[jacquesm]

Ok, we'll expand to porn and gambling

- images - payment systems - stored video - banner advertising - performance based advertising - affiliation - live video - video chat - fora

Etc... AI is a very logical frontier for the porn industry.

[jasonfarnon]

I don't remember any of these being "driven" by porn. The first applications weren't porn-based. Maybe live video--a split second after seeing the tech for the first time, probably 99% of guys were thinking of _applying_ it to porn. But, even for the usual money-grubbing startups, there was plenty of money coming from non-porn sources. Probably no different than the invention of camera, tv, videocamera, etc. and you wouldn't say porn drove that.

[jacquesm]

> I don't remember any of these being "driven" by porn.

That's ok.

> The first applications weren't porn-based.

They most definitely were, it is just that you are not aware of it. There runs a direct line from the 1-900 phone industry to the internet adult industry, those guys had money like water and they spent a fortune on these developments. Not all of them worked out but quite a few of them did and as a result those very same characters managed to grab a substantial chunk of early internet commerce.

[jasonfarnon]

" There runs a direct line from the 1-900 phone industry to the internet adult industry"

the internet adult industry is not the same as the internet. And if you;re trying to say the internet was developed for the sake of the internet adult industry, you're sounding circular.

[jacquesm]

I never made that claim and I'm fairly familiar with the development of the early internet, I was hanging around a lot at CWI/NikHef in the 80's and early 90's.

[fc417fc802]

I think this is like quibbling that the military isn't the driver of technological advances. It's not the only one, but it has a strong track record of throwing outsized resources at the bleeding edge and pushing it forward by leaps and bounds.

Porn and piracy outfits have historically adopted and pushed forward the bleeding edge of the internet. More recently that role has shifted towards the major platforms operated by BigTech. That's only natural though - they've concentrated the economics sufficiently that it makes sense for them.

But even then, take video codecs for example. BigTech develops and then rolls things out to their own infra. Outside of them it's piracy sitting at the bleeding edge of the adoption curve right now. The best current FOSS AV1 encoder is literally developed by the people pirating anime of all things. If it wasn't for them the FOSS reference encoder would still be half assed.

[azan_]

Just because things can be used for porn, it doesn't mean that it was porn that has driven their progress.

[jacquesm]

All of the things above were driven by porn, that can be proven. The AI stuff in the generic sense is not but you can bet that someone somewhere right now is working on improving photo realism of hair, eyes and skintone and they're not doing that to be able to make the next installment of little red riding hood.

[azan_]

Can you actually prove it?

[jacquesm]

Yes, I was there for quite a bit of it...

[runarberg]

a) I don’t believe you, and

b) This is exactly the kind of urban legend which tends to proliferate in human society, a cute lie which sounds believable. Like prostitution being the oldest profession, and the great wall of China being the only human made structure visible from space.

The story of the Internet is that it was developed in the mid to late 1960s by a couple of Universities in America and used by the US military to share resources across mainframes in each institution, as well as across institutions. Since then them main driver of innovation has been among universities and telecommunication companies finding optimal ways to deliver packages across telephone cables, antenna, satellites, etc.

The story of the Web is that it was developed in 1989-1991 to organize and link documents at the CERN research laboratory in Switzerland. Since then the main driver for innovations has been browser vendors competing and collaborating in developing browser technologies such that users pick their browser over the competition.

I don‘t know the story of online payment systems, but I bet the main drivers were companies opining up stores on the web and looking to replace pay by wire schemes over the telephone, and a bunch of start-ups who were able to find that market niche, developed software and sold it to those stores. The main driver of innovation here being start-ups. Porn sites and Gambling sites were no more important to that story as any other stores who sold art, golf-clubs, flight tickets, or hotel bookings.