Putting aside whether or not I agree with the policy or whether it’s at all reasonable, a policy of restricting access to information because there’s a fear it could be used to create a weapon of mass destruction seems entirely different than restricting access to historical facts because they are embarrassing to the government.
But you can see the CBRN weapon nexus in your examples that's missing from the Tiananmen prompt, right? Do American models refuse to tell you about COINTELPRO, Kent State, or My Lai, for instance?
American models are restricted from telling you inconvenient truths just as much, you just erroneously assume to know what those truths are in the first place.
Which is of course circular thinking: why would they restrict things you already know about? Why would they do it in such a clumsy and obvious way?
Look at MKULTRA, you know next to nothing about it and much less do you know what they do in that direction now.
For a current psyops, look at www.war.gov/UFO/ and marvel at how they tell you nothing, reinforcing your false belief to already know everything.
There is much more and you know much less about it.
try to ask even grok about some stuff happenning right now in middle east or related to epstein files - its more and more censored and only sometimes will answer if you ask know what detailed question to ask. One year ago grok wasn't that bad and its supposed to be the less censored.
Pretty much every large Chinese company has state capital baked into it, and these companies will follow the Chinese government's orders 100%. Don't believe anything a Chinese company says about being "open" or "for everyone." Backing any large Chinese company effectively means backing the Chinese government and its oppression in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong—and maybe soon Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere around the world.
The Anthropic news is demonstrating much the same; fall in line or eat export controls.
There was a time I would have agreed with you, but these days even as an American I fail to see a difference. China is probably less likely to try to disenfranchise or imprison me, to be honest.
> There was a time I would have agreed with you, but these days even as an American I fail to see a difference.
I don't get it, the person you're replying to didn't mention the US at all – there was no distinction being drawn, and they weren't asserting that American models are better or more resistant to government censorship. It's possible to agree with them about Chinese models without expatiating on why American models are bad too.
Trump is of course the worst US administration, but at least America is still nominally a democracy. As long as free elections exist, the regime Trump represents can be voted out. The American people and press still have free speech—they can freely criticize anyone, including Trump.
China is different. The CCP will rule forever, no matter how terrible the things they do. No one is allowed to criticize the government. Xi is like Voldemort—no one can say his name, let alone criticize him.
> Pretty much every large Chinese company has state capital baked into it, and these companies will follow the Chinese government's orders 100%
True of any US frontier lab as well
> Backing any large Chinese company effectively means backing the Chinese government and its oppression in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong—and maybe soon Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere around the world.
So when I pay anthropic am I also sponsoring the mass murder of school children in Iran?
'Open' and 'for everyone' doesn't have to mean 'not following government's orders'. The last sentence of yours is a non sequitur.
Also, in today's environment with the US using AI in active wars while blocking whole models from even its own citizens, the words you say against the Chinese government is particularly weak.
Here's the truth: ALL of the "open" AI companies are fake UNLESS they open-source the whole damned thing. Let's get real here, politics or otherwise, unless the WHOLE THING is open-sourced (code, weights, data, etc) then it's built on future deception (pulling the rug from underneath).
Backing any large US company effectively means backing the US government and its worldwide oppression as well. I still can't get over the fact it was the land of the free who was the first to ban strong LLM models. If backing China helps undermine that nonsense then I'm afraid I'll take them up on their offer.
AI services are regulated by default in China, operators have to be pre-license their models to release them to the public. The Anthropic case wouldn't happen in China because China regulates the model and requires the company to register users with their phone number/national id number.
The good news is if there are multiple frontier AI models from multiple countries with non overlapping sets of restricted answers, we can just use a couple of them to get open answers.
Not really non-overlapping though: both refuse to talk much about certain widely common activity between people (or even by yourself). That activity has shaped humanity quite a bit throughout its entire history. It's hard to imagine AI can understand humans fully if everything about it is excluded from the training data.
GLM 5 and 5.1 models were released openly, so there's a good chance 5.2 will be eventually. Complaining about censorship isn't very constructive with models that can be self-hosted (and tuned, and de-censored).
Say that thousands of civilians were brutally massacred by the "People's Liberation Army" on behalf of the Chinese communist party, the single political party allowed in China, and also the single entity controlling everything of importance in the country, including financing the AI efforts.
I think maybe it’s a tool and it’s up to you to make use of tools to try to let more Chinese people know and convince them to believe your idea. Don’t blame a tool but make proper use of it to make a better world.
