The Rule 34 of AI
When skimming over social media, countless users who are otherwise enthusiastic about AI applied to certain fields react negatively to its use in others. Usually, those areas are creative fields, mass surveillance, weaponry, and propaganda. But they can easily be boxing robots, white collar jobs, or AI companions. And quite frankly, it is understandable. Some of those uses are the stuff nightmares are made of. Alas, those posters do not have the slightest idea of how the cookie crumbles.
Enter Rule 34. Almost three decades ago, when a graphic artist stumbled upon lewd fan art of Calvin and Hobbes—a benchmark of wholesomeness in comic strips—he coined the rule and it turned into a tongue-in-cheek phenomenon on (where else but) 4chan/b/, the equally hilarious and horrifying sewage of the internet. The rule is roughly: “If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions”. Nowadays, nobody can deny that, though humorous, Rule 34 has become an iron law of the universe. No matter how obscure or absurd, any subject or character (and even objects!) has inspired pornographic material. And, if not yet available, it’s imminent or you simply don’t know where to look. Cartoons, aliens, world leaders, marine animals, and whatnot. You name it. There’s porn of it.
Sure, the substrate of Rule 34 is chuckle-worthy, but it has a deeper reading. Debates on the subject abound. Be it internet culture or the ethics of fan-made raunchy content based on copyrighted material, practically nobody lacks an opinion about it. The internet is vast and thus “controversial” content is inevitable. And just as the internet, AI is a powerful and malleable technology, capable of penetrating every area of human activity whether we like it or not. Just as all content is pornified online, the versatility of AI strongly indicates that it will infiltrate every domain from healthcare to weaponry insofar there are data. If “value” can be added through data, computation, or automation, AI will go in guns blazing. This is technological determinism, i.e., once a technology becomes widely accessible its application per omnia is inevitable. Can human actions shape such pervasiveness? Doubtful. The difference between Rule 34 and AI, though, is that the former can be put inside a box of democratization and debatable harmlessness, while the gargantuan investment needed for potent AI and its inescapable destructive potential for large swaths of humanity separate the two.
Then there is the parallel of behavior that emerges from decentralized systems. Adult content popped up organically from uncoordinated internet communities in an observable bottom-up dynamic. AI could be said to involve a similar ragtag made of corporations, researchers, hobbyists, and so on, lacking a centralized mandate. Simple drives lead to unforeseen outcomes and society is reshaped by them, suggesting the lack of deliberate intent and ubiquitousness through evolution of open systems. There is (again) a stark difference, though. While the blood of Rule 34 is mostly horny teenagers having a chuckle while surfing the web from mom’s basement, majorly without profit motive, those working in AI are well-funded researchers and corporate juggernauts in bed with nonstate actors and governments where the goals include Scrooge-level material wealth and raw power. So, there’s that.
I could go on and on with parallels and differences between Rule 34 and AI’s inevitable prevalence. From issues around ethics and setting of cultural boundaries to amplification of human desires and fears, and from the pitfalls of posthumanism to the iron law of unintended consequences. But what cuts the mustard is Schumpeterian creative destruction. Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist from the early 1900s, posited that innovation drives progress by disrupting and replacing outdated technologies, businesses, or practices, leading to social pain parallel to economic renewal. And here it is: Although pornography rots the horny consumer’s mind and makes cherished cultural norms wobbly, its immediate and evident destruction is of original content—like Calvin and Hobbes back in the day. AI? Not so much. It is profit driven. It is an unprecedented technology with consequences that include massive unemployment, the shattering of human nature, corrosion of freedom and democracy, and human extinction.
So, to all those persons happily churning out cute images with generative AI or the sick people being cured by the wonders of technology, but who decry AI going into realms they don’t like, the message is: What are you going to do about it? Are you willing to pay the price? I do not have an answer. I rarely do. But what I do know is that it does not matter. Whether via legitimate means or by the hand of rogue actors, the Rule 34 of AI states that it will go into every single aspect of human existence. No exceptions.
Javier Reyes, PhD, is a university lecturer, lawyer, and full-time pessimist. He lives in Helsinki. He finally stopped slacking and his book The Monkey in the Machine: Is It Ethical to Grant Legal Personality to AGI? (Ethics Press) is out now..