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fragmede01/22/20254 repliesview on HN

Why would China censoring Tiananmen Square/whatever out of their LLMs be anymore harmful to the training process when the US controlled LLMs also censor certain topics, eg "how do I make meth?" or "how do I make a nuclear bomb?".


Replies

vaccineai01/22/2025

Because China censors very common words and phrases such as "harmonized", "shameless", "lifelong", "river crabbed", "me too". This is because Chinese citizens uses puns and common phrases initially to get around censors.

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matkoniecz01/22/2025

Because falsifying history seems worse than restricting meth production, at least to me.

Though I see no reason whatsoever why LLM should be blocked from answering "how do I make a nuclear bomb?" query.

throwaway29001/22/2025

Because when a small group of elites with permament term and no elections decides what is allowed and what isn't... and has full control of silencing what's not allowed and any meta discussion about the silencing itself... is different from when an elected government decides it, and then anyone is free to raise a stink on whatever is their version of twitter today without worrying about being disappeared tomorrow

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Fade_Dance01/22/2025

They want their LLMs explicitly approved to align with the values of the regime. Not necessarily a bad thing, or at least that avenue wasn't my point. It does get in the way of going fast and breaking things though, and on the other side there is an outright accelerationist pseudo-cult.

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