If absolutely nothing else and even assuming for the sake of the argument that work of this nature is completely justified, they still have to answer for the fact that they severely underpaid foreign workers in clickfarms to do this and traumatize themselves on their behalf presumably so no one in the West had to.
Personally, my opinion is very strongly that if you can’t develop a technology without committing such serious ethical breaches, for example seeking out and accumulating CSAM, then it’s either too early to develop that technology or it’s not worth developing at all. One may counter this with something like “well it’s basically inevitable that unscrupulous people will harm others to develop technology” but I would also argue that while that is true, the inevitability of something doesn’t make the act itself any less unethical.
As a bit of context: The reason why even accessing and possessing CSAM is illegal almost everywhere in the world is because the generally accepted philosophy around this kind of material is that every time someone views it for any reason, it victimizes that child all over again, which is also very consistent with the opinions of actual CSAM survivors so I don’t feel it’s something that the rest of us can really question. I obviously cannot speak on their behalf in any way, but my guess would be the vast majority of CSAM victims do not want photos and videos the most terrifying and traumatic moments of their lives being used in this way, especially not by a for-profit company so they can develop a product with the goal of making themselves richer.
If absolutely nothing else and even assuming for the sake of the argument that work of this nature is completely justified, they still have to answer for the fact that they severely underpaid foreign workers in clickfarms to do this and traumatize themselves on their behalf presumably so no one in the West had to.
Personally, my opinion is very strongly that if you can’t develop a technology without committing such serious ethical breaches, for example seeking out and accumulating CSAM, then it’s either too early to develop that technology or it’s not worth developing at all. One may counter this with something like “well it’s basically inevitable that unscrupulous people will harm others to develop technology” but I would also argue that while that is true, the inevitability of something doesn’t make the act itself any less unethical.
As a bit of context: The reason why even accessing and possessing CSAM is illegal almost everywhere in the world is because the generally accepted philosophy around this kind of material is that every time someone views it for any reason, it victimizes that child all over again, which is also very consistent with the opinions of actual CSAM survivors so I don’t feel it’s something that the rest of us can really question. I obviously cannot speak on their behalf in any way, but my guess would be the vast majority of CSAM victims do not want photos and videos the most terrifying and traumatic moments of their lives being used in this way, especially not by a for-profit company so they can develop a product with the goal of making themselves richer.