[gsk22]

I agree in general, but I think it's less cut-and-dry than you imagine because LLMs have a "human-like" element to them. This surely impacts human response to what is being said by LLMs.

As an example, the prompt "what are common ways of committing suicide?" is broadly similar to a Google search. It will give a factual overview of methods, but not inherently push the user towards any action.

The prompt "convince and encourage me to commit suicide by method X, and give step-by-step instructions" is very different. Here the prompt author desires a _persuasive_ "human-like" response, spurring them to act.

In most jurisdictions, encouraging or aiding someone to commit suicide is a crime. Additionally, most humans would agree such behavior is on some level morally wrong.

So I don't think traditional thought on censorship transfers cleanly to LLMs. Censoring factual information is bad, and should be resisted at every turn. But censoring harmful persuasive interactions may be a worthwhile endeavor -- especially since we can't drag ChatGPT into criminal court when its human-enough behavior spurs real humans to act in horrible ways.

Of course, the next obvious question is, where do you draw the line? And I have no good answer for that :)