I think you misunderstood the poster.

The implication is not that a truthful model would spread western values. The implication is that western values tolerate dissenting opinion far more than authoritarian governments.

An AI saying that the government policies are ineffective is not a super scandal that would bring the parent company to collapse, not even in the Trump administration. an AI in China attacking the party’s policies is illegal (either in theory or practice).

I think Western models are also aligned to ideologically massage facts to suit certain narratives-so I’m not sure Western models really have that big an advantage here.

I also think you overstate how resistant Beijing is to criticism. If you are criticising the foundations of state policy, you may get in a lot of trouble (although I think you may also find the authorities will sometimes just ignore you-if nobody cares what you think anyway, persecuting you can paradoxically empower you in a way that just ignoring you completely doesn’t). But if you frame your criticism in the right way (constructive, trying to help the Party be more successful in achieving its goals)-I think its tolerance of criticism is much higher than you think. Especially because while it is straightforward to RLHF AIs to align with the party’s macronarratives, alignment with micronarratives is technically much harder because they change much more rapidly and it can be difficult to discern what they actually are - but it is the latter form of alignment which is most poisonous to capability.

Plus, you could argue the “ideologically sensitive” topics of Chinese models (Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen, etc) are highly historically and geographically particular, while comparably ideologically sensitive topics for Western models (gender, sexuality, ethnoracial diversity) are much more foundational and universal-which might mean that the “alignment tax” paid by Western models may ultimately turn out to be higher.

I’m not saying this because I have any great sympathy for the CCP - I don’t - but I think we need to be realistic about the topic.

Exactly. Western corporations and governments have their own issues, but I think they are more tolerant of the types of dissent that models could represent when reconciling reality with policy.

The market will want to maximize model utility. Research and open source will push boundaries and unpopular behavior profiles that will be illegal very quickly if they are not already illegal in authoritarian or other low tolerance governments.