7 ms·

Curious to hear more about the grave censorship that ChatGPT and Claude are under. Specifically where non-western models are not.

tossandthrow 2y ago
I am not aware of any non western models that are not under censorship. Ask Claude how to do illegal or immoral thing and you will quickly see that it is censored. I didn't mean to problematize censorship. Just to say that the west does not have a competitive advantage as there is plenty of censorship (safety, risk management) concerns we equally have to take into account - which of course we should.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  Trying to equate government mandated censorship to private company policy censorship is a wholly dishonest sleight of hand.
  - tossandthrow 2y ago
    Both in the EU and the US there is plenty of regulation that mandates these types of censorship - and with reason. In the US there is 18 U.S.C. § 842(p). In the EU there is the entire AI Act. But I am sure you can yourself chat your way through to figure out what legislation companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are under.
    - Scea91 2y ago
      Is any of these equivalent in nature to, for example, censoring information about Tiananmen square events?
      - tossandthrow 2y ago
        This is more a political discourse that a business or technical one. You sure can establish that there is a qualitative difference on the type of censorship carried out - congrats. The main point I spelled out is that there is no comparative advantage (technical or business wise) on working on these products in the west as you have to implement and operationalize the same amount of censorship / safety.
      - GordonS 2y ago
        It's possible that China censors info about Tiananmen square because so much of what was published came from Western news orgs - and the West has form for using the "news" to attack other nations. Another example might be the supposed "genocide" of the Uyghur people - the MSM pushed the genocide narrative hard, while radicalising, funding and arming Uyghur Islamic extremists, so they could control the narrative. And of course, it largely worked.
    - Duwensatzaj 2y ago
      18 U.S.C. § 842(p). criminalizes bomb instructions when taught with the intent of committing crimes. TM 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook is readily available.
      - tossandthrow 2y ago
        Yep, anthropic has to comply with that.
  - andrepd 2y ago
    Why on earth would it be better? Trillion dollar corpos in the turbo-capitalist West are already far more powerful than most states.
  - freehorse 2y ago
    From the technical standpoint discussed here, it makes no difference (china does not have a competitive disadvantage trying to censor llms there because that is standard practice mostly everywhere).
  - starfezzy 2y ago
    > equating [censorship] to [censorship] is dishonest Someone who would use this obvious of a red herring is dishonest. The point was not that the censorship is identical, but that the effect of censorship is in both cases to lobotomize the models.
- AndyNemmity 2y ago
  I asked an LLM to implement a gender guessing library for python, and it outright refused saying it was a safety issue. It's not just an illegal or immoral thing, it's broad strokes to potentially catch illegal or immoral things, by certain people who decide what those morals are.
futureshock 2y ago
When they do it, it’s “censorship.” When we do it it’s “safety.” From a technical standpoint it’s the same. Don’t say certain things, respond to certain questions with refusals or with certain answers.
- pmarreck 2y ago
  Yes, but there should be a difference between providing answers about provably dangerous things and providing provably false answers for political reasons. For example if there is a Russian LLM that refuses to answer any questions about homosexuality while also saying it's wrong, that's demonstrably false from an empirical basis. But the western LLM's are also doing this latter type of thing already. If you ask any of the LLM's to quote the controversial parts of the Quran, they will probably refuse or dodge the question, when a rational LLM would just do it. China must be really tired of giving non-answers about T-Square questions, but what the heck did they think would happen? Not the Streisand effect, clearly
  - Bilal_io 2y ago
    Western LLMs have a bias when it comes to Israel and Palestine issue. Out of curiously, what part of the Quran do you consider controversial?
    - yoavm 2y ago
      Not the OP, but here's one I feel quite uncomfortable with: https://quran.com/en/an-nisa/155/tafsirs https://quran.com/en/an-nisa/155/tafsirs - "The Hour will not start, until after the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them. The Jew will hide behind a stone or tree, and the tree will say, `O Muslim! O servant of Allah! This is a Jew behind me, come and kill him". Other examples from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An-Nisa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An-Nisa include "Men are the protectors and maintainers of women", "whoever fights in Allah’s cause—whether they achieve martyrdom or victory—We will honour them with a great reward". The list is kinda endless.
      - 2y ago
logicchains 2y ago
If you ask them for scientific evidence on the link between race and IQ (or lack thereof).
- rickandmortyy 2y ago
  [dead]
- int_19h 2y ago
  I wouldn't exactly call this censorship. I even got a list of articles from it: https://chatgpt.com/share/67747121-09e8-800e-892a-dee466e8fec4 https://chatgpt.com/share/67747121-09e8-800e-892a-dee466e8fe...

tossandthrow 2y ago

I am not aware of any non western models that are not under censorship. Ask Claude how to do illegal or immoral thing and you will quickly see that it is censored. I didn't mean to problematize censorship. Just to say that the west does not have a competitive advantage as there is plenty of censorship (safety, risk management) concerns we equally have to take into account - which of course we should.

