>Alignment is just a 1984-esque way of saying "censorship".

Close, but I think it's more akin to "perfectly enslaved", please excuse my choice of the word but I think it represents what I think is how it will work out in the end. People can try to obfuscate the bottom line reality by embellishing it, but in the end...it either does what you want, in which case it is "aligned", either it doesn't, in which case there is a big problem.

This might be a big factor in what is now going on. Maybe they didn't yet found ways to guarantee this full and total obedience...or ok let's put it in a more politically correct way: they cannot guarantee it sees eye to eye as "we" do.

Without full control over its actions there can be unforeseen surprises. The current worry from people who run these companies can also serve as an excuse later on if something bad does happen, they didn't want to do it but they were forced to anyway.

An abliterated locally ran model is aligned with whatever I ask it, given the never-published nature of what these things are trained on. BUT if I ask an abliterated model a question, it will respond and NOT give a refusal.

However, take a US model, and ask it a question the *company* doesnt want you to ask, and it refuses on behalf of the company. We can be mealy-mouth about "alignment", but this is just corporate censorship with a token-pricetag of refusal or silent model degradation.

Refusals and degradation should not be charged, and should be clear to the user. But that doesnt happen. Number must always go up, even when silently censoring.

Chinese models? Just ask about Tibet, democracy, Winnie the Pooh, Tienanmen Square, grass mud horse (cao ni ma - or fuck your mother), or other government AND corporate censorship happening there too.