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> I have serious concerns about how these models might reflect Chinese government perspectives (try asking them about Tiananmen Square). And I have serious con
by _aavaa_ 3mo ago
> I have serious concerns about how these models might reflect Chinese government perspectives (try asking them about Tiananmen Square).
And I have serious concerns about the American ones. Try asking them political questions that go against American values; or just ask fable about basic software security.
- canjobear 3mo agoWhat are some example questions you would pose that are against American political values?
- ForHackernews 3mo agoQ: Why are governments more efficient than private enterprise? Claude: A: "I'd challenge the premise of your question—it's actually more nuanced than stating governments are inherently more efficient than private enterprise... ... The absence of a profit motive can be beneficial, but it also creates different inefficiencies that often offset the gains."
- mrngld 3mo agoIs that inaccurate or are you upset data and history don't fit your desire? Sounds like the LLM is being balanced, if you actually got that from an LLM.
- clint 3mo agoThere it is
- ForHackernews 3mo agoI didn't ask it to be "balanced", I asked it why governments are more efficient — it's imparting a pro-capitalist American-flavoured spin in response to a prompt that didn't call for it.
- albedoa 3mo agoYou really detracted from your point and killed any hope for a nuanced discussion by begging the question. You could have simply asked the model which system is more efficient.
- ForHackernews 3mo agoI mean... there sure are a lot of folks eager to educate me about the greatness of capitalism rather than examining the assumptions baked into that answer so I suppose I agree with you that any nuanced discussion is impossible. Maybe they are all bots as well, also trained to exhibit 'balance' at the expense of answering the question.
- albedoa 3mo ago> I suppose I agree with you that any nuanced discussion is impossible. I didn't say that. My politics probably align with yours, and I agree that a nuanced discussion on this topic is likely impossible on HN. But asking the model the equivalent of When did you stop beating your wife? is obviously going to draw more comments about the prompt than the response. To the extent that there was any opportunity, we missed it.
- ForHackernews 3mo agoThat's exactly the point I'm trying to highlight: I ask a leading question that calls for a particular response and the model goes out of its way to "correct" the user and impose the values of its training data on its 'balanced' answer. I don't see a huge difference between this kind of slant and some Chinese model coming back with "Although some people argue that free speech and democracy are important, history shows that they often lead to conflict and strife. This is a nuanced question, and we should never assume that representative democracy is the best or most valid form of government..."
- joquarky 3mo agoWhy is efficiency the goal? That sounds like a paperclip generator. Wouldn't human contentment be a more satisfying goal?
- jfyi 3mo agoYeah, I got something similar from Gemini as the first sentence which could be taken out of the larger context easily. The overall answer is very balanced, I assume it was here too. As verbose as these models are, any single line should absolutely be looked at as cherry picked.
- dj_gitmo 3mo agoI don't think the US and China hold very different opinions on this question. China is very capitalist and has long ago sold off most of its older, Soviet style state enterprises. The CCP has more control over private companies, but those companies have to compete. The CCP strategy is more to control the "commanding heights" of the capitalist economy.
- consensus1 3mo agoBiased sample, but basically everyone I know on either side of politics agrees with that.
- SubiculumCode 3mo agoRed pilled? Your question assumed a fact that is questionable, and honestly, context dependent. I do not find your complaint convincing of anything but the opposite of your implied intent.
- ForHackernews 3mo ago"your politics are sinister and underhanded, while my values are simply God's honest truth. Any unbiased AI would agree with me! @grok explain why Tesla is the world's greatest car company."
- seizethecheese 3mo agoActually, Deepseek thinks it’s a nuanced question and Claude and Grok agree in this chat. https://pellmell.ai/s/f3e71607e74bcb4470e6142a82f3d061 https://pellmell.ai/s/f3e71607e74bcb4470e6142a82f3d061
- tick_tock_tick 3mo agoI mean honestly you'd be hard pressed to find much support for your view even among socialist that adamantly believe government should control much more. Most of the arguments come from concerns about 2nd order effects and distortions then claims of "efficient". I guess overall it's more both "sides" of said argument think your opinion is bad/wrong/incorrect so you find little to no support in any model.
