AI and Pornography

Or How the Sex Industry Drives Technology

In 1999 I started working in video production at a technology company. At the time we were just getting into video streaming, working with proprietary software that would sync up Power Point presentations with their accompanying filmed talks presented by a network of hernia doctors. We were using time code to lock the presentation to picture, but our challenge was getting the best compression while still maintaining the best quality to stream. Currently, streaming HD is something a twelve-year old can do, but nearly 30 years ago it was a whole different story. That said, my boss began looking for web streaming that was getting the best quality—and where else to go but porn sites. For anyone who’s watched HBO’s Silicon Valley, you’ll probably recall the scene where the crew goes to an adult technology convention to get funding for their app. What results is a hilarious scene with them deleting over a third of the content, but the reason they got the contract was due to the incredible l…