[fragmede]

Why would China censoring Tiananmen Square/whatever out of their LLMs be anymore harmful to the training process when the US controlled LLMs also censor certain topics, eg "how do I make meth?" or "how do I make a nuclear bomb?".

[vaccineai]

Because China censors very common words and phrases such as "harmonized", "shameless", "lifelong", "river crabbed", "me too". This is because Chinese citizens uses puns and common phrases initially to get around censors.

[saghm]

Don't forget "Winnie the Pooh"!

[jiggawatts]

OpenAI models refuse to translate subtitles because they contain violence, sex, or racism.

That’s just a different flavour of enforced right-think.

[talldayo]

They are absolutely different flavors. OpenAI is not being told by the government to censor violence, sex or racism - they're being told that by their executives.

News flash: household-name businesses aren't going to repeat slurs if the media will use it to defame them. Nevermind the fact that people will (rightfully) hold you legally accountable and demand your testimony when ChatGPT starts offering unsupervised chemistry lessons - the threat of bad PR is all that is required to censor their models.

There's no agenda removing porn from ChatGPT any more than there's an agenda removing porn from the App Store or YouTube. It's about shrewd identity politics, not prudish shadow government conspiracies against you seeing sex and being bigoted.

[snapcaster]

I don't know why people care if they're being censored by government officials or private billionaires. What difference does it make at the end of the day? why is one worse than the other?

[talldayo]

Because you aren't being "censored" by billionaires at all. They have made the business decision to reduce the usefulness of their AI to prevent their liability from being legally, or even socially, held accountable.

Again, consider my example about YouTube - it's not illegal for Google to put pornography on YouTube. They still moderate it out though, not because they want to "censor" their users but because amateur porn is a liability nightmare to moderate. Similarly, I don't think ChatGPT's limitations qualify as censorship.

[snapcaster]

Okay, i mean you can say censorship isn't censorship if you want? This is my point, why are you treating limits placed on your expression/sharing/information differently based on what type of person is doing it?

[A4ET8a8uTh0_v2]

Sigh. No. Censorship is censorship is censorship. That is true even if you happen to like and can generate a plausible defense of US version that happens to be business friendly ( as opposed to China's ruling party friendly ).

[ForHackernews]

> Censorship is censorship is censorship

"if your company doesn't present hardcore fisting pornography to five year olds you're a tyrant" is a heck of a take, even for hacker news.

[A4ET8a8uTh0_v2]

It is not a take. It is simple position of 'just because you call something as involuntary semen injection does not make it any less of a rape'. I like things that are clear and well defined. And so I repeat:

Censorship is censorship is censorship.

[Jean-Papoulos]

Usually a sign of great discussion when someone responds with "sigh" to a reasonably presented argument.

[curt15]

Is "Pooh" also censored?

[thebiss]

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Winnie-the-Pooh_...

[matkoniecz]

Because falsifying history seems worse than restricting meth production, at least to me.

Though I see no reason whatsoever why LLM should be blocked from answering "how do I make a nuclear bomb?" query.

[throwaway290]

Because when a small group of elites with permament term and no elections decides what is allowed and what isn't... and has full control of silencing what's not allowed and any meta discussion about the silencing itself... is different from when an elected government decides it, and then anyone is free to raise a stink on whatever is their version of twitter today without worrying about being disappeared tomorrow

[snapcaster]

It's not an elected government if you're talking about the US. These policies are also all decided by "elites with permanent term and no elections" you realize right?

[throwaway290]

> It's not an elected government if you're talking about the US

If you don't believe US has elections then straighten up your tinfoil hat:)

Maybe you'll say next the earth is flat, if you think people have nothing better to do but to find ways to lie to you.

[snapcaster]

I don't feel like this was a good faith interpretation of my comment. What i'm saying is that in the US and China, censorship is decided by unelected officials. In one case it's CPC in another case it's corporate executives

[throwaway290]

That makes even less sense as a comparison. Sure Instagram censored anti-Trump posts for a day but in case you didn't notice you are free to discuss that without fearing suppression or jail.

[snapcaster]

Come on man why are you doing this? I didn't say censorship was the same in america or china you're just trying to find something to disagree with

[Fade_Dance]

They want their LLMs explicitly approved to align with the values of the regime. Not necessarily a bad thing, or at least that avenue wasn't my point. It does get in the way of going fast and breaking things though, and on the other side there is an outright accelerationist pseudo-cult.

[bakuninsbart]

Ignoring the moral dimension for a second, I do wonder if it is harder to implement a rather cohesive, but far-reaching censorship in the chinese style, or the more outrage-driven type of "censorship" required of American companies. In the West we have the left pre-occupied with -isms and -phobias, and the right with blasphemy and perceived attacks on their politics.

With the hard shift to the right and Trump coming into office, especially the last bit will be interesting. There is a pretty substantial tension between factual reporting and not offending right-wing ideology: Should a model consider "both sides" about topics with with clear and broad scientific consensus if it might offend Trumpists? (Two examples that come to mind was the recent "The Nazis were actually left wing" and "There are only two genders".)