4 ms·

China calls it "harmonious society", we call it "safety". Censorship by any other name would be just as effective for manipulating the thoughts of the populace.

China calls it "harmonious society", we call it "safety". Censorship by any other name would be just as effective for manipulating the thoughts of the populace. It's not often that you get to see stuff like this.

madeofpalk 1y ago
I don't think it's controversial or unsurprising at all that a company doesn't want their random sentence generator to spit out 'brand damaging' sentences. You know the field day media would have Apple's new feature summarises a text message as "Jane thinks Anthony Albanese should die".
- ryandrake 1y ago
  When the choice is between 1. "avoid tarnishing my own brand" and 2. "doing what the user requested," corporations will always choose option 1. Who is this software supposed to be serving, anyway? I'm surprised MS Office still allows me to type "Microsoft can go suck a dick" into a document and Apple's Pages app still allows me to type "Apple are hypocritical jerks." I wonder how long until that won't be the case...
  - chii 1y ago
    > I wonder how long until that won't be the case... when there's no more alternative word processors any more.
  - madeofpalk 1y ago
    But so often these tools are used in a way that the user didn't explicitly request, like summarising notifications, or generating slideshows from your photo library.
- userbinator 1y ago
  If that's what the message actually said, why would the media be complaining? Or do you mean false positives?
cyanydeez 1y ago
In america is due to lawyers, nothing more. Ya'll love capitalism until it starts manipulating the populace into the safest space to sell you garbage you dont need. Then suddenly its all "ma free speech"
- SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
  Right, because the European models coming out are super SOTA? Minstrel is decent, but needs to be mixed with a ton of uncensored data to be useful. I’m convinced the only reason China keeps releasing banging models with light to no censorship is because they are undermining the value of US AI, it has nothing to do with capitalism, communism or un“safety”.
energy123 1y ago
This is the rhetorical tactic of false equivalence. State censorship by an autocracy with the objective of population control is not the same thing as a private company inside a democracy censoring their product to avoid bad press and maintain goodwill for shareholders. If you want solid proof that it's not the same thing, see all the uncensored open weights models that you can freely download and use without fear of persecution.
- troupo 1y ago
  > is not the same thing as a private company inside a democracy censoring their product to avoid bad press and Yet this private company has more power and influence than most countries. And there are several such companies. We already live in sci fi corporate dystopia, we just haven't fully realised it yet.
  - chgs 1y ago
    People think a trillion dollar brainwashing industry is absolutely fine because of “democracy”, completely ignoring that all you have to do is use a century of experience convincing people to act against their own interests can deliver whatever you want. Often the same people who think America is fine and safe are the ones who whine about the “main stream media” and “sheeple”.
    - Spivak 1y ago
      Which trillion dollar brainwashing industry— primary school, news, social media, advertising, the printing press? I would put individuals using language models for their own purposes pretty low on my list of things that can cause societal harm.
  - thinkingtoilet 1y ago
    If you were selling a product to enterprise customers, would you want it to be able to generate nude images of celebrities? Would you want it to be able to create deep fakes of politicians, or even your CEO? Would you want it to have hot takes on hot button political issues? Good luck on your sales calls. Not everything is a conspiracy.
jeroenhd 1y ago
I still remember when "bush hid the facts" went around the news cycle. Entertainment services will absolutely slam and misrepresent any small mistake made by large companies. I don't think it's as much a problem with safety as it is a problem with AI. We haven't figured out how to remove information from LLMs so when an LLM starts spouting bullshit like "<random name> is a paedophile", companies using AI have no recourse but to rewrite the input/output of their predictive text engines. It's no different than when Microsoft manually blacklisted the function name for the Fast Inverse Square Root that it spat out verbatim, rather than actually removing the code from their LLM. This isn't 1984 as much as it's companies trying to hide that their software isn't ready for real world use by patching up the mistakes in real time.

madeofpalk 1y ago

I don't think it's controversial or unsurprising at all that a company doesn't want their random sentence generator to spit out 'brand damaging' sentences. You know the field day media would have Apple's new feature summarises a text message as "Jane thinks Anthony Albanese should die".

ryandrake 1y ago
When the choice is between 1. "avoid tarnishing my own brand" and 2. "doing what the user requested," corporations will always choose option 1. Who is this software supposed to be serving, anyway? I'm surprised MS Office still allows me to type "Microsoft can go suck a dick" into a document and Apple's Pages app still allows me to type "Apple are hypocritical jerks." I wonder how long until that won't be the case...
- chii 1y ago
  > I wonder how long until that won't be the case... when there's no more alternative word processors any more.
- madeofpalk 1y ago
  But so often these tools are used in a way that the user didn't explicitly request, like summarising notifications, or generating slideshows from your photo library.
userbinator 1y ago
If that's what the message actually said, why would the media be complaining? Or do you mean false positives?

cyanydeez 1y ago

In america is due to lawyers, nothing more. Ya'll love capitalism until it starts manipulating the populace into the safest space to sell you garbage you dont need. Then suddenly its all "ma free speech"

SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
Right, because the European models coming out are super SOTA? Minstrel is decent, but needs to be mixed with a ton of uncensored data to be useful. I’m convinced the only reason China keeps releasing banging models with light to no censorship is because they are undermining the value of US AI, it has nothing to do with capitalism, communism or un“safety”.

energy123 1y ago

This is the rhetorical tactic of false equivalence. State censorship by an autocracy with the objective of population control is not the same thing as a private company inside a democracy censoring their product to avoid bad press and maintain goodwill for shareholders. If you want solid proof that it's not the same thing, see all the uncensored open weights models that you can freely download and use without fear of persecution.

troupo 1y ago
> is not the same thing as a private company inside a democracy censoring their product to avoid bad press and Yet this private company has more power and influence than most countries. And there are several such companies. We already live in sci fi corporate dystopia, we just haven't fully realised it yet.
- chgs 1y ago
  People think a trillion dollar brainwashing industry is absolutely fine because of “democracy”, completely ignoring that all you have to do is use a century of experience convincing people to act against their own interests can deliver whatever you want. Often the same people who think America is fine and safe are the ones who whine about the “main stream media” and “sheeple”.
  - Spivak 1y ago
    Which trillion dollar brainwashing industry— primary school, news, social media, advertising, the printing press? I would put individuals using language models for their own purposes pretty low on my list of things that can cause societal harm.
- thinkingtoilet 1y ago
  If you were selling a product to enterprise customers, would you want it to be able to generate nude images of celebrities? Would you want it to be able to create deep fakes of politicians, or even your CEO? Would you want it to have hot takes on hot button political issues? Good luck on your sales calls. Not everything is a conspiracy.

jeroenhd 1y ago

I still remember when "bush hid the facts" went around the news cycle. Entertainment services will absolutely slam and misrepresent any small mistake made by large companies. I don't think it's as much a problem with safety as it is a problem with AI. We haven't figured out how to remove information from LLMs so when an LLM starts spouting bullshit like "<random name> is a paedophile", companies using AI have no recourse but to rewrite the input/output of their predictive text engines. It's no different than when Microsoft manually blacklisted the function name for the Fast Inverse Square Root that it spat out verbatim, rather than actually removing the code from their LLM. This isn't 1984 as much as it's companies trying to hide that their software isn't ready for real world use by patching up the mistakes in real time.