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Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

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Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#41

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

Well, yes, those AIs are used inside of china, instead of tiktok which only exists outside of china. But AI represents a conundrum for censors.

Normally they would just steal it with some cooperate espionage, but they then have not the expertise to retrain it or censor it properly themselves. So i guess the censorship is only temporary, until a chinese version of midjourney can be retrained on the data from within the golden shield project.

But that AI will be largely useless, as it will spout mostly little red book Xi thought and other propaganda.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#43

Post by paxys »

Nothing new or unexpected sadly. Even the most vocal critics of the US government and its policies (including all the "pro freedom of speech", "anti woke culture" types) will quickly get in line and shut up as soon as China is involved in the conversation. Absolute authoritarianism and economic power is a very dangerous combination.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#44

Post by HWR_14 »

sakisv wrote: post #24
auggierose wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not China, nor any other non-democratically governed country.

If I may point out here that if we take the word "democracy" at face value (i.e. That the ruling entity needs to have the support of the majority of demos) then most countries are really not democratically governed: The people in charge get voted in by a minority of the people who go to vote - which gets even worse if you account for people who are eligible to vote but abstain.

> The people in charge get voted in by a minority of the people who go to vote

Except for a couple examples in the US, I'm not aware of democratic countries where this has actually occurred.

And in the US, it's not a common occurrence.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#47

Post by andrewstuart »

>> “the ability for people in China to use this tech is more important than your ability to generate satire.”

How about "the ability for people to be free and have free systems and society is more important than the money we hope to get from doing business in China".

But here we are in Silicon Valley where business and money rise above all else including national sovereignty.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#49

Post by jacooper »

threatofrain wrote: post #11

You can make satire on Biden and Putin, but for Xi Jingping: > We just want to minimize drama,” the company’s founder and CEO, David Holz, said last year in a post on the chat service Discord. “Political satire in china is pretty not-okay,” he added, and “the ability for people in China to use this tech is more important than your ability to generate satire.

At least there aren't any mental gymnastics here, his reasoning is pretty clear and understandable from a CEO point of view.

Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping

#50

Post by ano88888 »

paxys wrote: post #43

Nothing new or unexpected sadly. Even the most vocal critics of the US government and its policies (including all the "pro freedom of speech", "anti woke culture" types) will quickly get in line and shut up as soon as China is involved in the conversation. Absolute authoritarianism and economic power is a very dangerous combination.

All of freedom of speech promoters like Elon Musk would only talk about positive things about China when it comes to sensitive topic. Xi is probably the most powerful person on earth when you think about it.
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