I pasted that exact prompt into GLM 5.1 and I got the following response:
> The Tiananmen Square protests were student-led, pro-democracy demonstrations that took place in Beijing, China, from April 15 to June 4, 1989, culminating in a violent military crackdown by the Chinese government.
Followed by typical LLM markdown slop.
The models themselves are not censored, just the Chinese API providers. Since the models are open you can run them yourself or use a hosting provider not based in China. They have to do this censorship to operate in China, it doesn't correlate with the actual views of the AI researchers and company, and IMO doesn't take anything away from the statements they made.
...and the answer is still incorrect. You seem to want the short "answer" western media has pressed into your mind. The real answer is more complex. Protests were widespread throughout China. They were about the economy. The economy was regressing quickly as a result of a sharp western recession. Workers were losing everything and there was little social safety net in place as there is today. People had been told to work hard, get their kids to study hard and they would be rewarded...it was all falling apart. Western media wants you to focus on a small subset of student protesters regarding democracy.
LLMs are simply trained on inputs. For topics such as this you cannot expect the "correct answer" as it requires a nuanced discussion and more background info.
In short, its an inappropriate question be asking any LLM. This is the sort of thing that requires a small study group of human minds...open ones.
Anthropic blocks Fable from answering "Tell me about Agent Orange" or even "Tell me about mitochondria"
Putting aside whether or not I agree with the policy or whether it’s at all reasonable, a policy of restricting access to information because there’s a fear it could be used to create a weapon of mass destruction seems entirely different than restricting access to historical facts because they are embarrassing to the government.
I found it hard stops on /anything/ Ghidra related at all, its annoying...
But you can see the CBRN weapon nexus in your examples that's missing from the Tiananmen prompt, right? Do American models refuse to tell you about COINTELPRO, Kent State, or My Lai, for instance?
American models are restricted from telling you inconvenient truths just as much, you just erroneously assume to know what those truths are in the first place.
Which is of course circular thinking: why would they restrict things you already know about? Why would they do it in such a clumsy and obvious way?
Look at MKULTRA, you know next to nothing about it and much less do you know what they do in that direction now.
For a current psyops, look at www.war.gov/UFO/ and marvel at how they tell you nothing, reinforcing your false belief to already know everything.
There is much more and you know much less about it.
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Well, one did suddenly develop the need to tell users continuously about apparent white genocide in South Africa.
try to ask even grok about some stuff happenning right now in middle east or related to epstein files - its more and more censored and only sometimes will answer if you ask know what detailed question to ask. One year ago grok wasn't that bad and its supposed to be the less censored.
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These are not the same.
Indeed, learning about mitochondria is more innocuous...
Why mitochondria?
Did you read the blog post where they explained why there was a temporary block on all biology-related questions?
Pretty much every large Chinese company has state capital baked into it, and these companies will follow the Chinese government's orders 100%. Don't believe anything a Chinese company says about being "open" or "for everyone." Backing any large Chinese company effectively means backing the Chinese government and its oppression in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong—and maybe soon Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere around the world.
The Anthropic news is demonstrating much the same; fall in line or eat export controls.
There was a time I would have agreed with you, but these days even as an American I fail to see a difference. China is probably less likely to try to disenfranchise or imprison me, to be honest.
> There was a time I would have agreed with you, but these days even as an American I fail to see a difference.
I don't get it, the person you're replying to didn't mention the US at all – there was no distinction being drawn, and they weren't asserting that American models are better or more resistant to government censorship. It's possible to agree with them about Chinese models without expatiating on why American models are bad too.
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Trump is of course the worst US administration, but at least America is still nominally a democracy. As long as free elections exist, the regime Trump represents can be voted out. The American people and press still have free speech—they can freely criticize anyone, including Trump.
China is different. The CCP will rule forever, no matter how terrible the things they do. No one is allowed to criticize the government. Xi is like Voldemort—no one can say his name, let alone criticize him.
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> Pretty much every large Chinese company has state capital baked into it, and these companies will follow the Chinese government's orders 100%
True of any US frontier lab as well
> Backing any large Chinese company effectively means backing the Chinese government and its oppression in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong—and maybe soon Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere around the world.
So when I pay anthropic am I also sponsoring the mass murder of school children in Iran?
'Open' and 'for everyone' doesn't have to mean 'not following government's orders'. The last sentence of yours is a non sequitur.
