crosses a certain threshold of being organized, industrialized, weaponized. Is a union, guild, or weird new accreditation/certification for snake oil practitioners crossing such a threshold? Probably not, unless they are throwing millions at advertising, lobbying, making sly deals with doctors.
Well, this problem only exists if you presuppose that snake-oil salesmen of minor scale are to be allowed. And I would ask, why? I wouldn't suggest we have patrols of anti-bullshit regulatory agencies patrol every farmers market per se, but the days of the roaming doctor going from town to town selling snake oil are long past. Most of these are large operations with significant presences on the Internet in general and social media in particular. The "small operations" to the extent they still exist at all are still advertising using whatever terms best describe their alleged products. We can find them easily, because they are trying to be found, like any business is.
> To understand the line in the sand for "being evil",
To be clear, I would not call this evil, I just call it theft, scamming, grift. Flim-flammery, one might say, and to that end we have ample historical precedent for shutting it down.
> one can usually ask something like "what happens if the business model succeeds beyond the owners wildest dreams". For a cottage-industry of grift/manipulation/exploitation, you get to pay for the cottage and maybe buy a boat?
I mean, D. Gary Young's net worth at the time of his death was noted to be in the millions... and again, the industry of homeopathy is valued at just shy of a billion. And that's just one industry of flim flam, Chiropractors as a profession are worth something closer to 14 billion dollars, I don't think there's hard numbers on the crystal healing crowd but I'm guessing it's far from nothing. And for that matter, Replika's supposedly worth 20 million so far? Not because the product is helping people, but because they're monetizing the secrets people tell it.
> If the corporate AI girlfriends scale up well then I guess not only are the cam girls out of a job, but human relations in general are devalued, hell, maybe the species corporations evolved to exploit even dwindles and disappears?
I mean, being one of the idiots who was born a human, I'd kinda prefer it didn't? Haha
Selling AI girlfriends to lonely people at scale and simply to profit the board and shareholders is a different animal, way more ethically suspect than mediating an actual human interaction.