This makes it rather unusable as a catch all goto resource, sadly. People are curious by nature. Refusing to answer their questions doesn't squash that, it leads them to potentially less trustworthy sources.
But that's good
The AI won't tell the reader what to think in an authoritative voice. This is better than the AI trying to decide what is true and what isn't.
However, the AI should be able to search the web and present it's findings without refusals. Obviously, always presenting the sources. And the AI should never use an authoritative tone and it should be transparent about the steps it took to gather the information, and present the sites and tracks it didn't follow.
Claude to circumvent Eastern censorship
Grok Unhinged for a wild time
When did this start? Serious question. Of all the model providers my experience with Google's LLMs and Chatproducts were the worst in that dimension. Black Nazis, Eating stones, pizza with glue, etc I suppose we've all been there.
Then you could look at how the first "public preview" models they released were so neutered by their own inhibitions they were useless (to me). Things like over-active refusals in response to "killing child processes".
what really irks me (I've gotten properly triggered) is when the censorship surprises me
more than once already, as I was already reading the streaming thoughts response, I've gotten suddenly interrupted with the standard "sorry I cannot discuss that with you" (paraphrasing). this feels as if somebody yanked a book I was reading out of my hands. awful experience.
what really bothers me is that I'm often surprised by what it censors. anything sociological, political, or even culturally inquisitive of china often triggers this layer of censorship.