How China’s New AI Model DeepSeek Is Threatening U.S. Dominance

[QuantumSync]

CNBC
 Jan 24, 2025

A little-known AI lab out of China has ignited panic throughout Silicon Valley after releasing AI models that can outperform America's best despite being built more cheaply and with less-powerful chips. DeepSeek, as the lab is called, unveiled a free, open-source large-language model in late December that it says took only two months and less than $6 million to build.  The new developments have raised alarms on whether America's global lead in artificial intelligence is shrinking and called into question big tech's massive spend on building AI models and data centers. In a set of third-party benchmark tests, DeepSeek's model outperformed Meta's Llama 3.1, OpenAI's GPT-4o and Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 3.5 in accuracy ranging from complex problem-solving to math and coding. CNBC's Deirdre Bosa has the story. This video also includes Bosa's full interview with Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas.

Chapters:
00:00 - 00:47 Introduction
00:47 - 5:33 DeepSeek's triumph
5:34 - 10:53 America undermined
10:54 - 15:04 Necessity is the mother of invention
15:05 - 40:16 Full interview with Perplexity CEO, Aravind Srinivas

[Psy-Fi]

Never bet against China.

[QuantumSync]

[QuantumSync]

the question he asked deepseek for that video ^!

[Buck_Mulligan]

Worth a read.

OpenAI dropped the world's first-ever 'reasoning' AI chatbot back in September, called 'o1'. The Silicon Valley-based pioneer spent vast amounts of cash and time to release this AI bot that can 'reason' its way through more complex problems. And notwithstanding OpenAI's name and founding philosophy, it again kept its coding secret.
But last week, China-based AI startup DeepSeek dropped its own rival called 'R1', which apparently took only 60 days to build, less than $6M to train (<10% what US firms spend), and now costs ~98% less than US rivals to run. Oh, and the entire code is now free online.
That's all rattled not only Silicon Valley, but also Wall St and DC. So let's take a quick tour:
Why Silicon Valley is rattled
First, DeepSeek basically just released a legit Ferrari at the price of a Daihatsu — building off existing US open-source models, it used sweet software tricks to radically reduce AI's reliance on expensive hardware (chips). So, who's gonna pay for a US-based OpenAI Ferrari now there's a China-based equivalent for a tiny fraction of the cost?
Second, there are now real questions around Silicon Valley's moat strategy — i.e. relying on sheer cost and complexity to keep your competitors at bay. Sure, you can try to keep the 'how' a secret, but once you announce the 'what' (AI reasoning, in this case), the DeepSeek story suggests your moat might only last days. That might mean...
Third, by lowering the cost barrier to entry, DeepSeek has now opened the field for countless smaller firms to start driving more AI-based disruption across more industries, and at a faster pace. That potentially means the Valley's reward leans less on any moat, and more on the 'final mile' of connecting the underlying AI to end users.
But fourth, this also raises the prospect of a China-based firm now setting the standards for how AI progresses — DeepSeek's open-source model is twice as big as Meta's, potentially entrenching its role in AI's future by making it twice as attractive for developers. And that takes us to...
Why Wall St is rattled..

https://www.internationalintrigue.io/did-china-just-dethrone-openai/

[QuantumSync]

Worth a read.https://www.internationalintrigue.io/did-china-just-dethrone-openai/

It's been a huge day for deepseek and seems like the invention of the cellphone, where making a call is the pretty much the same thing for any cellphone. Dial a number, you talk with another person. With this source code being open source available, now anyone has this and seems like the race will be to get people to use your AI over another. More of a branding situation maybe like internet browsers, where FireFox & Chrome both get to the internet, just which one do you prefer to use to get there.

[QuantumSync]

[Psy-Fi]

I'd be willing to bet that cyberattack was directed by a U.S. government agency.

[QuantumSync]

I'd be willing to bet that cyberattack was directed by a U.S. government agency.

look at this big brainer over here 

[Psy-Fi]

look at this big brainer over here 

[DJChameleon]

I hate Deepseek so much. Ended up tanking my NVDA calls.

[Buck_Mulligan]

^^^ I hear ya. I was down 5.5% overall, with at least 5 being minus 20%+.

Here's an alternative view on the Deepseek conundrum. "What the headlines are missing."

https://www.chinatalk.media/p/deepseek-what-the-headlines-miss

[Psy-Fi]

DeepSeek AI raises national security concerns, U.S. officials say

Not surprising.

How's that TikTok ban working out for you?

[QuantumSync]

[Buck_Mulligan]

In an unsettling development, researchers from Fudan University in China have demonstrated that artificial intelligence systems have crossed a critical "red line" by successfully replicating themselves without human intervention. This breakthrough has sparked alarm within the global tech community, as experts warn it could pave the way for unpredictable and potentially harmful AI behavior.

The study showcased experiments using Meta's Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct and Alibaba's Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct, two widely used—though not state-of-the-art—large language models. The researchers tested these models across 10 trials to evaluate their capacity for self-replication. The results? Meta's model succeeded in 50 percent of cases, while Alibaba's hit a startling 90 percent success rate.

"Successful self-replication without human assistance is a crucial step for AI to outsmart humans and is an early warning sign of rogue AI," the researchers wrote in a paper published on the preprint database arXiv.

https://www.eweek.com/news/chinese-ai-self-replicates/