I tried China’s new DeepSeek AI tool, and it seems just as effective as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini AI offering. However, others have conducted more extensive research of DeepSeek’s capabilities, and found that it apparently doesn’t know anything about Tiananmen Square, Taiwan or the failings of communist governments. (if that link is blocked, just Google Deepseek blocked for Tiananmen square). This should not come as a big surprise, after all secrecy, control, and censorship are typical and indispensable tools used by totalitarian regimes in the course of their government operations. We certainly don’t do that in the West; no way, no how.
But wait. Grok3, Elon Musk’s xAI model
offering was found to be blocking
suggestions related to disinformation from President Trump and his financial
backer – and appointed government disassembler – Elon Musk! (If that link
is blocked, just Google xAI blocked for negative trump musk.) The good news? That “feature” has been
reversed, and now Musk’s “maximally truth-seeking" AI is no longer
censoring this type of query. The bad
news? It raises the lingering question – how could this happen in the first
place? Well, don’t worry; Musk reassured
everyone that a lowly employee who previously worked at OpenAI "pushed the
change without asking" and that it had since been "reverted." Whew! Thank goodness for that.
The question is, do we believe that story,
or was Musk just caught with his pants down, and forced into his version of
damage control – blaming someone else, and reacting heroically? Skeptics like
me will certainly lean one way on that question. Others will take his word as
gospel. And that divisiveness parallels the line between the political left and
right in the US. Worse still, the question of AI censorship tweaking is just
the tip of the iceberg.
If secrecy, control, and censorship become
normalized in the West, then perhaps we need to ask – just how bad is China,
really? If Western governments adopt the same tactics as China’s government,
then how different are we? Sure, China has a lead in political and ideological
imprisonment, but the US actually leads the world in per
capita incarceration. Further, one could easily imagine that the gap is
closing rapidly, as Trump
plans to deport large numbers of people working in the US (and presumably put their children
back into cages), and even suspend
birthright citizenship. If Trump and
Musk follow the Project
2025 blueprint, what other horrors are coming down the pike?
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