Speaking of which, presumably ChatGPT with its close association with China is also deferential to the chilling effects of Chinese demands, preferences, requests and requirements?
Not in the US, based on a few basic queries I just ran
Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
51–60 of 352 posts
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#52You 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.
"the ability for people in China to use this tech is more important than your ability to generate satire."
The implication here being that the ability to generate a million waifu anime selfie blended pictures is somehow a crucial technology.
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#53Required reading for those who aren't already convinced that we very urgently need fully open source generative AI models.
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#54I thought Midjourney works only on Discord, which is blocked in China?
That was my thought too, but my understanding is that the usage of VPNs is pretty ubiquitous in China, and that the government for the most part looks the other way.
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#55You 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.
? No mental gymnastics? Sure there are!
“Use this tech” implies the same tech as everyone else, including satire, no? What else could it mean? Oh, it could mean, “use this tech in only ways that are allowed by a totalitarian dictator, continuing to spread china’s government’s racism and hatred of certain minorities, and also normalize self-censorship globally”.
That’s really what it means-that it’s more important to the CEO that China should continue suppression of its people and also to exert the maximum influence it can socially on the world, than it is too stop specifically midjourney in China.
Plenty of mental gymnastics required there.
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#56Mid journey is already fairly heavy handed in terms of its onerous restrictions and puritanical censorship (blood, gore, etc), so this comes as no surprise.
I find myself having to turn more and more to stable diffusion models to finish a lot of my concept work.
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#57Genuine question:
What could be a more logical thing to do than what he did?
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#58> It’s not just Midjourney’s China-based users that can’t satirize Xi Jinping — that rule applies to users everywhere, even in the United States.
I'm speechless and a bit scared...
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
These new models could be the downfall of authoritarian regimes. These regimes rely on suppressing access to information but soon we'll have an LLM that can answer any questions about the world and fit on a USB stick that can be passed from person to person. No more great firewall of China.
Didn't we say the same thing about Wikipedia?
Wikipedia, whose concept of free speech is, "You can freely edit our encyclopedia as long as you cite CNN"
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least there aren't any mental gymnastics here, his reasoning is pretty clear and understandable from a CEO point of view.
? No mental gymnastics? Sure there are! “Use this tech” implies the same tech as everyone else, including satire, no? What else could it mean? Oh, it could mean, “use this tech in only ways that are allowed by a totalitarian dictator, continuing to spread china’s government’s racism and hatred of certain minorities, and also normalize self-censorship globally”. That’s really what it means-that it’s more important to…
Let's everyone pull out of doing business with all Chinese in China...
and see how well that works in altering the course if history.