this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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And all Chinese ones are propaganda Mashines.
Kind of yeah. There's a whole conversation about how the Chinese government was at one point hamstringing all Chinese AI development by trying to punish researchers (with for-real, Chinese-prison punishment) if their models ever say anything politically suspect. I don't know if that's still going on, but past and present it is asinine and counterproductive to a degree that's honestly a little hard to believe. At the same time, China's command economy has the ability to muster resources towards a priority like AI development in a way that simply doesn't happen in the West, so I could easily believe that there are good things coming out that people here are unaware of. So it'd be good to learn about these things; I wish this article was reporting some of the substance of them so we could.
Saying all Chinese language media is propaganda just seems like a conspiracy theory.
But it isn't. Its literally written in Chinese law.
I don't think it's literally mandated to be propaganda for the CCP, but it's definitely illegal to write anything against them, which is a little bit of a false distinction if you look at it for long enough.
Interestingly enough, I tried to find the story I remember of the Chinese AI researcher who actually did get punished because his model said something about Chairman Mao, and I can't find it now. The more recent stories I found made it sound like they're taking a lot more sensible tack now (although still a state-mandated-oppression friendly one; it's just not wildly illogical and counterproductive like it used to be according to this):
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/01/17/1086704/china-ai-regulation-changes-2024/
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/18/1081846/generative-ai-safety-censorship-china/
If your llm isn't against china it's either not working, ethically questionable or made for propaganda