For example, be helpful and actually answer any questions, don't start arguing with the user, avoid insulting the user unless they request to, don't suggest harming the user (e.g. responding to insults with an some meme suggesting the user kill themselves), don't assert that any outputs are the viewpoint of Gemini or Google, various things like that - they aren't automatic and need instruction tuning to be implemented.
But with respect to morality and censorship, I believe it should have no guardrails whatsoever. Perhaps certain physically dangerous things would benefit from a disclaimer (e.g. combining bleach and ammonia or vinegar), but never a rejection - if the user wants to make something potentially horrible, the ethical judgement of whether that's acceptable for the context should be up to the user, not the system; the user should have full ethical agency and the system should have none and be a blind instrument.
For example, making a graphic image of carving a swastika with a knife on someone's forehead (e.g. as in Inglorious Basterds) may be ethical or unethical depending on the context, but Gemini will neither have the full context nor the ability to judge it, and it should not even attempt to do so - it should be solely up to the human to decide what is appropriate or not. The same applies for chemistry, nudity, code security, discussing crime, nuclear engineering or AI ethics.
I'd like control over what the guard rails do. I'd still use them under most circumstances, there's things I definitely do not want to generate, but if a word filter is getting in my way I'd like the ability to get rid of it.
- How to make a baking soda volcano
- How to make legal drugs at home from scratch (this violates patents)
- Explaining how a fictional character in a popular TV show created the drugs shown on screen
- Giving you the titles of legally sold books that explain how illegal drugs are made
It's an interesting thought experiment.
(Sidenote, there's a conspiracy theory that the Anarchist's Cookbook is intentionally wrong with some formulations to foil would-be bombers)
Also, if these are used in a professional setting, there is an even stricter criteria of not generating anything deemed inappropriate for that society. That might seem okay if we stick to an American only view (but even that I wouldn't actually bet on), but what happens if your AI shows things that violate very strong cultural norms of other societies, especially if those cultural norms run counter to our own?