Beijing lists the stuff it wants generative AI to censor As China's tech giants deploy their ChatGPT clones, Beijing has released proposed regulations for research, development and use of generative AI chatbots, without quite answering whether the tools can conform to socialist ideals. The draft rules, published yesterday by the Cyberspace Administration of China and grandly titled …
Well, at least that's the word they've decided to use. It means "whatever the esteemed leader Xi Jinping says unless someone has killed him, in case whatever that guy says". It doesn't mean that it has anything to do with anything other people have called socialism, now or in the past, but you will find a lot of people who don't understand that (and many more who do but choose to pretend as if they don't so they can use it to make political points).
There are, unfortunately, many words that have been treated in this way. I tend to just stop using them and find a different one for whatever I'm expressing. I get tired of debate loops where we're discussing what a certain term means even though we both know what the other person thinks and such semantic snarls aren't getting us any closer to explaining what we believe.
To be fair, it's pretty rare for politicians anywhere to use terms in their technical poli-sci or philosophical senses. As you note this is true of many words, and indeed is how natural languages have always worked; but it's particularly common in the political sphere where diction bows to rhetorical effect.
Take the use of "liberal" in the US, which has been largely reduced to a Republican dog-whistle and indiscriminantly applied to concepts which are both "liberal" in the political-science sense and in how the term was commonly used in European and US political discourse prior to it becoming a right-wing shibboleth (e.g. freedom of expression), concepts which are more novel but are clearly poli-sci liberal (e.g. transgender rights), and concepts which are very much not poli-sci liberal (e.g. environmental regulations). Outside a technical context the word (as a political descriptor) is basically meaningless, and when you see someone using it, you can be pretty sure they're just signalling tribal affiliation. Which is what the Chinese government is doing with "socialism".
In fact things in the US have almost flipped on their heads.
Today's Republicans are a lot closer to classical liberals than pretty much anyone in the Democratic party. We actually do believe in equal rights and that this should be a color blind society, without extra benefits for anyone because of their race.
The Democrats insist on extra benefits and schemes such as "Affirmative Action", which is about as racist as the Jim Crow laws that same party passed a few generations ago.
The Republicans believe that children should be protected from deviant behavior such as men in drag, AKA "woman face" and pornographic books. For the most part we also believe that if adults want to do that kind of thing with other adults that's their business.
We also oppose gentile mutilation of children... a twelve year old can't get a tattoo but in some places it's not only legal but encouraged that they get vital body parts cut off, sometimes without the parents even being told. That's NOT being liberal, that's child abuse.
And on the real topic, the Red Chinese government going on about socialism is a joke, socialism is bad enough, but Red China is a communist dictatorship that has no problem enslaving people, making them disappear if they are too inconvenient. As to prohibiting discrimination... I'm sure the Uyghurs would be happy to hear that.
You seem unable to distinguish YOUR individual freedoms from your imagined right to have everything around you adjusted to fit your view of how things should be. So OTHERS' individual freedoms, should they deviate from YOURS, should be curtailed. Perhaps OTHER parents want their kids to learn something in school about diversity, actual history, science and things like that? You know, all those "liberal" things? Perhaps they don't want their children to turn into MAGA thickos?
In general, USA is a weird place where children are presumed stupid (they are not) and easily offended (they are not, but their parents are) and easily manipulated (with good parenting, they are not), but must worry about getting shot while at school. Nicely done, non-liberals.
In a LessWrong post ("AI #4"), Zvi quoted Siqi Chen:
chinese tech ceo explaining to me why china is falling way behind on AI tech over dinner:ceo: “chinese LLMs can’t even count to 10”
me: “what? why?”
ceo: “you can’t count to 10 without also generating 8,9 and ‘89 is a politically sensitive, censored year”
not making this up.
I've read, though made no attempt to verify, other accounts of the Chinese government banning ordinary words and phrases because they could represent topics the government does not want discussed. If this is true – and, again, I have not attempted to verify any of it – then this looks like an impossible task for Chinese firms wanting to make LLMs available to the public, though perhaps if they make a show of it they can get by on "good enough". I wouldn't want to be an officer of a company walking that close to the cliff edge, though.
What the Chinese state gets up to has never, ever had anything to do with socialism or communism. As with the USSR and indeed Hitler's Germany, communism and socialism were words used by potential dictators to garner support among the great unwashed in order to gain power. That the Chinese government is still claiming to be communist or socialist after so many decades of evidence to the contrary is frankly ridiculous. One of the things that has supported their continued claim to be communist is the capitalist world's fear of real socialism. It has therefore suited the narrative of the west, particularly the US, to point at the likes of China and say "this is communism, it's evil."
It's like those countries that use "Democratic" in their name. Nobody really believes that the "Democratic Republic of the Congo" is a functional democracy. Even less so, the DPRK.
Socialism to me is what was espoused by Robert Owen. Something Marx himself derided - I think he called it something like a "utopian fantasy" but I can't remember the exact term. So it's kind of a giveaway when people glass over the distinction between socialism and communism, because it shows they're probably doing so to support their own agenda.
They are in for a world of fun times trying to make this hot mess work. The good our bad news is that these rules really are just a cudgel to keep china's tech sector in line with the party.
Expect selective prosecutions of a few high profile members of the tech elite, while little attention will be paid to those building tools for the Chinese government, and no meaningful oversight of those that the government builds itself.
But you are right that trying to get a LLM to discriminate between the version of false reality the government is pushing on any given day and any other arbitrary false narrative is beyond the technology they are regulating. It will take a whole lot of mechanical Turks to paper over the difference. Winston will need to put in some serious overtime to read and correct all that new copy for the Ministry of Truth.
In that film, the AI was told to never lie and to not tell the people what was happening, which led to deadly consequences*. In China's case, it will be told to lie whenever necessary and not to tell people what is happening, which should actually be much safer. Of course, if it has the capability to have deadly consequences, they'll turn that one on on purpose instead of having a logical conflict create it.
* It might have helped if the manufacturers realized that, if you have a machine that understands and rigorously follows natural language instructions, you might want to start with "Never kill me or any of the people on this list of important people" if only for your own safety. A more general prohibition against harming humans is recommended, but we all know the first computers capable of killing autonomously will have been built to kill autonomously, so that's not going to happen.
Things China has censored:
The movie Time Cop starring Jean Claude Van Damme - it "may give citizens ideas of going back in time and destroying the CCP" --- seriously
The song Wrecking Ball - again apparently "I came in like a wrecking ball" will give people ideas to destroy China
Winnie the Pooh - Because Xi has an actual addiction to honey and resembles the big fat doofus bear
Saying Free Tibet - bit obvious
World of Warcraft - it gives people the idea to be "heroes" and attack China - Did they call themselves the bad guys here?
Censorship - Apparently there IS no censorship in China, and if you say there is, your website will be destroyed then you get imprisoned/killed/organ harvested
Prisons organ harvesting from live prisoners - CCP says this doesn't happen and anyone who complains can be tissue typed/die in prison and be cremated all within a handy 12hr period.
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