Choosing an AI today is a political decision, not just a technical one.
I asked three open weights models – Meta’s Llama 3.2, DeepSeek’s R1 and Alibaba’s Qwen – to tell me about Taiwan.
Llama provided an overview of the general position from a Western perspective. The two others responded with a version of the official position of the Chinese government.
The politics of the situation are deeply baked into the weights of the models.
They do not represent the world’s information neutrally but instead construct a very specific world model that they want you to believe.
That shouldn’t surprise any of us.
With a technology this disruptive it’s not surprising that governments will try and control how it’s used.
That’s why sovreignty is an issue at a national level.
And at a company level, we must select models and how we use them with an eye on what happens if someone decides to turn off the AI tap.
Information is power.
Who will you trust with the switch?
Handcrafted insight 