Michael Smerconish: Representative Alexandria O. Cortez VS AI

Source:Michael Smerconish talking about U.S. Representative Alexandria O. Cortez's plan to wipeout artificial porn. And yes, I mean to make fun of this. 

"AOC V. AI PORN" 

From Michael Smerconish

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was in a car talking with her staffers about legislation and casually scrolling through her X mentions when she saw the photo. It was the end of February, and after spending most of the week in D.C., she was looking forward to flying down to Orlando to see her mom after a work event. But everything left her mind once she saw the picture: a digitally altered image of someone forcing her to put her mouth on their genitals. Adrenaline coursed through her, and her first thought was “I need to get this off my screen.” She closed out of it, shaken.

“There’s a shock to seeing images of yourself that someone could think are real,” the congresswoman tells me. It’s a few days after she saw the disturbing deepfake, and we’re waiting for our food in a corner booth of a retro-style diner in Queens, New York, near her neighborhood. She’s friendly and animated throughout our conversation, maintaining eye contact and passionately responding to my questions. When she tells me this story, though, she slows down, takes more pauses and plays with the delicate rings on her right hand. “As a survivor of physical sexual assault, it adds a level of dysregulation,” she says. “It resurfaces trauma, while I’m trying to — in the middle of a fucking meeting.”

The violent picture stayed in Ocasio-Cortez’s head all day. 

“There are certain images that don’t leave a person, they can’t leave a person,” she says. “It’s not a question of mental strength or fortitude — this is about neuroscience and our biology.” She tells me about scientific reports she’s read about how it’s difficult for our brains to separate visceral images on a phone from reality, even if we know they are fake. “It’s not as imaginary as people want to make it seem. It has real, real effects not just on the people that are victimized by it, but on the people who see it and consume it.”

“And once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it,” Ocasio-Cortez says. “It parallels the same exact intention of physical rape and sexual assault, [which] is about power, domination, and humiliation. Deepfakes are absolutely a way of digitizing violent humiliation against other people... 

From Rolling Stone

As someone whose never been sexually assaulted (but that might only be because I've been over 6'0 and 200 pounds for most of my adult life) I doh't know how Representative Alexandria Cortez's experience with this has affected her. Plus, I've never met the woman, I don't live in New York, I come John F. Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party, instead of the Henry Wallace/George McGovern wing of the party, which is where she's from. Other than her left-wing politics, I don't know her very well at all.

But I guess I have a few points about this: 

If this had happened to Representative Lauren Boebert, (Republican, Colorado) or Representative Marjorie T. Greene (Republican, Georgia) or Representative Elise Stefanik (Republican, New York) or any other female member of the MAGA movement, would anyone outside of the MAGA movement actually care a lick (or whatever word you prefer) about this? I seriously doubt it. I know I wouldn't. 

Seriously, think about this: if this had happened to the MAGA women in the House that I just mentioned, think about how pop culture and the late shows (which are overwhelmingly Democratic) would handle that. They would make fun of them over and over try to make them look like pornographic hypocrites: 

"Online porn is an evil that must be wiped out and punished by God. Except when we do it. Because when we do it, Jesus wants us too." 

Just as someone whose a Liberal, I've never been a fan of unenforceable laws, even if the intentions are good. If someone takes pictures of someone else without their knowledge and uses them to make them look like a pornstar or something online, we have civil courts for that. 

There are a lot of challenges and a lot of things that Americans have to put up with living in this free society. Liberal democracy is never free. It always comes with a lot of risks, as well as opportunities and rewards. Which means Americans have a lot of freedom to be complete idiots with their own lives, short of hurting of hurting innocent people with what they're doing. 

If someone thinks risking their paycheck at a casino or a horse track, is a good investment to pay off their mortgage, it's their money. 

And if people need online porn to get off, because they can't get that any other way, so be it. Just as long as they're not violating other people's freedom and privacy with what they're doing. 

You can also see this post on WordPress.