[4bpp]

And some people might want to know about [insert your favourite beyond-the-pale-in-the-US topic here, we're on a US forum after all]. I think it would be great if those people could turn to Chinese models, while anyone wanting to know about Uyghur camps can ask the US ones.

[quorumsensor]

There aren’t any. The idea that the censorship environment is the same in the US as it is in China is nonsense used to ‘both sides’ away concerns about the CCP.

[wasfgwp]

The models to themselves are currently generally not censored though and the guardrails are on the application layer?

Of course that might change in the future but as long as the Chinese companies continue publishing their research and models it only makes it easier for third parties to catch up with them.

[customguy]

> beyond-the-pale-in-the-US topic

Can you name one? It's an honest question, first of I'm not American, but also the stuff I do come up with (asking an LLM how to blow up a school or whatever) would also be handled similarly in China, so those would be a wash, and I can't think of any that aren't.

[4bpp]

I would imagine a lot of things touching upon progressive politics would be affected (there were a few high-profile incidents demonstrating bias like Google's black Wehrmacht soldier pictures, but has anyone rigorously tabulated how the various commercial LLMs respond to questions about the gender binary or heritability of human traits considered good or bad?). Overall, I'm too reluctant to even write out in the abstract sequences of words that I never want to explain to a future job interviewer or HR employee who used GPT-7 to comb the internet for all text that stylistically can be traced to me, but just imagine whatever you believe to be vile and wrongheaded opinions in that general space which it is certainly more than justifiable to prohibit. The things that make you think "banning this is good actually" are exactly the things most likely to be banned (and this is true in China too).

Another thing I would try if I had access to the models and enough proxies to hide behind is asking for advice on software/movie piracy or seeing to what extent the models can be elicited to straight up argue against the validity of intellectual property, though there it seems more probable to me that the US models would be permissive.

[customguy]

What historical fact is the US trying to systematically suppress, is the question. This beating around the bush about things that are "considered uncouth in some circles" just underlines there either aren't any, or they're so perfect at it nobody knows of any. So let's just admit than and move on, because what you just said is true about any society, ever.

> The things that make you think "banning this is good actually" are exactly the things most likely to be banned (and this is true in China too).

Then make the case why it is better for the world that the Tiananmen Square massacre is memoryholed. You said A, now say B.

In the meantime, I'll make the case against it, and it's simple: totalitarian control of historical truth, by definition, to be 100% watertight, needs control of the whole globe. It doesn't mean everything needs to be controlled, it means everything needs to be controlled by at least an entity that cooperates on this matter. I.e. another totalitarian bloc.

That makes the CCP, just by their insistence about Tiananmen -- nothing additional required, at all, they could not harm a fly and have no prisons and it would make zero difference -- an enemy, a threat marching towards any thinking human who wants to have agency and dignity. Actually, it's more like a river flowing to the ocean, people in the CCP can have lofty ideals about honesty and factual truth, the system they require to survive in turn requires this to survive, as it is. It requires human spontaneity and human freedom to be dead, completely. That is what totalitarianism is.

And by the same token, we must be wary of those who take that lightly. A friend falling asleep at the wheel will kill you just the same as an assassin who messed with your car.

That is not "as opposed to the US or the EU or Russia or North Korea". It is strictly in addition. No other regime can behind another regime or use it as an excuse. Using the US to distract from the CCP is as odious as doing the reverse.

> I never want to explain to a future job interviewer or HR employee who used GPT-7 to comb the internet for all text that stylistically can be traced to me

So you want to work in an office wearing a tie. Well, people who want to work as roadies and fight all night would never hang with you if they found out. And if that was your priority, you would be more afraid of NOT being blacklisted by the corpos than not being part of them.

But seriously, are you saying you are as afraid of being found out as the person you are, because you're not already wearing that on your sleeve, in exactly the same way as people who have to fear that they and their family get disappeared, tortured, for remembering friends that got murdered? That would be totally a you problem.

[antiamerican634]

From an outsiders point of view:

- The Trail of Tears

- The Tuskegee syphilis study

- Use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War

- Open Air biological warfare testts in civilians eg. in 1950 San Francisco

- The only use of nuclear weapons against civilians?

- Coca Cola and "american culture"

- Neoliberalist economy

- Spreading blame for their sins to other "white" nations

plus one: The text input method to HN comments :(

[customguy]

all of these things have books about them published in the US

you are comparing a wooden stick to a fighter yet, try again