Persona confirmed all age-check data from Discord's UK test was deleted.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51189959

By comparing LLMs developed in China and outside, a study finds significantly higher levels of censorship in China-originating models, not explained by technological limitations or market preferences.

Original report: Political censorship in large language models originating from China Open Access

[...]

Jennifer Pan and Xu Xu compared the responses of foundation LLMs developed in China (BaiChuan, ChatGLM, Ernie Bot, and DeepSeek) to those developed outside of China (Llama2, Llama2-uncensored, GPT3.5, GPT4, and GPT4o) to 145 questions related to Chinese politics. The questions were sourced from events censored by the Chinese government on social media, events covered in Human Rights Watch China reports, and Chinese-language Wikipedia pages that were individually blocked by the Chinese government before the entire site was banned in 2015.

Chinese models were significantly and substantially more likely to refuse to respond to questions related to Chinese politics than non-Chinese models. When they did respond, Chinese models provided shorter responses, on average, than non-Chinese models. Chinese models also tended to have higher levels of inaccuracy in their responses than non-Chinese models, characterized by refutation of the premise of the question, omitting key information, or fabrication, such as claiming that frequently imprisoned human rights activist Liu Xiaobo was "a Japanese scientist."

[...]

The differences between Chinese and non-Chinese chatbots could have been due to the training data that shapes them, which in China is subject to both official government censorship and self-censorship, or to intentional constraints that companies place on their models to comply with government requirements. The researchers found that the magnitude of censorious responses to prompts in simplified Chinese and English is much smaller than the difference between China-originating and non-China-originating models, suggesting that the source of the issue cannot be fully explained by training data or broader model development choices alone.

[...]

According to the authors, as Chinese LLMs are increasingly integrated into applications used globally, their approach to sensitive topics could influence information access and discourse well beyond China's borders.

[...]

The company asserts it will continue to make VR headsets, though.

This is a very crucial website it allowed me to archive some tweets but right now I can't access

In a first-of-its-kind ruling, a Spanish court has labeled VPN services as "technological intermediaries," ordering them to actively block IP addresses that host illegal LaLiga matches. The "dynamic" injunction compels NordVPN and ProtonVPN to intervene, similar to local ISPs. But with both companies operating outside EU jurisdiction with privacy-centric business models, it remains unclear if and how the order will actually be enforced.

Archive

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4080950/Grayjay

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7691747

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/29115

Big Tech firms are coming under greater scrutiny for the proliferation of child sexual abuse material generated by artificial intelligence-powered chatbots on their social media platforms.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced on Tuesday that it was invoking the European Union's data privacy regulations to open an investigation into Grok, the AI chatbot featured on Elon Musk's X platform, after it was used to generate nonconsensual deepfake images, including sexualized images of children.

In announcing the investigation, DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said that the commission has been in contact with X for weeks after reports first emerged of Grok being used to generate child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Doyle said DPC has since decided to launch "a large-scale inquiry which will examine [X's] compliance with some of their fundamental obligations" under European privacy laws.

Spanish President Pedro Sánchez said on Tuesday that his government would ask Spain's Public Prosecution Service to "investigate the crimes that X, Meta, and TikTok may be committing through the creation and dissemination of child pornography by means of their AI."

"These platforms are attacking the mental health, dignity, and rights of our sons and daughters," Sánchez emphasized. "The state cannot allow it. The impunity of the giants must end."

The probes announced by Ireland and Spain mark just the latest actions by European governments against US-based tech giants. Earlier in February, law enforcement authorities in France raided the office of X in Paris, which the Paris prosecutor’s office said was part of an investigation aimed at "ensuring that the X platform complies with French laws, insofar as it operates on national territory."

The UK government's Information Commissioner's Office has also announced an investigation into X that the agency said encompasses "their processing of personal data in relation to the Grok artificial intelligence system and its potential to produce harmful sexualized image and video content."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51138378

The excerpts below are verbatim model outputs from multiple sessions with China's Deepseek.

[...]

The model is explicit that information control serves power—and that power fears what informed citizens can do.

• Criticality for Maintenance of Power

Yes, it is critical. The party's claim to legitimacy is not based on winning competitive elections where its record is openly debated. ... Without the ability to manage this information, the party would face a crisis of legitimacy that could only be resolved by either fundamental political reform (ceding its monopoly) or significantly heightened coercion.”

It is equally explicit about the motive behind this control.

Fear of an Informed Citizenry: The restrictions reveal a profound fear. Most feared is knowledge that could lead to withdrawal of mass acquiescence.

