Comment by Blackthorn
2 days ago
It's about whether or not their censorship affects you. Their models are censored for the Chinese audience. Meanwhile Anthropic OpenAI etc models are censored for the American audience.
So by default you'd be better with one of the Chinese models if you're American.
The restrictions aren't symmetric at all.
Chinese models have government-enforced censorship, while American models have security and legal restrictions.
> Chinese models have government-enforced censorship, while American models have security and legal restrictions.
They are both government enforced. The USA administration is using early access and export control restrictions to do their enforcing.
As for the effects: while I'm told the Chinese government is sensitive to some internal political topics, I've never seen it myself. I guess that's because I don't write code dealing on Tiananmen square or similar topics, and I don't know anyone who does. In contrast the restrictions on the USA models are a right proper pain in the arse. Hugging Face being forced to swap Chinese models to defend against the OpenAI GPT attack is a good an illustration as any.
That said, these USA restrictions are a new thing that seemed to start with Mythos - which means around 6 months ago. The Chinese models are (pull number out of the air) 6 months behind, so maybe in 2027 the Chinese models will start behaving like the current US SOTA ones.
I don't care why they're being censored. I care that they're being censored.
You can also make a pretty good case that exactly what you just said, rather than being a demonstration of how free and open the American system is, is a demonstration of how advanced the American system is, wrapping its controls around you with no target to blame or lobby for changes. Is China "more" authoritarian than the American/Western system... or is the American/Western system actually just that much better than China at it?
> security and legal restrictions
The security of American hedgemony, and legal restrictions that are due to laws enacted by the American government
You're using different words to describe the same thing, but trying to imply America's reasons are moral
The nature of these laws are conceptually different, and I think to not see that is willfully obtuse. You are conflating these distinctions for rhetorical purposes.
Their deplorable censorship, our necessary legal restrictions. Potayto, potahto.
Legal restrictions are literally government enforced censorship.
Again, this is a category error. How are speed limits censorship?