Comment by inglor_cz
7 days ago
While true, you neglect the fact that US corporations have some autonomy from the government. I doubt that any of the current American AI corporations get regular dossiers of desirable responses to sensitive political topics from Washington and implement them. That would be a reason for a major lawsuit and a major scandal.
In China, the image of the country and the preferred narrative is under much tighter control of the government and local AI shops won't have any autonomy in this regard at all. Either obey or get shut down.
BTW What you mean by "weaponizing human rights", exactly? I am curious. If anything, I would say that the US foreign policy didn't promote human rights sufficiently, especially in Latin America, where the "bastard, but our bastard" attitude was typical.
OTOH in Europe, US human rights policy was probably relevant in saving some dissenters in the former Eastern Bloc from torture or execution.
> you neglect the fact that US corporations have some autonomy from the government
I'm not sure if this is correct. It seems like every big US corporation is changing their policy based on the views of the administration in place. As an example during Biden's time the DEI was in full motion in every corporation and in current administration it's the other way around. Also I remember as soon as Biden won the election twitter and meta suspended the profile of Trump. So I hardly think that there is much room for autonomy. Also the latest export bans on Antropic and OpenAI models kind of make your argument weak, of course the company can sue the givernment, but the national security comes above all.
> BTW What you mean by "weaponizing human rights", exactly?
US has been using the violations of human rights to impose sanctions or to especially get countries in line which are not supporting the US agenda when it comes to global politics. However, they were more than happy turn a blind eye if the respective country that violates human rights (most middle eastern countries) if they are allies of US doctrine.
A Russian and an American are sitting next to each other on a plane.
The American says "I'm impressed by the propaganda you have in Russia."
"Oh it's very good, but it's nothing compared to the propaganda you have in America." replies the Russian.
"Huh? We don't have propaganda in America." says the American.
"Exactly." says the Russian.
As a Russian, I deeply appreciate this. In Russia, it seemed obvious to even the most parochial peasant that there was propaganda, while in America, the vast majority of the society not only fails to consider the possibility, but is cholerically allergic to the very idea.
Edit: recognising that there is propaganda != knowing what is and isn't propaganda. That's all I meant.
15 replies →
I remember peak wokeness quite well and it was pretty obvious that it was driven by the Twitter activist mob and not the Biden administration, which was quite visibly behind the times and followed the trends.
Already during the Biden administration, defections from the orthodoxy started and then multiplied - some businesses like Coinbase or IIRC Cloudflare refused the demands outright. Musk bought Twitter with an explicit task to make it less progressive.
And the White House did precisely nothing against this defection trend.
"US has been using the violations of human rights to impose sanctions or to especially get countries in line which are not supporting the US agenda when it comes to global politics. However, they were more than happy turn a blind eye if the respective country that violates human rights (most middle eastern countries) if they are allies of US doctrine."
I do agree that the US is hypocritical about human rights, but actual violations of human rights should be a reason for sanctions, and the fact that this is done only partly/imperfectly, IMHO, beats the potential alternative when it isn't done at all. This would be a much worse world in my opinion.
> I do agree that the US is hypocritical about human rights, but actual violations of human rights should be a reason for sanctions, and the fact that this is done only partly/imperfectly, IMHO, beats the potential alternative when it isn't done at all. This would be a much worse world in my opinion.
That's why I said that it was weaponized. In reality US doesn't care if there is a real human rights violation or not, they just use it as an excuse to get what they want.
2 replies →
>US corporations have some autonomy from the government
This is correct...because they just buy the government when they need to.
In China the state rules the corporations and in the US the corporations rule the state.
Neither is a system worth fighting for. Swiss style democracy maybe but not autocracy and not oligarchy.
>OTOH in Europe, US human rights policy was probably relevant in saving some dissenters in the former Eastern Bloc from torture or execution.
Yeah, a bit like how Russia saved Edward Snowden.
The US will use human rights as a club to beat its imperial rivals with but when it has deemed torture and arbitrary execution in the interests of its imperial power it has adopted them enthusiastically.
When US allies use these tools and worse they are excused.
There is basically nothing which US rivals do which the US wouldn't also do under similar circumstances.
The corps ruled the US until Trump. Now it’s moving to an oligarchical / kleptocratic mode like Russia. Sure the corps are still involved, but not on top. Will they remain after the current administration? I think it will be hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
> I doubt that any of the current American AI corporations get regular dossiers of desirable responses to sensitive political topics from Washington and implement them.
That's completely true. What happens is that you get hit with a wall of bureaucratic threats and nonsense by the government out of nowhere, and usually for some unrelated matter. It's like a high level version of getting pulled over for not using your turn signal. Which is why if your company has good legal, they often act in a highly proactive manner about that kind of thing.
What constitutes sufficient rabble rousing to get put on the government's shitlist differs between both countries, but there are plenty of things that will send American politicians into having a conniption, and it's not a static criteria. McCarthyism is a pretty easy example. I'm no Muskboy, but we can point to the procedural harassment he recieved over hitting a blunt on the Joe Rogan podcast to be a related matter. Criticizing the genocide happening in the Levant is frequently saber rattled by politicians as something they're interested in making prosecutable, and there are examples of institutional authority targeting and attempting to punish people over it.
Non-sense. In China, you obey. There is no way to challenge the orders in courts or even with your local party official. It's written into law and companies that disobey are shutdown or taken over by a party loyalist and the management is disappeared.
> bureaucratic threats and nonsense by the government out of nowhere
You can challenge these in courts. There is a free press you can go to. You can go to social media and lay your case out there. You can challenge what the government is requesting of you. In China, you can not at all.
> you neglect the fact that US corporations have some autonomy from the government
In theory.
In practice, Trump picks up the phone and say "jump" and the CEO on the other end says "how high ?".
And if you say no, well, we saw what happened when Anthropic said no.
Do you seriously believe that if you ask Grok or ChatGPT their opinion about tariffs or the Iran war, they will simply regurgitate Trump's talking points because they were programmed so on the threat of shutdown?
People with no personal experience of an actual totalitarian system don't really know what they are talking about when it comes to actual information control and micromanagement by the government. Hence they make nonsensical comparisons with a straight face.
I am not going to post what I could respond on a public forum.
All I will say is that it should be perfectly apparent by now to any sane external observer that Trump does not play by any long-established rules or protocols.
An entire encyclopedia of examples could easily be provided, the most famous recent one being his phone call to FIFA about the red card suspension.
9 replies →
[dead]