3

When writing this answer at Chinese.SE, I was surprised that the LLM ChatGLM, which is being developed in China by Tsinghua researchers, wrote the example sentence (my translation):

光是想到工作，我就充满动力。 (Merely thinking about work, fills me with motivation.)

While this is just an isolated example sentence, as you likely know, China is a communist country, so it seems plausible that this is not just a coincidence: LLMs developed in China might have a different stance on labor than those developed in western countries.

Question: Do LLMs developed in China have different attitudes towards labor than LLMs developed in western countries?

This is tricky to test directly: Many LLMs developed in China require a Chinese ID card (requiring Chinese citizenship) and/or Chinese phone number to use (and Chinese language proficiency to understand what it writes). (See this for a list of Chinese-speaking LLMs.) Meanwhile, many LLMs developed in other countries (e.g. ChatGPT, Bard) don't operate in China, and are generally not directly accessible even with a VPN.

Improve this question
2
  • "generally not directly accessible even with a VPN" why? Does the Chinese firewall target LLM providers in particular?
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Jul 30, 2023 at 3:36
  • (Actually that would be an interesting question here.) Generally when people think of the "great firewall", they think of China blocking various service providers. This happens, but even if you use a VPN to bypass it, the service providers may also refuse to operate in China under Chinese laws. E.g. if you try to register an account using a Chinese phone number, the service provider might refuse to create an account. (The converse is true too; China's LLMs are likely unavailable to people without a Chinese phone number or ID card.)
    – Rebecca J. Stones
    Commented Jul 30, 2023 at 4:02

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

Do LLMs developed in China have different attitudes towards labor than LLMs developed in western countries?

LLM outputs simply reflect the LLM training data. In your example, it indicates that Chinese texts might have a different stance on labor than English texts, on average. E.g., 996 is more often present in Chinese texts than in English texts.

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.