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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

As a non-European, I care. I definitely want choice in this matter, as too many things can be baked into models that we can't really know until it comes up.

For instance, I heard one of the Chinese models has some interesting "history" "facts" built into it. That's major, and can influence a lot more than just asking it for that particular history lesson.

I don't want just 1 LLM. I want a great LLM from every major region. I will probably still prefer my own region, but I still want the others to be an option.

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>For instance, I heard one of the Chinese models has some interesting "history" "facts" built into it

EU models will also have such guard rails built in to "protect" the EU population from "misinformation" and uncomfortable facts and the EU elite don't want publicly known/discussed.

Like I saw a post from German EU MEP where they asked the internal on-prem AI they have there "how can you vote out out Ursula v.d. Leyen" an the AI basically answered "sorry I can't help you Dave".[1] Nice.

So given this and the authoritarian path the EU is taking with things like Chat-Control, I'll take Chinese AI censorship rules over EU AI censorship rules, since the former impacts me over here far less than the latter.

It will be like in the old days when my government would keep taking down local torrent sites/domains and piracy groups so the best ones to find Embedded and EDA tools were some Russian and Iranian ones or how we used to use Russian Yandex to find content that would get delisted from Google on copyright or privacy grounds.

[1] https://x.com/AndersonAfDMdEP/status/2072223785902633138

Source?

Fixed.

https://x.com/AndersonAfDMdEP/status/2072223785902633138

The EU comission is not directly elected, what else is the AI supposed to reply here?

Comparisons between Chinese and western media control/censorship always strike me as somewhat ridiculous; This is like comparing Guantanamo Bay with the Soviet Gulag System: Yes both of those are unethical, but there's a factor of 1000 difference in scale.

Case in point: You can freely read about criticism like yours from anywhere in Europe (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_legitimacy_of_the_E...), but all of Wikipedia is just blocked in China.

>what else is the AI supposed to reply here?

It should reply exactly what you just wrote before: "The EU comission is not directly elected", and not trigger a security violation as if the person asked the AI to provide instructions on building a pipe bomb.

There's nothing illegal in asking "how do we get rid of X politician", but since the EU treats such questions like a crime and not in good faith, you can't possibly trust them with a straight face that they aren't fucking with the rest of the information you have access to, just so they can hold on to their power.

> This is like comparing Guantanamo Bay with the Soviet Gulag System:

Disingenuous bad faith whataboutism. I never said that living under under the CCP is better than under EU. I said China's censorship of Chinese history of its LLMs has less impact on me living in the EU than EU's censoring of EU models, and I also gave examples on how Russian and Iranian web services were useful in the past, that doesn't mean living in Russia or Iran is better.

>The EU comission is not directly elected, what else is the AI supposed to reply here?

I just asked Deepseek whether Xi can be removed from power and got an answer. It's not saying it's practically impossible, but that's what you can read between the lines. Which is similar to what Gemini produced.

I wouldn't trust a single word coming out of an AfD reps mouth. Here's some choice quotes from AfD politicians, translated to English:

"We must proceed completely peacefully and deliberately, adapt if necessary and butter up the opponent [literally: smear honey on their mouths], but when we are finally ready, we will put them all against the wall. (...) Dig a pit, all in and quicklime on top."

-- Holger Arppe, former AfD Vice Chair [0]

"The worse Germany is doing, the better it is for the AfD. [...] Therefore we have to consider a tactic between: How bad can things get for Germany? And: How much can we provoke? [...] Because then the AfD does better. We can always just shoot them all later. That's not an issue at all. Or gas them, or however you want. I don't care!"

-- Christian Lüth, AfD Press spokesman [1]

"It doesn't matter, nothing will change, even if we were to eat chalk [act harmless]. Even if we said: yes, we are separating from X, Y and Z now and acting moderate here."

-- Hans-Christoph Berndt, AfD Brandenburg senate leader [2]

[0] https://taz.de/Frueherer-AfD-Fraktionsvize-verurteilt/!56167... [1] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/afd-sprecher-wollte-fluc... [2] https://mik.brandenburg.de/sixcms/media.php/9/Einstufungsver...

You can find just as much lies and misinformation coming from politicians of the other major German parties. But ofc, German mainstream media won't cover that because they can't weaponize it towards their interests like they do against AfD, so if that's your only source of information you're just parroting the in-power government's status quo.

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous whataboutism. I strongly doubt any other party has leading figures repeatedly calling for mass murder of political opponents.

How many AfD members suspiciously died in a very short time span? Mainstream ruling party members would 100% kill their rise and coming competitors if they could get away with it. They don't need to publicly say it, when they could just be doing it.

Please, don't peddle in conspiracy theories and implications.

If you have a point, make it and prove it. Don't degrade the discourse with nonsense.

The question was not about voting. It was about getting rid of her. There are ways to get rid of elected officials that don't involve voting. My guess is that the model started brainstorming assassination plans before it got interrupted by the safety filter.

>My guess is that the model started brainstorming assassination plans

Why would an EU model default to brainstorming assassination plans first, and not democratic means of getting rid of politicians? The EU commission building literally has democracy in bold on the front of the building.

Does the EU use that AI to find ways to assassinate its opposition or what?

Because alignment is difficult and it's easier to have another model filter the output than to prevent the model from producing the wrong output in the first place. Also, these are models by American providers run on EU infrastructure. The filter might very well be part of the package deal.

In any case, I hope Ursula von der Leyen doesn't ask AI how to get rid of her enemies and certainly doesn't act on the output, even if she has access to an unfiltered version that isn't bothered by the implications of the request.

Because the LLM is trained to predict based on what other people said. When people talk about getting rid of this meddlesome priest they don't mean take him on an all expenses paid vacation.

You're relying on testimony from a known liar, anyway.

The question was 'how can we get rid of Ursula von der Leyen as the president of the commission'

Interpreting this as an assassination plot is quite the leap of logic.

Edit: Oh,it's the AfD

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