That Chinese AI companies have to be much more cautious with their language models, because the state control of speech is far greater and less predictable, is very interesting in its possible consequences.
I am a bit skeptical of the claim that China lacks high-quality training data. It traces back to a Chinese technology journalist bemoaning an alleged decline in quality of online discourse. It’s like western complaints about Twitter—it’s a bit true, it’s a bit false, but long-form discussions are taking place elsewhere anyway; and people do still write essays and even books.
Some people claim that western societies have a greater spirit of inquiry and criticism. If that’s true, then maybe training on a western corpus can produce a language model with greater powers of critical thought. Then again, China does have large numbers of intellectuals, with views far more diverse than most westerners realize. Because of Chinese politics, they do need a kind of “security mindset” in being careful how they express themselves; will that be passed on to a language model?
Presumably political correctness in China requires that the language model not say things that contradict the current ideological line. Here’s an example of what that’s like, from the start of the Xi era. I suppose politically correct Chinese language models will give Elon another reason to pursue his “BasedAI”…
That Chinese AI companies have to be much more cautious with their language models, because the state control of speech is far greater and less predictable, is very interesting in its possible consequences.
I am a bit skeptical of the claim that China lacks high-quality training data. It traces back to a Chinese technology journalist bemoaning an alleged decline in quality of online discourse. It’s like western complaints about Twitter—it’s a bit true, it’s a bit false, but long-form discussions are taking place elsewhere anyway; and people do still write essays and even books.
Some people claim that western societies have a greater spirit of inquiry and criticism. If that’s true, then maybe training on a western corpus can produce a language model with greater powers of critical thought. Then again, China does have large numbers of intellectuals, with views far more diverse than most westerners realize. Because of Chinese politics, they do need a kind of “security mindset” in being careful how they express themselves; will that be passed on to a language model?
Presumably political correctness in China requires that the language model not say things that contradict the current ideological line. Here’s an example of what that’s like, from the start of the Xi era. I suppose politically correct Chinese language models will give Elon another reason to pursue his “BasedAI”…