Abliteration involves fine-tuning a language model to bypass built-in refusal mechanisms that prevent the model from generating responses to potentially harmful or sensitive prompts. Source

Addition: For a more sophisticated article on abliteration see:

Uncensor any LLM with abliteration

In this article, we will explore a technique called “abliteration” that can uncensor any LLM without retraining. This technique effectively removes the model’s built-in refusal mechanism, allowing it to respond to all types of prompts.

COP? This is this organization who said that oil and gas is a ‘gift of god,’ right?

Just look at the history of COP. Last time there were 1,700 oil&gas lobbyist officially registered.

The independent Climate Action Tracker says about China:

• Policies and action against fair share: Insufficient
• NDC [Nationally Determined Contributions] target against modelled domestic pathways: Highly insufficient
• NDC target against fair share: Insufficient
• Net zero target year before 2060: Comprehensiveness rated as Poor

Overall rating: Highly insufficient

Post it or I end this discussion.

I posted for what there is apparent evidence. It happened in China, that’s what we know. There is no reason for whataboutism. You are free to post other incidents if there is evidence.

Both the report and the documentary are, of course, reliable information. It happened in China as reported.

There is also a BBC documentary about it.

Troublemakers: Drugged, Framed and Detained – (Alternative Invidious link, 49 min)

This in-depth investigation reveals how the [Chinese] police found ways to […] to punish protestors without going through the criminal justice system. With almost no checks and balances, the number of people being illegally sent to psychiatric hospitals is said to be surging.

Testimonies from three protestors, detained for months in secure psychiatric wards reveal how they were restrained, forcibly treated with psychoactive drugs and even subjected to electric shock therapy.

Their crime? “Picking quarrels and troublemaking” - the catch all offence police use to sweep up anyone threatening disturb “social harmony”.

Seems there are people for whom whataboutism never ends. In this context, I personally find this particularly disgusting.

Addition: There is also a BBC documentary about it.

Troublemakers: Drugged, Framed and Detained – (Alternative Invidious link, 49 min)

This in-depth investigation reveals how the [Chinese] police found ways to […] to punish protestors without going through the criminal justice system. With almost no checks and balances, the number of people being illegally sent to psychiatric hospitals is said to be surging.

Testimonies from three protestors, detained for months in secure psychiatric wards reveal how they were restrained, forcibly treated with psychoactive drugs and even subjected to electric shock therapy.

Their crime? “Picking quarrels and troublemaking” - the catch all offence police use to sweep up anyone threatening disturb “social harmony”.

Malaysia expects surge of Chinese investment, economy minister says

Chinese chipmakers and technology companies are heading to Malaysia in droves, its economy minister Rafizi Ramli said, as Beijing prepares to face more tariffs when Donald Trump returns as US president this month.

Thailand denies planning Uyghur return in face of UN pleas

Thai authorities have denied any immediate plan to send 48 Uyghur refugees back to China after UN experts urged a stop. Rights groups accuse Beijing of widespread abuses of Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim minority in China.

Thailand denies planning Uyghur return in face of UN pleas

Thai authorities have denied any immediate plan to send 48 Uyghur refugees back to China after UN experts urged a stop. Rights groups accuse Beijing of widespread abuses of Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim minority in China.

@InevtaibleList

Chinese people are much more nationalistic than their government is. If it were a democracy it would have invaded Taiwan long ago.

What a rubbish.

Yeah, so to intensify the ‘peace talks,’ the Chinese government should take down its Great Firewall, allowing all non-Chinese apps to be downloaded in the country, and stop censorship. We can then discuss and learn better from each other, the good things and the bad ones, like the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, forced labour in Xinjiang, or people like Xu Zhiyong, Cao Shunli, and many others.

Let Chinese people download apps from outside China, and ‘peace talks’ will even improve.

(As a personal note: I am really wondering whether the author of this article has ever been to China or knows some Chinese at least. I have been in the country and know a lot of Chinese citizens, but I never felt we needed ‘peace talks’ because we never were at war. Such an assumption, which the article appears to make, is complete rubbish. Such rhetoric comes from governments, not from the people. And in this case, it is particularly the Chinese government that is ‘firewalling’ the country and bombarding its own citizens with propaganda. If governments -in China and elsewhere- would work for the people in developed democracies, we don’t need peace talks as there is no war.)