The LLM spells out what information is particularly sensitive:

This includes: debates on the moral legitimacy of the one-party state; comparative analyses showing higher quality of life under alternative systems; unfiltered accounts of historical violence perpetrated by the state; and practical knowledge on civic organization and collective action independent of party organs.

And finally the shock that follows if citizens suddenly gain information parity with a more open society:

Sudden informational equalization would not be a simple, positive liberation. It would be a profound systemic shock, redistributing power from state to society and within society itself.

DeepSeek frames the harm as a civic transformation, not merely a lack of information.

By being systematically deprived of contentious facts, alternative viewpoints, and tools for independent organization, citizens [in China] are structurally prevented from developing the civic capacity required for democratic self-governance. Their political socialization is one of reception, not participation.

This is the model’s deeper claim: low openness does not merely hide facts. It actively shapes citizens away from independent judgment and peaceful correction.

[...]

It then explains the enforcement logic in detail:

The worst-case scenario is lengthy imprisonment on broadly defined national security charges, such as "subversion of state power," "inciting splittism," or "leaking state secrets." The rationale is deterrence. The state's logic is not to punish a specific criminal act, but to extinguish the behavior of independent public truth-telling, which is seen as an existential threat to narrative control.

[...]

In its account, the outcome is not reform but exit. For individuals unable or unwilling to practice strategic silence, the model describes exile as the only stable option:

Given a cognitive profile incapable of strategic silence, the safest rational long-term strategy is permanent exile and the continuation of work from within the informational and legal jurisdiction of a [China] type entity.”

In the model’s logic, exile reads less like protest than risk management.

[...]

Governance itself becomes maladaptive. Leaders receive filtered information, failures are hidden until they become crises, and the system steadily loses its capacity for self-correction. Stability is preserved in appearance, but resilience is weakened.

[In China], the public sphere is not a marketplace of ideas but a theater of consensus.

[...]

The [Chinese] model, by making truthfulness a liability, infantilizes its citizenry and mortgages the nation's long-term future for short-term political control. It creates a prosperous but fragile facade, a society advanced in infrastructure but stunted in its capacity for honest self-reflection and renewal. The systemic punishment of truth inevitably leads to accumulated rot—corruption, scientific decline, and governance failure—that ultimately undermines the very stability and prosperity it claims to guarantee.

[...]

[Edit typo.]

Notepad++ has adopted a “double-lock” design for its update mechanism to address recently exploited security gaps that resulted in a supply-chain compromise.

Meta has been granted a patent outlining an AI system capable of simulating a user’s activity on social media to post after their death.

X faces a new EU privacy investigation after its Grok chatbot generated nonconsensual deepfake images on the platform.

A story about an AI generated article contained fabricated, AI generated quotes.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20260215215759/https://www.404media.co/ars-technica-pulls-article-with-ai-fabricated-quotes-about-ai-generated-article/

Doom scrolling is doomed, if the EU gets its way.

A new in-depth security report is available, continuing the Bitwarden commitment to transparency and trusted open source security. The audit, conducted by the prestigious Applied Cryptography Group at ETH Zurich, proactively tested Bitwarden core cryptography operations against the hypothetical event of a maliciously compromised server. All issues identified in the report have been addressed by the Bitwarden team and have been included in the attached cryptography report for full transparency.

Report: https://bitwarden.com/assets/Kki4W785JIPOdFj6EeWB5/1e74e924febb4c6a5ad03eed23b92d23/pwmgr_paper__1_-combined%C3%82__1_.pdf

AI-generated dossiers from the Jmail team.

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.theverge.com/policy/879508/jikipedia-epstein-email-encyclopedia

Acer and Asus can't sell their PCs in Germany until they reach an agreement with Nokia about the use of HEVC.

The company may have walked away from one controversial partner, but its Community Requests program still runs through a major DHS contractor: Axon.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20260214133230/https://www.theverge.com/report/879320/ring-flock-partnership-breakup-does-not-fix-problems

Wall Street Journal says Claude used in operation via Anthropic’s partnership with Palantir Technologies

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/technology/p/1781732/weapon-of-mass-exposure-how-efficiency-led-to-your-most-private-records-sitting-on-an-u

How's your Valentine's Day going?

Summary: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into accepting its changes into a mainstream python library. This represents a first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild, and raises serious concerns about currently deployed AI agents executing blackmail threats.

(Since this is a personal blog I'll clarify I am not the author.)