This NYT article got my attention (not paywalled)[1]:
DeepSeek Forces a Global Technology Reckoning
The fast-growing popularity of the Chinese artificial intelligence software hit shares in tech giants like Nvidia, as Silicon Valley worried about what comes next.Markets are on edge on Monday, as global tech investors face a $1 trillion wipeout. The cause: anxiety that the emergence of powerful — and cheap — Chinese artificial intelligence software could upend the economics of A.I.
Nasdaq futures have plummeted nearly 4 percent. And shares in Nvidia, the chipmaker whose processors help train and run A.I. software, are down 11 percent in premarket trading. Those in Constellation Energy, a utility betting heavily on powering A.I. data centers, are down nearly 13 percent.
DeepSeek is forcing a reckoning in Silicon Valley.
The company’s models appear to rival those from OpenAI, Google and Meta, despite the U.S. government’s efforts to limit China’s access to leading-edge A.I. technology. And DeepSeek says it did all this with a fraction of the resources that American competitors use.
Over the weekend, DeepSeek shot to the top of Apple’s App Store charts, rivaling ChatGPT. And DeepSeek is drastically undercutting OpenAI on price.
Consider that OpenAI and its partners have promised to spend at least $100 billion on their Stargate project, or that Microsoft said it will spend $80 billion, or Meta $65 billion.
China's public investment in AI R&D was estimated to be on the order of a few billion dollars in 2018, but there may be secret Chinese government money involved. Given the hardware, software, and personnel costs, (and here) the development of DeepSeek was estimated at around $5.5 million to $6 million. This figure includes the cost of training the model, which is far less than what U.S. companies like OpenAI spend.
What the frack is going on here? If American capitalism is so damned good and efficient, why is China doing the same thing at what seems to be about 1% the cost of American AI development efforts. The US spends hundreds of billions or trillions, while the Chinese do it for far less. If American capitalism is so damned good and efficient, why is China doing the same thing at what seems to be about 1% or less of the cost of American AI development efforts.
Maybe China is going to eat our lunch in AI.
I went to DeepSeek and checked it out. Since it is a Chinese company/government, one can expect no privacy. Its privacy policy includes this, along with some other creepy things:
Data Controller: The Service is provided and controlled by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., and Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., with their registered addresses in China (“we”or “us”). If you have any questions about how we use your personal data, please contact service@deepseek.com(Chat) / api-service@deepseek.com(Platform) or click "Contact us" column on the website.
The personal information we collect from you may be stored on a server located outside of the country where you live. We store the information we collect in secure servers located in the People's Republic of China.
Where we transfer any personal information out of the country where you live, including for one or more of the purposes as set out in this Policy, we will do so in accordance with the requirements of applicable data protection laws.
We automatically collect certain information from you when you use the Services, including internet or other network activity information such as your IP address, unique device identifiers, and cookies.
- Technical Information. We collect certain device and network connection information when you access the Service. This information includes your device model, operating system, keystroke patterns or rhythms, IP address, and system language. We also collect service-related, diagnostic, and performance information, including crash reports and performance logs. We automatically assign you a device ID and user ID. Where you log-in from multiple devices, we use information such as your device ID and user ID to identify your activity across devices to give you a seamless log-in experience and for security purposes.
My keystroke patterns and rhythms? WTF is that about? Who is going to stop China from breaking applicable data protection laws? No one.
I tried to set an account up, but DeepSeek denied me. I wonder if the Chinese government already knows me and decided it doesn't like me. 🥺
Qs: Is this creepy or what? Is China going to eat our lunch in AI?
Footnote:
1. Another NYT article: How Chinese A.I. Start-Up DeepSeek Is Competing With Silicon Valley Giants -- The company built a cheaper, competitive chatbot with fewer high-end computer chips than U.S. behemoths like Google and OpenAI, showing the limits of chip export control -- DeepSeek’s engineers said they needed only about 2,000 specialized computer chips from the U.S. chipmaker Nvidia, in comparison to the as many as 16,000 chips needed by major American companies. The team behind the system, called DeepSeek-V3, described an even bigger step. In a research paper explaining how they built the technology, DeepSeek’s engineers said they used only a fraction of the highly specialized computer chips that leading AI companies relied on to train their systems. These chips are at the center of a tense technological competition between the United States and China. As the U.S. government works to maintain the country’s lead in the global AI race, it is trying to limit the number of powerful chips, like those made by Silicon Valley firm Nvidia, that can be sold to China and other rivals. But the performance of the DeepSeek model raises questions about the unintended consequences of the American government’s trade restrictions. The controls have forced researchers in China to get creative with a wide range of tools that are freely available on the internet. According to the benchmark tests that American AI companies have been using, DeepSeek answered questions, solved logic problems and wrote its own computer programs as capably as anything already on the market.