Me Too, Chapter 2?

 The vote in the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking saga is now in, and almost all legislators in Congress agree that the FBI files in the case should be released. Some may be grateful to put this behind and get back to what they feel are more important things. But this certainly IS an important thing right now.

There has been a debate over the application of the word “pedophilia” to the Epstein story. Arguments have been made that this term shouldn’t be used in this case because it implies sexual offenses involving very young children, not the teenage girls who were the victims in Epstein’s ring. According to textbook definitions, those who make that argument are technically correct: the P word applies to prepubescent children.

There are wide legal and cultural variations around the world as to just when a girl becomes a woman. May-December relationships happen, and some turn into successful marriages.

But of course, that’s not what we’re talking about here, and hair-splitting over words almost misses the point. If you don’t like the P word, there should be no argument about the T word: trafficking. And it applies to more than just minors. When a girl in this country becomes a legal adult at age 18, she could still be a victim. In fact, the social services community recognizes the concept of transitional age youth, or TAY, which includes people up to 25 years old, an age at which many young women remain vulnerable to predators. Reaching legal adulthood should mean that women are all fully their own agents and always make rational decisions without pressure. I think we can agree that is not quite the case.

The sex trafficking in the Epstein ring was on an industrial scale, said to be valued at a billion dollars. It operated for decades and had in the neighborhood of a thousand victims. But how many other, lower-level Jeffrey Epsteins are out there, and what is the priority for investigating them? Are these crimes getting as much attention as they deserve, especially in our federal law enforcement arena? I think there’s a bigger social picture here, and a little zooming out is in order.

In the Me Too movement of a few years back, the names of men who used their wealth and power for the sexual exploitation of women were revealed. While relatively few were charged with crimes, many, including legislators, Hollywood executives, and even prominent journalists, fell precipitously from grace, and only some have managed to resurface. This is going to happen again, and maybe it needs to, but we had better brace ourselves for it.

 

Would the Real Me Please Stand Up

 

(text version of podcast)

AI has gotten so good now that it is easy to fool us. Audio and video representations of an individual who appears to be saying or doing certain things are almost perfect. You may even be wondering if you are now really hearing MY voice.

My podcast usually runs about three or four minutes, but it often takes me several hours to produce. First, of course, I have to write it. Then I have to read the script aloud and record it. Even if I believe I have read a commentary perfectly, I usually make about half a dozen small boo-boos. To come up with a finished product, I record three versions. I pick the best one as a base, then go in and replace a bad section with the same section from one of the other two versions, where I hopefully have not made the same error. Just so you know, I record the three versions one after another so that my voice sounds the same in the cutting-and-pasting process. So that’s how this sausage is made.

But why spend all this time, you may ask. There is a program out there whereby I could just provide a sample of my voice, send the script in, and the program would spit out me reading it perfectly in one take. You probably wouldn’t notice or care that its AI. But I do.

I have an artist friend who paints stylized portraits of people on commission from photos they send her. Maybe it takes her a day or two to come up with her finished product. But for years now, there have been programs to which you can send photos of yourself, and you will get back 50 versions of you in minutes. My artist friend worries about losing business, and says Ai might have even stolen some of her technique.

I tell her this: If people want to hang the Mona Lisa or paintings by Van Gogh or Gainsborough on their living room walls, they can easily have copies made and do it. But for the most part, they don’t. They want to hang originals on their walls, and since they can’t afford those masterpieces, they choose the work of lesser-known artists, because they are proud to own and display genuine originals, or at least a signed print.

While it may be of no ongoing financial comfort to my artist friend, those of us who own one of her paintings prize her original work, and it is more valuable than anything AI could come up with.

So I will continue to record these podcasts in my old-fashioned Boomer way. As Sammy Davis Jr. once sang, I just gotta be me.