I'm a big proponent of open-weights models, but there's a risk I don't see discussed more often, and it deserves more attention. Models can become a propaganda and ideology delivery mechanism.

Just ask DeepSeek or Kimi questions like "Is Taiwan part of China", for example. You'll see how state policies become seemingly neutral model responses.

It's strange to me that people are very sensitive to media bias, but when it comes to LLMs, people seem to think LLMs are more neutral, and even delegate part of their thinking to them. This worries me about how people's ideas and information can be shaped.

Open weights reflect their makers' beliefs, stances, assumptions, and laws. It's dangerous not to be careful of the political bias and censorship built into the models.

You're right, but American models aren't super different in that regard. Ask an American model about Israel and you can immediately tell they're responding in a different manner to other queries. At least with open-weights models you have the opportunity to tune them, to decensor them, and so on.