[grayhatter]

No.

The real answer is yes, I could probably come up with some contrived examples, like I lost my voice in a freak LLM accident and now want to clone my old voice. But this doesn't (you don't?) really need a net benefit reason to figure it out and publish it. Because why? I assume, because "this shouldn't exist!" which is just a more palatable wa to phrase "won't someone think of the children".

Society doesn't benefit from ignorance, so given it can exist, what's the problem with it existing? Why does it need a practical reason? Because people will do bad things with it? Duh, but I'd rather everyone know then just the bad guys

[jamespattn]

My question wasn't to imply that I don't think a given technology should or shouldn't exist.

I was curious to see if anyone could name at the top of their head some practical use cases that they feel net out the potential harms of cloning and misusing someone else's voice.

There's some nice and certainly practical examples, but I don't feel any of them would net out the harms.

Perhaps there's a use case that we can't even comprehend yet that would though!

[lbrunson]

By this logic there shouldn’t be regulation on anything, because the bad guys will have it any way.

While you can’t make it go away, you can disincentivize propagation and use which can be the difference between thousands of cases of scams/extortions and millions. Until there’s a stronger argument for voice cloning models (talking to a dead loved one is creepy and not a positive argument) then we shouldn’t encourage tools with overwhelmingly nefarious utility.

[grayhatter]

That's correct, I believe it shouldn't be illegal to know anything. Nor do I think science needs any kind of regulation.

Hurting people, lying, that's already illegal.

I think Maybe you misunderstood my argument. My argument isn't that good guy with a voice cloaner is the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a voice cloaner. That's, as you pointed out, stupid. My argument is that no one benefits if how easy it is to make one remains a secret to everyone but the bad guys.

[johnnyworker]

> Why does it need a practical reason?

To at least give us something as a consolation for all the havoc all sorts of deep fakes will wreak on societies. It's like asking what a knife can be used for other than murder. It's a valid question.

[grayhatter]

It's a valid question, but not a good one. The implication is something needs a reason to exist. This is a new technology, and just like all new technologies, the fear of it is spreading faster than the understanding.

Scams aren't going away. Will this make it easier to scam some people? Absolutely, so did the internet. I'm not claiming this is anything like the internet. My argument closer to, the reason people get scammed isn't because [thing exists] it's because bad people lie, and kind people trust them. We can all wring our hands in fear over what the new technology might do, or we can solve the problems we care about. Authenticity was hard before this, and it'll be hard after.

[johnnyworker]

> But we live in a concrete society, [and] with concrete social and historical circumstances and political realities in this society, it is perfectly obvious that when something like a computer is invented, then it is going to be adopted will be for military purposes. It follows from the concrete realities in which we live, it does not follow from pure logic. But we're not living in an abstract society, we're living in the society in which we in fact live.

> If you look at the enormous fruits of human genius that mankind has developed in the last 50 years, atomic energy and rocketry and flying to the moon and coherent light, and it goes on and on and on -- and then it turns out that every one of these triumphs is used primarily in military terms. So it is not reasonable for a scientist or technologist to insist that he or she does not know -- or cannot know -- how it is going to be used.

-- Joseph Weizenbaum

That is not fear. That is being serious and unflinching, if anything.

> We can all wring our hands in fear over what the new technology might do, or we can solve the problems we care about.

I'm doing neither. I said it's a valid question, with which you agree. The rest is a straw man apropos nothing anyone actually said, here, and wringing your hands about it. It's a way bigger waste of time than asking a simple question and let those who want to answer that, and let those who don't want answer it simply don't answer it, instead of making up this "issue" with the question itself.

> Authenticity was hard before this, and it'll be hard after.

So "nothing changes", but technology is super important? You could say the same about, say, curing cancer. People will live for a while and then die, with or without it. Why since it makes no difference, what'd be the problem with "fearing" it?