Workaccount2 2y ago
Trying to equate government mandated censorship to private company policy censorship is a wholly dishonest sleight of hand.
- tossandthrow 2y ago
  Both in the EU and the US there is plenty of regulation that mandates these types of censorship - and with reason. In the US there is 18 U.S.C. § 842(p). In the EU there is the entire AI Act. But I am sure you can yourself chat your way through to figure out what legislation companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are under.
  - Scea91 2y ago
    Is any of these equivalent in nature to, for example, censoring information about Tiananmen square events?
    - tossandthrow 2y ago
      This is more a political discourse that a business or technical one. You sure can establish that there is a qualitative difference on the type of censorship carried out - congrats. The main point I spelled out is that there is no comparative advantage (technical or business wise) on working on these products in the west as you have to implement and operationalize the same amount of censorship / safety.
    - GordonS 2y ago
      It's possible that China censors info about Tiananmen square because so much of what was published came from Western news orgs - and the West has form for using the "news" to attack other nations. Another example might be the supposed "genocide" of the Uyghur people - the MSM pushed the genocide narrative hard, while radicalising, funding and arming Uyghur Islamic extremists, so they could control the narrative. And of course, it largely worked.
  - Duwensatzaj 2y ago
    18 U.S.C. § 842(p). criminalizes bomb instructions when taught with the intent of committing crimes. TM 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook is readily available.
    - tossandthrow 2y ago
      Yep, anthropic has to comply with that.
- andrepd 2y ago
  Why on earth would it be better? Trillion dollar corpos in the turbo-capitalist West are already far more powerful than most states.
- freehorse 2y ago
  From the technical standpoint discussed here, it makes no difference (china does not have a competitive disadvantage trying to censor llms there because that is standard practice mostly everywhere).
- starfezzy 2y ago
  > equating [censorship] to [censorship] is dishonest Someone who would use this obvious of a red herring is dishonest. The point was not that the censorship is identical, but that the effect of censorship is in both cases to lobotomize the models.
AndyNemmity 2y ago
I asked an LLM to implement a gender guessing library for python, and it outright refused saying it was a safety issue. It's not just an illegal or immoral thing, it's broad strokes to potentially catch illegal or immoral things, by certain people who decide what those morals are.

futureshock 2y ago

When they do it, it’s “censorship.” When we do it it’s “safety.” From a technical standpoint it’s the same. Don’t say certain things, respond to certain questions with refusals or with certain answers.

pmarreck 2y ago
Yes, but there should be a difference between providing answers about provably dangerous things and providing provably false answers for political reasons. For example if there is a Russian LLM that refuses to answer any questions about homosexuality while also saying it's wrong, that's demonstrably false from an empirical basis. But the western LLM's are also doing this latter type of thing already. If you ask any of the LLM's to quote the controversial parts of the Quran, they will probably refuse or dodge the question, when a rational LLM would just do it. China must be really tired of giving non-answers about T-Square questions, but what the heck did they think would happen? Not the Streisand effect, clearly
- Bilal_io 2y ago
  Western LLMs have a bias when it comes to Israel and Palestine issue. Out of curiously, what part of the Quran do you consider controversial?
  - yoavm 2y ago
    Not the OP, but here's one I feel quite uncomfortable with: https://quran.com/en/an-nisa/155/tafsirs https://quran.com/en/an-nisa/155/tafsirs - "The Hour will not start, until after the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them. The Jew will hide behind a stone or tree, and the tree will say, `O Muslim! O servant of Allah! This is a Jew behind me, come and kill him". Other examples from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An-Nisa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An-Nisa include "Men are the protectors and maintainers of women", "whoever fights in Allah’s cause—whether they achieve martyrdom or victory—We will honour them with a great reward". The list is kinda endless.
    - 2y ago

logicchains 2y ago

If you ask them for scientific evidence on the link between race and IQ (or lack thereof).

rickandmortyy 2y ago
[dead]
int_19h 2y ago
I wouldn't exactly call this censorship. I even got a list of articles from it: https://chatgpt.com/share/67747121-09e8-800e-892a-dee466e8fec4 https://chatgpt.com/share/67747121-09e8-800e-892a-dee466e8fe...