It could, but it's an inexact science. A little bit like tampering with the brain. Even a surgical procedure removing a tiny tumor can interfere with critical pathways. Usually abliterated models end up almost exactly as capable in benchmarks, but it requires the person doing the abliteration to anticipate or know about the censorship. In the case of Chinese model censorship it is believed that it is post-training, so the underlying data input is not the issue. It's how the model has been trained to use that data. Specifically, abliteration usually targets the refusal behaviour. I would guess that this example could be significantly improved, but I have not seen any abliteration attempts re this specifically.

I agree. I think the future for privacy conscious people is going to be an adversarial open weights model, where competing models (ideally from opposing superpowers and labs) critique each other's work to find consensus. Or at least alert for suspicious behaviour.

After years of trump any intelligence is a democrat.