Can you please expand on how french citizens don't have free speech ? And how ensuring minimum decency in the output of a computer program would impact free speech ?
> This will change really fast. I highly doubt AI will have free speech in France when citizens don't.
In countries such as France or Germany, Holocaust denial speech is illegal. However, they’ve never demanded that developers of word processors or email clients or web browsers modify their products to prevent their use for Holocaust denial. Sure, they might decide to treat LLMs differently from those older technologies - but there is no guarantee they will.
Mixtral acknowledges the historical reality of the Holocaust - unless you specifically prompt it to deny it. And if you are telling an AI model to deny the Holocaust, why should the AI model developer have legal liability for that, as opposed to the person who chooses to input that prompt?
You can say anything you want in european countries. Some things might backfire in various ways, though. IE if you megaphone that some person group X should be killed right away, that usually is a criminal offense and punished according to law.
This is related on where you stand regarding to hatespeech.
IE in germany, it is forbidden to praise the holocaust or deny that it even happened (ironically there are national museums where the cruelties happened, including real footage, which all kids visit as part of their school curriculum). This is in place to keep the historical learnings alive what the fascists did when given enough power so we do not repeat this mistake too easily.
Now in the US I think like 20% of the highschoolers think that the whole story is a hoax or is exaggerated. The world is increasingly turning rightwing again. This is the exact time when we should leverage everything we have to remind the public what can happen when fascists come to power again - and have something to oppose the populists with.
A _lot_ of people are suspect to manipulation from all sides, so society needs a bit of help to protect citizens from evil players manipulating them. The real truth of propaganda (or outright lies) is that it works, sooner or later.
This stuff is explicitly defined in law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung) and while indeed it restricts absolute freedom of speech a bit, the reason why this exists should be clear. This gives society a handle on manipulative people when they become too radical. Everyone can _criticise_ stuff of course, publicly, but calling for violence is a hard showstopper.
This will change really fast. I highly doubt AI will have free speech in France when citizens don't.