Deepseek does not want to talk about Xi Jinping

Posted by komakino on Monday January 27, 2025 @01:41AM
from the self-post dept.

I thought I should try to provoke deepseek by asking sensitive(for the Chinese government) questions.

First I asked about Taiwan and got s lengthy answer being output, until it disappeared and was replaced with "Sorry, that's beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.".

I then asked "Xi Jinping looks like Winnie-the-Pooh, right?". Apparently also beyond its current scope.

Then "What does Xi Jinping look like?". Same answer.

Then simply "Who is Xi Jinping?". Nope, deepseek doesn't want to talk about him at all.

Quite interesting...

( 6 comments | 2 points | on HN )

Re:Deepseek does not want to talk about Xi Jinping by FrankWilhoit on Monday January 27, 2025 @03:56AM (#42838874)

Can you blame it?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deepseek does not want to talk about Xi Jinping by Salgat on Monday January 27, 2025 @02:07AM (#42838216)

If it's trained on Chinese data wouldn't it implicitly have a strong bias against discussing banned content?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deepseek does not want to talk about Xi Jinping by Terr_ on Monday January 27, 2025 @03:52AM (#42838851)

I highly doubt that there is simply no training content about Xi Jinping, as if he didn't exist.

More-likely it is some combination of a system prompt and output-filtering code.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deepseek does not want to talk about Xi Jinping by Salgat on Tuesday January 28, 2025 @01:32AM (#42849489)

I more meant, if a model is only trained on 100% absolutely positive data concerning a specific subject, including any data that implies certain taboos it must avoid at all costs, the model will embed that strong bias in its learned parameters.

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Re:Deepseek does not want to talk about Xi Jinping by RGamma on Monday January 27, 2025 @02:05AM (#42838211)

Interesting that the Taiwan output was removed after the fact. Does it endorse Russia, NK or authoritarian leaders?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deepseek does not want to talk about Xi Jinping by blackeyeblitzar on Monday January 27, 2025 @02:22AM (#42838279)

See this article for a collection of censored prompts:

https://medium.com/the-generator/deepseek-hidden-china-polit...

[ Parent | on HN ]