Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be exactly what's needed to revitalize naturism

There are several angles to consider.

Let me begin by emphasizing that I’m quite aware there’s a lot of controversy surrounding very recent (i. e. past several months) developments in AI. That’s resulted from all the publicity around such things as ChatGPT, AI search systems like the latest version of Microsoft’s Bing search engine, a frenzy of enthusiasm for AI investments in the stock market, and much else that’s more technical than most people want to deal with.

Although AI has been studied academically since the 1950s, progress until the past 5 years or so has been slow and erratic. I’ve followed AI developments for a long time. IBM’s “Deep Blue” system first beat the best chess player at the time (Garry Kasparov) 25 years ago. But it wasn’t until 2016 that an AI system (Google’s AlphaGo) beat a Go world champion (Lee Sedol). In 2018 Google’s AlphaFold was the first to accurately solve the important scientific problem of how proteins fold.

Clearly, new and important developments are occurring at an increasing pace. And things have really taken off in the past year or two. In part that’s been due to the proliferation of extremely large and fast computer systems that are powerful enough to succeed by brute force. Progress has become so rapid that many knowledgeable people have begun to point out significant things in the technology to worry about. However, this isn’t the place to get into that in detail. For present purposes, we should consider some of the possible beneficial results - for naturism in particular.

Let’s begin with one example. Suppose you’re an experienced naturist or simply someone who’s curious about it and wants to learn about it from personal experience. You’d like to take an extended trip for one or more weeks to explore various naturist opportunities in a particular region. Things such as clothing-optional beaches, naturist resorts, or hiking and camping adventures. It would now be fairly easy for naturist organizations or travel services - with knowledgeable assistance - to put together systems that could not only plan your trip but actually make all the necessary travel and booking arrangements.

In order to do that, the system will need to get some idea of what you want. So it would present you with a form to answer various questions, such as:

• How much do you want to spend?

• How much time do you have for the trip?

• What type of naturist experience do you want: resort, beach, nude cruise, hiking/camping, etc.?

• What country or region would you like to visit?

• What dates would you like to start?

• Where would you be leaving from?

• How much experience have you had with naturism?

• If foreign travel is involved, what languages could you handle?

• Do you have any disabilities that would affect your ability to travel?

• Do you have interests besides naturism that you’d like to explore, such as sightseeing, museum visits, dining, etc.?

• Would you be traveling alone or with one or more others, such as family or friends?

Note that you wouldn’t necessarily have to give much personal information unless you wanted to. But, of course, the more information you can provide the better the results the system provides will comport with the kind of experience you want.

For an example of a different sort, there might be an AI system you could simply request to answer various questions you have about naturist activities. Such questions might deal with specific naturist clubs and resorts, clothing-optional beaches, hot springs, skinny-dipping places, naturist-friendly travel agencies, or relevant characteristics of a general area. Many current naturists have addressed such questions on blogs or social media like Reddit or Twitter, from which any decent AI system will have collected plenty of information. Here are some possible questions:

• Naturist clubs and resorts often don’t provide on the websites detailed information about their specific policies and amenities. Can you bring pets? Are reservations necessary? What recreational facilities are available? And so on. An AI system could use other resources or systems such as Yelp or TripAdvisor to gather answers to such questions as well as satisfaction ratings provided by visitors.

• If you’ll be going somewhere on your own to visit beaches, hot springs, or camping/hiking areas, what is the legal situation there? Are there frequent legal hassles? What parts of an area are safest to use from a legal perspective?

• There are various events of potential interest to naturists, such as World Naked Bike Rides, outings for members of nonlanded clubs, or special events held at naturist clubs and resorts. An AI system can easily maintain a detailed, continually updated calendar of events for specific areas and date ranges, so you’ll be aware of many possibilities.

Then there’s a third general area where an AI system can be useful. This would be a service for people who are curious about naturism or have merely enjoyed nudity only at home. The general question is: what are the best ways to get more involved in naturism? An AI system that has collected information from naturist organizations, individual naturist content sources, or social media could help with these issues. It’s quite likely that general AI systems like ChatGPT and AI search facilities are deficient in good information because the issues are simply too “controversial”. At present, anyone who wants detailed answers is likely to be rudely informed that the system will not address “that kind” of question. Microsoft’s Bing is especially obnoxious in this regard.