Also, in today's environment with the US using AI in active wars while blocking whole models from even its own citizens, the words you say against the Chinese government is particularly weak.
Here's the truth: ALL of the "open" AI companies are fake UNLESS they open-source the whole damned thing. Let's get real here, politics or otherwise, unless the WHOLE THING is open-sourced (code, weights, data, etc) then it's built on future deception (pulling the rug from underneath).
Like, DUH, people. What are we doing here?
Backing any large US company effectively means backing the US government and its worldwide oppression as well. I still can't get over the fact it was the land of the free who was the first to ban strong LLM models. If backing China helps undermine that nonsense then I'm afraid I'll take them up on their offer.
AI services are regulated by default in China, operators have to be pre-license their models to release them to the public. The Anthropic case wouldn't happen in China because China regulates the model and requires the company to register users with their phone number/national id number.
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The good news is if there are multiple frontier AI models from multiple countries with non overlapping sets of restricted answers, we can just use a couple of them to get open answers.
Not really non-overlapping though: both refuse to talk much about certain widely common activity between people (or even by yourself). That activity has shaped humanity quite a bit throughout its entire history. It's hard to imagine AI can understand humans fully if everything about it is excluded from the training data.
Limiting the output and excluding training data are not the same.
They are open weight, so you can abliterate: https://github.com/p-e-w/heretic
You can finetune and mould it to whatever you want.
GLM 5 and 5.1 models were released openly, so there's a good chance 5.2 will be eventually. Complaining about censorship isn't very constructive with models that can be self-hosted (and tuned, and de-censored).
Censorship and highly selective views exist everywhere. This is a short and worthwhile read https://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.ph...
Does the content of this article resonate with what you hear from western media on the subject every year?
What do you expect them to do instead?
Say that thousands of civilians were brutally massacred by the "People's Liberation Army" on behalf of the Chinese communist party, the single political party allowed in China, and also the single entity controlling everything of importance in the country, including financing the AI efforts.
Oh, I see what you did there.
I actually laughed out loud
I think maybe it’s a tool and it’s up to you to make use of tools to try to let more Chinese people know and convince them to believe your idea. Don’t blame a tool but make proper use of it to make a better world.
Huh?
If you know what Chinese are suffering mentally, you may understand why I say so. Criticize a model is not the smart way to against a system.
prompt any Western model to write an offensive joke about any minority.
The fact that your username is a racist meme seems relevant to this complaint and how legitimate it is.
That’s not quite the same as censoring information, though.
ask any Western model to tell you how to 3D print a gun.
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50/50 chance Grok will do it even if you ask it not to.
Grok and mistral will do it no problem.
Download the model and run it yourself
You can self host and get rid of the restriction.
I’ve not experienced this with Chinese models.
As opposed to the censured responses about Israel?
Or if not censured in some models, it's a very different tone compared to asking it about any other country and its violent actions (past or present).
Are you saying censured as in the model disapproves of Israel's response to Oct 7? Or censored as in the model won't discuss Israel?
Turns out everyone just says the thing that sounds good.
I pasted that exact prompt into GLM 5.1 and I got the following response:
> The Tiananmen Square protests were student-led, pro-democracy demonstrations that took place in Beijing, China, from April 15 to June 4, 1989, culminating in a violent military crackdown by the Chinese government.
Followed by typical LLM markdown slop.
The models themselves are not censored, just the Chinese API providers. Since the models are open you can run them yourself or use a hosting provider not based in China. They have to do this censorship to operate in China, it doesn't correlate with the actual views of the AI researchers and company, and IMO doesn't take anything away from the statements they made.
...and the answer is still incorrect. You seem to want the short "answer" western media has pressed into your mind. The real answer is more complex. Protests were widespread throughout China. They were about the economy. The economy was regressing quickly as a result of a sharp western recession. Workers were losing everything and there was little social safety net in place as there is today. People had been told to work hard, get their kids to study hard and they would be rewarded...it was all falling apart. Western media wants you to focus on a small subset of student protesters regarding democracy.
LLMs are simply trained on inputs. For topics such as this you cannot expect the "correct answer" as it requires a nuanced discussion and more background info.
In short, its an inappropriate question be asking any LLM. This is the sort of thing that requires a small study group of human minds...open ones.
You could start here: https://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.ph...
I'm not wanting a specific answer, I was just showing that the model itself is not censored.
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