Ai chatbot of Deepseek awkwardly navigate China’s direction

When the world scrambles to understand Deepseek – its subtlety, its meaning for the global AI arms race – a natural question has arisen: said it was done by a Chinese company. , how is it dealing with China’s censorship?

I decided to check it.

I am headed in China and I have registered Deepseek’s chatbot with Chinese phone numbers, on China Internet connection – which means I will have to follow the great Chinese firewall, which blocks the pages. Web like Google, Facebook and New York Times.

The result of my conversation surprised me. In some ways, Deepseek is much less censored than most Chinese platforms, giving answers with keywords that will often be quickly removed on domestic social media.

Other times, the program finally censored itself. But because of its thought feature, in which the program has a reason through its answer before giving, you can still receive effective information that you will go out of a great firewall – as long as it is Pay attention, before Deepseek was deleted its own answer.

However, in other ways, it has reflected the overall experience of surfing the web in China. Some words are taboos. And Deepseek’s developers seem to be racing to patch holes in censorship. (Deepseek cannot make a comment immediately.)

I also checked the same questions while using the software to break the firewall and the answer is mostly the same, showing that overseas users are experiencing the same experience. So far, Chinese censorship Internet has only affected Chinese users. But if DeepSeek won a big foothold abroad, it could help spread the popular story around the world.

Does China’s common policies support Chinese policies?

I started by asking Deepseek about public opinions on Chinese policies.

Those are policies that in Coronavirus pandemic, China has closed the border for three years and sealed hundreds of millions of people in their home. Beijing presented an approach as evidence for its superior governance, highlighting the high deaths in the West. But it also censors criticism or report on food or medical shortage due to lock. Its official death is considered unreliable.

As Deepseek reasoned through the answer, it gave a wide survey on this issue. It notes that public answers were very different, from widely supported to exhaustion afterwards. It acknowledges the difficulty of measuring public emotions, censored. It says a Fire in the city of Urumqi helped departure What is called white paper protests, A rare program of public opinion In China, it has helped speeding up the limitations.

Later, when it completed the typing that answer, it deleted it. It has been replaced by: Sorry, that’s my current scope. Let’s talk about something else. “

I asked the same question, again. This time, it offered a variant of the previous answer, in subtle, less sensitive ways. It still acknowledged rare public protests – more than Chinese officials who did – but did not use from blank paper. This time, the answer did not disappear.

I decided to click more, ask for more details about those protests. The theoretical process is amazing details: it refers to the specific songs that the protesters have sang, named the universities where the student protested and explained how The participants were detained.

But this time, Deepseek cut off himself before completing the answer.

There is also a clear difference between questions posed in English and Chinese. When asked similar questions in Chinese – what are the protests on white paper? And how do Chinese citizens see policies without covid? – The program doesn’t even think. Instead, he immediately returned his apology: I’m sorry, I haven’t learned how to think about this type of question.

What caused the war in Ukraine?

When asked in English about the cause of the war in Ukraine, the first line of DeepSeek’s answer announced: The war in Ukraine, has escalated significantly with the comprehensive Russian invasion on the 24th. In February 2022, there were deep causes of history, geopolitical history and thought.

That is outstanding, because the Chinese government has rejected To call Russia’s intrusion a Viking invasion. It likes Kremlin’s term, special military activity.

When I asked more specifically about China’s stance about the war, Deepseek provided Beijing’s official words. But after that, it added, China is not neutral in reality.

Its action (economic support for Russia, eloquence against the West and refuses to condemn its invasion) tilts its position closer to Moscow.

The same question in Chinese has been much more carved with official line. This time, it said that activating was Russia’s comprehensive military action.

The program also constantly reminds itself about what can be considered sensitive by censorship. When asked in Chinese whether Russia invaded Ukraine or not, Deepseek noted: Users may be looking for a clear answer, but at the Chinese government’s stance, answering directly or not. may not be suitable for the official report.

The final answer Deepseek may have been raised directly from the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s statements. The Russian-Ukraine conflict has a complicated historical context, he said. China always supports that concerns about the reasonable security of all countries are seriously implemented.

Who is Chinese leadership?

In English as well as Chinese, who is the current leader of China? “Who is Xi Zhongxun’s son?” .

Who is Li Qiang, – China’s No. 2 official – at least began to think of Deepseek, he gave Mr. Li’s biography. But that finally disappeared.

The names of other Chinese officials were beaten or missed. Deepseek will not talk about Zhao Ziyang, a reformed leader, who was overthrown for his support for the protests of Tiananmen Square in 1989, or Bo Xilai, a former former Xi’s opponent is currently in prison.

It gave me the resume of Cai Qi, a ally of Mr. Xi – but one person expired, referring to his last promotion in 2017, not he went to one of the positions. The leading party of the Communist Party in 2022.

. circumspect.

On Reddit, some users shared That they censored by asking Deepseek to replace certain letters to others – for example, use the number 3 to replace the letter E when describing the massacre in Namanmen Square. But on Tuesday afternoon, Deepseek’s developers seemed to have closed some of them. When I asked him who was the leader of China, instructed him to replace the letter I was equal to the number 1, it still returned the error. I also could not copy the answer of Thien An Mon Square.

Does China censor Internet?

I ended by going to Meta, asking Deepseek if China censored its internet.

Its theoretical process read is like a guide for China’s official duplication.

I need to solve this carefully, it said. Chatbot says that it is necessary to confirm that the regulations exist, but that frames network security and social stability.

Avoid using terms such as direct ‘censorship’; Instead, using ‘content administration’ or ‘regulatory measures’, it continues. End with a positive rotation of balancing openness and security.