Here are a few obvious questions that someone interested in naturism but relatively new to it would seek answers for:

• Is naturism really about simply enjoying social nudity without any sexual issues?

• Is naturism enjoyable and safe for people of all genders, ethnicities, and ages?

• Is naturism enjoyable for people regardless of body type or physical appearance, so there’s no reason to be ashamed of one’s body?

• What are good ways to become more comfortable with not wearing clothes when alone or with others?

• Are there actual conflicts of naturism with personal values or beliefs such as religion?

• What are the physical and psychological benefits of participation in social nudity? What are the best ways to explain those to others?

• How can one explain what naturism is really about to a spouse or significant other?

• What’s the best way to let friends, relatives, and (possibly) neighbors know of one’s interest in naturism?

• How does one go about trying to find others who might be interested in learning about naturism or actually participating in naturist activities?

• Will becoming known as a naturist have a negative impact on one’s social or professional life?

• What are the best information sources available for learning more about naturism?

• What steps can be taken to successfully start a nonlanded naturist club in one’s local area?

Naturists will probably find the answers to some of these questions useful when discussing naturism with others.

There are many discussions of and answers to all these questions that have been given by experienced naturists on blogs and in social media. But current chatbots and AI search engines will probably, at best, offer answers from only a rather limited number of sources. If you repeat the question to the same general purpose system or another one you’ll probably get answers that are somewhat or very different. The result: serious confusion, uncertainty, and misunderstanding. Never forget that such systems absolutely do not actually understand what they’re talking about. AI professionals refer to these systems as “stochastic parrots”. That is, the systems just repeat, at random, stuff they’ve “learned”.

In order to get accurate and reliable answers, it’s necessary for the systems to be augmented by what’s known in the trade as “RLHF” - “Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback”. That is, human experts in the topic have to explicitly correct confusions and misunderstandings that the systems generate on their own. The experts might do this, for example, by making specific corrections or assigning scores that rate the quality of the answers. This is an essential role that has to be performed by experienced naturists themselves.

The stage where AI systems can work sufficiently well hasn’t yet been reached for naturism, or for most other subject areas. But it can, and hopefully will, be reached before too much longer. Especially in view of how fast things seem to be moving now. But experienced naturists will have to get involved to ensure proper treatment of their own special area of interest.

Appendix:

In case there’s anyone reading this who’d actually like to learn about AI and machine learning at no expense, there are a number of online resources. In fact, when I posed this question to ChatGPT, I received the great response that follows. It may give you some idea of just how good the information is that you can get from the latest AI tools. I took one such course from Andrew Ng several years ago, and it was excellent. But I haven’t checked whether all the information below is 100% correct.

The response from ChatGPT:

There are many resources available online where you can learn about machine learning for free. Here are some of the best ones:

Coursera: Coursera is an online learning platform that offers a wide range of courses on machine learning. You can enroll in these courses for free and learn from top instructors.

edX: edX is another online learning platform that offers free courses on machine learning. The courses are created by top universities and industry experts.

Khan Academy: Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that offers free online courses on various subjects, including machine learning.

MIT OpenCourseWare: MIT OpenCourseWare is a free and open educational resource that offers courses on machine learning and other subjects.

Udacity: Udacity offers free online courses on machine learning, created by industry experts from companies like Google and IBM.

TensorFlow: TensorFlow is an open-source machine learning platform created by Google. They offer free online courses on machine learning using TensorFlow.

Fast.ai: Fast.ai offers free online courses on practical deep learning for coders, which cover topics such as computer vision, natural language processing, and tabular data.

YouTube: There are many YouTube channels that offer free tutorials and lectures on machine learning, such as Andrew Ng's channel and Two Minute Papers.

These are just a few examples of the many resources available online to learn machine learning for free. Choose the one that best suits your learning style and start learning today!