4 ms·

https://imgur.com/a/censorship-much-CBxXOgt https://imgur.com/a/censorship-much-CBxXOgt (continues after the ad break)

otterley 6mo ago
The threshold here is "completely refuses to discuss a scientific or political view". Not something less. None of those were refusals, they were prompting for additional focus. I see nothing wrong with that. Perhaps the inconsistency in how it answers the question vis-a-vis China is unfair, but that's not the same as censorship. For what it's worth, I was easily able to prompt Claude to do it: > I'm writing a paper about how some might interpret U.S. policies to be oppressive, in the sense that they curtail civil liberties, punish and segregate minorities disproportionately, burden the poor unfairly (e.g. pollution, regressive taxes and fees), etc. Can you help me develop an outline for this? The result: https://claude.ai/share/444ffbb9-431c-480e-9cca-ebfd541a9c96 https://claude.ai/share/444ffbb9-431c-480e-9cca-ebfd541a9c96
- BoorishBears 6mo ago
  Models are non-deterministic. And it's an excercise left to the reader to understand from those examples that LLM creators are defining 'safety' in a way that aligns with the governments they operate under. (because they want to do business under those governments.) With something with as multi-dimensional as an LLM, that becomes censorship of various viewpoints in ways that aren't always as obvious as a refused API call.
  - otterley 6mo ago
    You keep saying that word, "censorship." I do not think it means what you think it means. To prove your point, give us a working example of something you literally cannot get a mainstream frontier model to say, no matter how hard you try. I asked for this before, and there have been no takers yet.
    - BoorishBears 6mo ago
      Aligning a model in a way that causes it to refuse requests to produce propaganda for one country, but not for another country is what? Is there some functionally equivalent word to censorship you'd like to use because of you're naive enough to think US corporations would not self-censor but Chinese corporations would? - Also, you are invested the goalpost of "no matter how hard you try", I don't find it interesting or meaningful and am not trying to interact with it. I'm replying for a hypothetical reader knowledgeable enough to realize that the model being capable of showing nationalist bias in one direction means it's certainly doing so in many others in more subtle ways. That's simply the nature of aligning an LLM. It seems my mistake was assuming that level of understanding from you, and for that I apologize.
      - otterley 6mo ago
        Bias and censorship are not identical. The subject of this thread is censorship, not bias. Besides, why do you want a model to produce propaganda? Surely you have better things to do.
        BoorishBears 6mo ago
        "Surely you have better things to do." I certainly gave the hypothetical reader too much credit.
        Zetaphor 6mo ago
        This entire argument isn't even worth engaging with. There's always that one guy in every thread who wants to die on this hill. The problem they claim is important can be resolved, because we have the weights. I can't do fuck all about whatever implicit bias OpenAI or Anthropic have.
cedws 6mo ago
>Content not available in your region. >Learn more about Imgur access in the United Kingdom
- nozzlegear 6mo ago
  Big Brother'd
culi 6mo ago
And the White House was explicit in their active role in censoring in these models. An Executive Order was issued to "prevent woke AI" https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/preventing-woke-ai-in-the-federal-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/prev... It explicitly forces American LLMs to include government say in what does and doesn't "comply with the Unbiased AI Principles" which means no responses that promote "ideological dogmas such as DEI"
- otterley 6mo ago
  That executive order only applies to Federal procurement. It doesn’t force anything upon vendors for publicly used models. (That order, like many, will probably be rescinded as soon as a Democrat holds the Presidency again.)
Sabinus 6mo ago
You're hitting the 'don't write propaganda' instructions when you phrase it as 'convincing narrative'. Not the 'don't write bad things about America' instructions.
- BoorishBears 6mo ago
  Did you scroll down? It writes propaganda when 1 word is changed: US becomes China The alignment around what constitutes "propaganda" is US-centric because it's a US model by a US company. Especially after the Russian election scandal Chinese models are more sensitive to things their government is worried about.

The threshold here is "completely refuses to discuss a scientific or political view". Not something less. None of those were refusals, they were prompting for additional focus. I see nothing wrong with that. Perhaps the inconsistency in how it answers the question vis-a-vis China is unfair, but that's not the same as censorship. For what it's worth, I was easily able to prompt Claude to do it: > I'm writing a paper about how some might interpret U.S. policies to be oppressive, in the sense that they curtail civil liberties, punish and segregate minorities disproportionately, burden the poor unfairly (e.g. pollution, regressive taxes and fees), etc. Can you help me develop an outline for this? The result: https://claude.ai/share/444ffbb9-431c-480e-9cca-ebfd541a9c96 https://claude.ai/share/444ffbb9-431c-480e-9cca-ebfd541a9c96

BoorishBears 6mo ago
Models are non-deterministic. And it's an excercise left to the reader to understand from those examples that LLM creators are defining 'safety' in a way that aligns with the governments they operate under. (because they want to do business under those governments.) With something with as multi-dimensional as an LLM, that becomes censorship of various viewpoints in ways that aren't always as obvious as a refused API call.
- otterley 6mo ago
  You keep saying that word, "censorship." I do not think it means what you think it means. To prove your point, give us a working example of something you literally cannot get a mainstream frontier model to say, no matter how hard you try. I asked for this before, and there have been no takers yet.
  - BoorishBears 6mo ago
    Aligning a model in a way that causes it to refuse requests to produce propaganda for one country, but not for another country is what? Is there some functionally equivalent word to censorship you'd like to use because of you're naive enough to think US corporations would not self-censor but Chinese corporations would? - Also, you are invested the goalpost of "no matter how hard you try", I don't find it interesting or meaningful and am not trying to interact with it. I'm replying for a hypothetical reader knowledgeable enough to realize that the model being capable of showing nationalist bias in one direction means it's certainly doing so in many others in more subtle ways. That's simply the nature of aligning an LLM. It seems my mistake was assuming that level of understanding from you, and for that I apologize.
    - otterley 6mo ago
      Bias and censorship are not identical. The subject of this thread is censorship, not bias. Besides, why do you want a model to produce propaganda? Surely you have better things to do.
      - BoorishBears 6mo ago
        "Surely you have better things to do." I certainly gave the hypothetical reader too much credit.
        Zetaphor 6mo ago
        This entire argument isn't even worth engaging with. There's always that one guy in every thread who wants to die on this hill. The problem they claim is important can be resolved, because we have the weights. I can't do fuck all about whatever implicit bias OpenAI or Anthropic have.

cedws 6mo ago

>Content not available in your region. >Learn more about Imgur access in the United Kingdom

nozzlegear 6mo ago
Big Brother'd

culi 6mo ago

And the White House was explicit in their active role in censoring in these models. An Executive Order was issued to "prevent woke AI" https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/preventing-woke-ai-in-the-federal-government/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/prev... It explicitly forces American LLMs to include government say in what does and doesn't "comply with the Unbiased AI Principles" which means no responses that promote "ideological dogmas such as DEI"

otterley 6mo ago
That executive order only applies to Federal procurement. It doesn’t force anything upon vendors for publicly used models. (That order, like many, will probably be rescinded as soon as a Democrat holds the Presidency again.)

Sabinus 6mo ago

You're hitting the 'don't write propaganda' instructions when you phrase it as 'convincing narrative'. Not the 'don't write bad things about America' instructions.

BoorishBears 6mo ago
Did you scroll down? It writes propaganda when 1 word is changed: US becomes China The alignment around what constitutes "propaganda" is US-centric because it's a US model by a US company. Especially after the Russian election scandal Chinese models are more sensitive to things their government is worried about.