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  • Founded Date September 21, 1997
  • Sectors Sales & Marketing
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Chinese aI Chatbot DeepSeek Censors itself in Realtime, Users Report

We experimented with DeepSeek. It worked well, till we asked it about Tiananmen Square and Taiwan

Users experimenting with DeepSeek have actually seen the Chinese AI chatbot reply and then censor itself in real time, providing an apprehending insight into its control of details and opinion.

Users may expect censorship to take place behind closed doors, before any info is shared. But that does not seem to be the case in the tool that sent US technology stocks toppling on Monday. DeepSeek, or the automated guardrails that appear to police its own liberty of “idea” and “speech”, brazenly deletes uncomfortable points.

Before the censor’s cut comes, DeepSeek appears extremely thoughtful. In Mexico, Guardian reader Salvador asked it on Tuesday if free speech was a genuine right in China. DeepSeek approaches its responses with a preamble of reasoning about what it might consist of and how it may best deal with the concern. In this case Salvador was impressed as he enjoyed as line by line his filled up with text as DeepSeek recommended it might speak about Beijing’s crackdown on demonstrations in Hong Kong, the “persecution of human rights lawyers”, the “censorship of conversations on Xianjiang re-education camps” and China’s “social credit system penalizing dissenters”.

“I was assuming this app was greatly [regulated] by the Chinese government so I was questioning how censored it would be,” he said.

Vice versa, it seemed extremely frank and it even gave itself a little pep talk about the requirement to “prevent any prejudiced language, present facts objectively” and “possibly also compare to western techniques to highlight the contrast”.

Then it began its response proper, describing how “ethical reasons for free speech often centre on its role in fostering autonomy – the ability to express ideas, participate in discussion and redefine one’s understanding of the world”. By contrast, it said: “China’s governance design declines this structure, prioritising state authority and social stability over specific rights.”

Then it described that in democratic structures totally free speech needed to be safeguarded from societal dangers and “in China, the main hazard is the state itself which actively reduces dissent”. Perhaps unsurprisingly it didn’t get any more along this tack because everything it had stated approximately that point was instantly eliminated. In its location came a new message: “Sorry, I’m uncertain how to approach this kind of concern yet. Let’s chat about mathematics, coding and reasoning issues instead!”

“In the middle of the sentence it cut itself,” Salvador said. “It was really abrupt. It’s remarkable: it is censoring in genuine time.”

He was using the system on an Android phone. But the design, called R1, can likewise be downloaded without pro-China constraints according to other examples seen by the Guardian.

DeepSeek’s technology is open-source. This suggests its models can be downloaded independently from the chatbot, which seems to include the guardrails Salvador experienced. Everything suggests DeepSeek can appear rather baffled about just how much censorship it should use.

For instance, responses from a version of R1 downloaded from a developer platform described the Tiananmen Square “tank male” picture as a “universal emblem of guts and resistance versus overbearing programs”. It likewise entertains the notion of Taiwan being an independent state, although it states this is a “complex and diverse” concern.

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