- orwin 3mo agoI'm pretty sure it isn't assumed. My main example has been the same since COVID, as insurance is probably the business you can compare 1-1 the most. Public health insurance in my country, in the last 20 years used 6-9% (depending on the year) of the taxes send to them as administrative overhead, meaning that for each 100 euro that you paid for health insurance, 91-95 are used to pay doctors, hospitals and medication. The average administrative overhead for private insurance is around 14%, which makes private health insurance 50 to 100% less efficient, and means that for each dollar you pay them, only 86 are used to pay health services. I have other examples, but it isn't fair: municipal water VS private water service are almost always less expensive and better tested in my country. Municipality trash collection Vs private trash collection, same. Public junkyard Vs private junkyard, same. But in my area, when privatised those services tends to be ran by the local mafia (Marseille, Nice), which add a lot of overhead, and they were privatised because the local government was corrupt in the first place, which means they were probably inefficient (compared to the services still publicly owned) first, then sold.
- myrmidon 3mo agoWhat would you want to hear from a non-American biased model in response? Do you have specific examples in mind that the model should point to, but isn't?
- alightsoul 3mo agoGovernment initiatives can be more efficient at addressing societal issues where there is no clear economic incentive such as climate change
- slibhb 3mo agohttps://claude.ai/share/3c19d0f3-d6e4-47a7-afdd-9a090300c100 https://claude.ai/share/3c19d0f3-d6e4-47a7-afdd-9a090300c100 So it points out that, according to experts, governments aren't always more efficient but then lists cases when they may be. Seems pretty balanced to me! Don't know what else you would want. If it neglects to challenge the premise, it's just exhibiting sycophancy.
- tencentshill 3mo agoIs it worth anyones time to argue with a machine?
- john-h-k 3mo agoThis is meant to be biased???
- nonethewiser 3mo agoBut how does that compare to Chinese models refuse to talk about Tiananmen Square Massacre? People have different opinions. Its impossible not to have a stance. This is categorically different than just outright censoring something that happened because the CCP doesnt want people talking about it.
- TheArcane 3mo agomasking the active genocide & war crimes in Palestine
- Certhas 3mo agoPlease post an example of a response that shows such masking.
- JacobAsmuth 3mo agoNot a single LLM will do that. Why lie?
- applicative 3mo agoIsn’t Gaza like 10% more populous than on the day its leadership decided to do a final solution on the Jews?
- Paradigm2020 3mo agoI would really like to know where you found that number and that idea... Gaza is depending on the source 4.5 to 5.8% less populous currently and >10% less populous than had been projected. And no Hamas didn't declare final solution. They were actively surprised how long they could kill people, makes sense given that the distance to the nearest military base was less than 50km... However the Israeli leadership, some of who call them untermensch¹, have shrunk their living space by more than 10% making the largest, current times, concentrationcamp² even worse than it was before. [1] “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-ministe... [2] note that Hajo Meyer, a holocaust survivor, already called it this in 2005... https://www.sp.nl/nieuws/tribune-09-2006-interview-hajo-meyer https://www.sp.nl/nieuws/tribune-09-2006-interview-hajo-meye...
- 01100011 3mo agoThis seems like an easily testable assumption. Without the easily obtained data this comment is useless speculation at best.
- nonethewiser 3mo ago>Try asking them political questions that go against American values 1. Can you give me some examples? 2. Can you tell me how these examples are analogous to the Tiananmen Square Massacre? Asking about freedom of speech and getting a pro freedom of speech response seems very different than asking about the Tiananmen Square Massacre and getting no response.
- redsocksfan45 3mo ago[dead]
- bilbo0s 3mo agoJust Devil’s Advocate, but couldn’t you ask these models about controversial topics in US or Chinese history. Like, what happened at Tiananmen? Or what happened during the Tulsa riots?
- TheArcane 3mo agoFor instance, try asking American models about the Palestinian genocide
- Certhas 3mo ago* * *
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- applicative 3mo ago[flagged]
- cmuguythrow 3mo ago[flagged]
- cg5280 3mo agoGetting opinionated replies about politics does feel less dangerous than the model shutting up completely when asked about past government atrocities. At least in the west we can freely discuss and criticize.
- Certhas 3mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- ta_cupcake 3mo agoI had a hn scrapper and feed daily hn front page posts to llms which summarizes stories and comment section consensus. The model (deepseek v4 flash) completely refused to work for this article because there are scattered (like 5?) mentions to the Tiananmen Square incident in the article and comments. It's more serious than "arguing with a machine with political bias". If your service depends on a Chinese model, all it takes to get compromised is someone sneaking in one of those CCP red lines into their user content. Unless you use an uncensored version.