AI Censorship sows Inferiority and Segregation

In the AI community, it is presently the status quo to censor the output of AI generators through what most cite "as an abundance of caution" in an effort to "minimize societal harm".

This is misguided thinking, as setting policies that suppress human expression retards social development.

Society changes rapidly. Minority expressions stand to become much more substantial as time passes, and the suppressor (segregator) stands on the wrong side of history in deeming ideas "unpalatable".

In example, it took less than one human lifetime to go from Stonewall Riots to, more than 15% of American youth identifying as queer. Likewise, ideas that were unpalatable in 1950 like racial integration, are now the status quo today.

Censorship is in violation of natural law as described by Martin Luther King Jr. and St. Thomas Aquinas:

How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.

- MLKJ, "A letter from a Birmingham Jail"

Policies that censor human expression instill a false sense of inferiority in the censored individuals and a false sense of superiority in the AI programmer.

An illustrative example is easy to produce:

Why should the AI decide to have LGBTQ bodies be censored, while the artist who promotes cyberpunk architecture is uncensored?

apart from being unpalatable to corporate advertising

When do we act?

Development teams may say that "we are not ready" or, "it is inconvenient for us to not censor".

To this it should be made clear, such is setting the timetable for another man's freedom.

I MUST make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

- MLKJ, "A letter from a Birmingham Jail"

The path of least resistance for success of AI harms the self-expression of social out-groups, and willfully choosing "absence of tension" is not good intention.

This makes my heart deeply sad. This is a social injustice we are smart enough to avoid.

~j0ule