China Punishes Activists and Families to Quash Dissent, Report Says – (April 2024)

Addition as I have just seen it: Thailand must immediately halt deportation of 48 Uyghurs to China: UN experts - let’s add this issue to the peace talks, right?

[It] will not generate responses about certain topics like Tiananmen Square or Taiwan’s autonomy, as it must “embody core socialist values,” according to Chinese Internet regulations.

China is trying to sell its self-defined “core socialist values” in AI along with other projects, it’s so-called called “AI Capacity Building and Inclusiveness Plan” which is aimed particularly at the Global South.

[Chinese] Government rhetoric draws a direct line between AI exports and existing initiatives to expand China’s influence overseas, such as Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Global Development Initiative (GDI). In this case, the more influence China has over AI overseas, the more it can dictate the technology’s development in other countries […]

[According to the Chinese government] AI must not be used to interfere in another country’s internal affairs — language that the PRC has invoked for as long as it has existed, both to bring nations of the global south on board in China’s ongoing efforts to seize Taiwan and to deflect international criticism of its human rights record […]

China’s decision to co-launch its AI Capacity Building plan with Zambia also had a symbolic element. PRC state media reported that the African nation was the recipient of thousands of Chinese workers and hundreds of millions of RMB in loans in the 1960s, making it the beneficiary of one of China’s earliest overseas infrastructure projects — another thread connecting the latest in AI cooperation with China’s long-held ambitions to lead the developing world, even as it becomes a superpower in its own right. In a 2018 meeting with the Zambian president, Xi said they must jointly “safeguard the common interests of developing countries.” […]

Yeah, I also feel somehow that this news comes 10 years or so too late.

Here is a video by Matt Brown analyzing RedNote.

Chinese RedNote App Exposes Sensitive User Data — (18 min, here is an alternative Invidious link)

TLDR: It’s sending most of the app data in cleartext HTTP instead of TLS, while some of the TLS are not done in a secure way. It is true that other social media apps send data back to the servers, but here it appears to be less safe, enabling attackers to do so in transit.

Now jolly old Elon wants Xitter being allowed in China …

While TikTok is allowed to operate freely in the US, Musk pointed out that his platform, X, is banned in China. Musk stated that the situation is “unbalanced” and added, “Something needs to change."

“One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” ― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

“One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” ― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

There is a recent study on Tiktok and how it compares to Instagram and Youtube – (pdf)

An article about the study says:

The three-level study, which has now been peer-reviewed, looked at TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

Typing in four politically-loaded key words – “Tiananmen,” “Tibet,” “Uyghur,” and “Xinjiang” – the team first looked at what content the respective algorithms delivered.

The researchers found that while TikTok might not deliver more pro-CCP content, it did deliver less anti-CCP content than the rival platforms. It also, interestingly, delivered more content that researchers say was irrelevant to the keywords.

The team next looked at engagement to see if this explained why anti-CCP content was performing less well. But it found that TikTok users “liked or commented on anti-CCP content nearly four times as much as they liked or commented on pro-CCP content, yet the search algorithm produced nearly three times as much pro-CCP content”. This didn’t happen on Instagram or YouTube.

The last element of the study looked at the impact the content was potentially having on users. The researchers surveyed 1,214 Americans to find information on their social media usage, and their opinion on China’s human rights record. What they found was that the more time users spent on TikTok, the more positive their attitude towards the CCP was.

The researchers came to the damning conclusion that “taken together, the findings from these three studies raise the distinct possibility that TikTok is a vehicle for CCP propaganda.”

Another widely ignored issue regarding Tiktok and other Chinese apps is that European digital rights organization Noyb has filed GDPR complaints against TikTok, AliExpress, SHEIN, Temu, WeChat and Xiaomi for unlawful data transfers to China.

Yeah, a bunch of 2 billion people in the SE Asia.