If the rationale is to avoid sending data back to Chinese servers, then shouldn't there be a carveout for downloading a model you run locally?
> The bill, which also prohibits the “transfer of research,” could create an unworkable environment for computer scientists who make their research public, and regularly read AI papers published by Chinese researchers.
> “Beyond just impacting people downloading models from China, the bill's penalties for the import to or export from China of AI technology and intellectual property could also potentially extend to anyone who publishes AI models or research papers on the open internet knowing they will be downloaded by people in China,” Bankston said. “Researchers are also threatened by the second half of the bill, which would directly outlaw American collaboration with researchers at basically any Chinese university or company—with a fine of up to 100 million dollars for any company that violates the prohibition, amongst other penalties.”
(I already spent the first Trump term trying to discern "malice or incompetence", it's a red-herring, the investment is unreasonable, I'm declaring it "both.")
That word has a meaning, and a model that isn’t politically aligned isn’t it.
That said, I’ve been using deep seek distilled to qwen, which should yield an incredibly censored model if they had been censoring the models, but instead yields a pretty balanced model that is more than willing to talk about Tiananmen and Xi Jinpings human rights failings.