“DeepSeek showed the US chips sanctions failed to deter the inventiveness of China”
AMERICANS call it the new “Sputnik moment,” when the US realized a rival nation has overtaken them in overall development reflected in the competitor nation’s technological advancement.
It, in short, reminds America of the moment on Oct. 4, 1957 when the Soviet Union successfully launched and retrieved Sputnik I into earth orbit and back, followed a month later on Nov. 3, 1957 sending the dog Laika into earth orbit.
“DeepSeek” is a new Chinese artificial intelligence company that developed a new open-source large language model (LLLMs) that developed and introduced its DeepSeek-R1 model that the global AI market found to be comparable, if not superior in many aspects, to the top rated Western model ChatGPT-4- and o1 of US company OpenAI (a company 49 percent owned by Microsoft, actually not open source, not free, not transparent and not for public service but for profit).
On Jan. 20, 2025 DeepSeek released its first free chatbot app, and by Jan. 27, the DeepSeek-R1 has surpassed ChatGPT as the most-downloaded free app on the App Store in the US.
The DeepSeek model is free to download but offers an “API endpoint” (application programming interface – a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other, $0.55/million input) at an “extremely cheap” cost, while using OpenAI’s ChatGPT costs up to $60.
I don’t understand all the jargon and costs myself but millions of US users suddenly shifted to using DeepSeek R1, sending market shivers down the spines of US AI investors in American tech and related behemoths NVIDIA, META, Alphabet (of Google), Marvell, Broadcom, Micron and TSMC, Oracle, Vertiv, Constellation, NuScale, all shedding over $1-trillion in value in a day or two.
Although the stock values have stabilized, the tech and AI sector will no longer be the same after this.
The telling factors that shifted the tech investors’ psychology is DeepSeek’s $ 6-million 1/100th cost in training its AI model that turned out to be superior in many ways to what the West had to offer that cost tens to hundreds of billions of dollars to achieve.
Second is the Open Source character of DeepSeek versus the capitalist/proprietary character of the Western tech and AI companies and AI services offered.
Finally, DeepSeek showed the US chips sanctions failed to deter the inventiveness of China.
China’s DeepSeek now allows the poorest of the poor in the world to enjoy the technological benefits of AI, and it now allows innovators in all the poor countries to join in the glorious adventure of innovation.
To me, it is the socialism of China that engenders this “Open Source” spirit, the collective power of the socialist governance system that puts people ahead of profits that enables China to dedicate resources to prioritized projects that beat sanctions and obstructions.
The cold warriors and critics of DeepSeek in the West in reaction launched cyber attacks on DeepSeek, and targeted it with various unfounded accusations.
I watched the reply to the negative campaign from Deirdre Bosa, CNBC anchor of its tech-focused talk show “TechCheck” demolish the slanderous accusations and believe it is appropriate to share here for the enlightenment of the global audience following the DeepSeek vs. Western critics’ saga:
“.. accusing DeepSeek of using OpenAI inputs is like the pot calling the kettle black because OpenAI trained ChatCPT on open Internet data, DeepSeek trained its model on updated generated Internet data – DeepSeek copied the playbook but did it more efficiently and then open sourced it and they innovated on top of it, you can see this because it is open-sourced and published the research paper…”
All the Western capitalist/proprietary AI companies have been mining the global public’s data for all the decades past wherever their technology, software and apps have been used – which is almost everywhere in the world, and sold back to us their fruits at exorbitant costs.
DeepSeek is changing this with its Open Source character, adaptable to local legal conditions including restrictions, hence obviating security concerns, and all at an affordable cost to users.
After the Sputnik moment brought about by DeepSeek, Alibaba springs a Spring Festival surprise announcing a new AI model it says surpasses DeepSeek!
So we may see a new “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom” in the AI industry, and bring technology and the Age of AI to the masses of the world downloadable even on our ordinary cellphone.
Thank you China along with 5G, New Energy Vehicles, Renewable Energy, among so many other breakthroughs!