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The geopolitics of LLMs is definitely interesting. China censors politics. The West censors intellectual property. I am not equating the two so please excuse th
by janalsncm 2y ago
The geopolitics of LLMs is definitely interesting. China censors politics. The West censors intellectual property. I am not equating the two so please excuse the edgy teen dystopia that follows:
I keep having this vision of a dystopian future where the Star Spangled Banner is sold off to a private equity firm and anyone who wants to play it has to pay a licensing fee. Of course “freedom-hating” countries have banned it long ago as well. The subversive main character is playing a bootleg copy of it in some politically ambiguous country when police break his door down, but the screen cuts to black before we find out was it the copyright mafia or the dictatorship.
- tw04 2y ago>China censors politics. The West censors intellectual property. How does the West "censor Intellectual Property"?
- mistrial9 2y agoChina officially does not care about declarations of Intellectual Property from the West (ianal); by extension, they do not censor it. In the US and Commonwealth countries and the EU etc.. copyright material in publications, in various flavors, are behind a paywall in some circumstances.. Elsivier Science publications, for example.. others.. so by extension the prohibition on reproduction and copying is "censorship"
- kibwen 2y agoY'all, I'm as against our boneheaded copyright regime as anyone, but that ain't what the word "censorship" means.
- xtracto 2y agoI'll say a "state granted monopoly" on distribution is pretty close to censorship. People are not Libres to distribute or use some bunch of text because the judicial arm of the government will prosecute them.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> China officially does not care about declarations of Intellectual Property from the West Cool. Now try appropriating a Standing Committee member’s intellectual property.
- tamimio 2y agoThe West censors politics too, to be fair. Anyone can be "cancelled" for a political opinion, get fired, or face other ramifications. Many people were "ghost banned" or banned during the COVID-19 craziness, and some were even fired. Julian Assange is another well-known example of a political prisoner. Many people on Hacker News or LinkedIn refrain from engaging in politics because they fear getting fired, judged, isolated, or even prosecuted. Thus, each country has its own "nerve" that no one can talk about.
- christianqchung 2y agoEngaging in politics on LinkedIn is kind of psychotic, sorry.
- tamimio 2y agoI agree more with this edit >Engaging on LinkedIn is kind of psychotic
- lelandbatey 2y agoCensorship is different from social mores. Every group of people has "typical behaviors considered permissable", codified or not. No avoiding that. Censorship is not that.
- LAC-Tech 2y agoBut again, there's plenty of actual censorship in the west. Maybe not the United States, but the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany... all definitely have it, with documented cases.
- simianparrot 2y agoTwitter files revealed direct censorship recently
- exe34 2y agocensorship where people tell you to f*ck off because they don't want to hang out with you and censorship where the government, with the monopoly of violence, takes you and/or your family away for torture or hard labour are very different things.
- AlexandrB 2y agoI don't know if I'd call it censorship, but unlike real property IP effectively requires restrictions on what speech every other member of society can engage in to give the IP owner a monopoly on that speech.
- janalsncm 2y agoIn the context of LLMs, I’m talking about refusals. Ask chatGPT to draw Micky Mouse. What happens? Intellectual property rights kick in and you can’t see it. As a Chinese chatbot what happened June 3, 1989 in Tiananmen Square and you will also get some kind of refusal. Some kind of principle of social stability has kicked in. I’m really just making a trite observation about the way LLMs reflect our laws/values.
- vmfunction 2y ago> Some kind of principle of social stability has kicked in. Same goes in finance. For example, SIFI (Systemically important financial institution) are exempt from regulation and even bankruptcy. It is human nature to mange/avoid risk, and the system will always want to maintain itself. It is kind pointless point finger to say oh this company/nation/regime censor this. Everyone does it in their own ways.
- eunos 2y agoEpilogue: In a dark room filled with hooded folks. One of them is laughing that people are focussing on 'icon' (Star Sprangled Banner) than real concrete thing.
- mistermann 2y ago> China censors politics. The West censors intellectual property. The West also teaches its citizens to use language in very interesting ways. Someone unfamiliar with our customs might interpret your phrase to mean that the West doesn't censor politics. In my opinion subverting the base means of communication is by far the most clever and powerful of the three techniques.
- meany 2y agoI think equating censorship and intellectual property is not a good comparison. Copyright laws do not restrict sharing of ideas or opinions just specific textual instances of those opinions. Under copyright, you are free to paraphrase or quote the text to share the core idea. Political censorship prevents you from communicating specific political views, which limits dissent. I don’t see how copyright does that.
- janalsncm 2y agoThat’s a fair point. I think “censorship” was really a poor word choice. I should have used “refusal” to emphasize that this is from an LLM. It’s really a sign of my poor writing that the ensuing thread is arguing about something other than my main point, which was really just a simple observation about how refusals can tell us something about laws and values of a society.