What is China’s DeepSeek and why is it freaking out the AI world?
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. DeepSeek, an AI startup just over a year old, stirred awe and consternation in Silicon Valley with its breakthrough artificial intelligence (AI) model that offered comparable performance to the world’s best chatbots at seemingly a fraction of the cost. Created in China’s Hangzhou, DeepSeek carries far-reaching implications for the global tech industry and supply chain, offering a counterpoint to the widespread belief that the future of AI will require ever-increasing amounts of power and energy to develop.
DeepSeek is a Chinese startup founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, the chief of AI-driven quant hedge fund High-Flyer. The company develops open-source AI models, and its eponymous mobile app surged to the top of the iPhone’s download charts in the US after its release in early January. The DeepSeek app distinguishes itself from other chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT by articulating its reasoning before delivering a response to a prompt.
The company claims its R1 release offers performance on par with OpenAI’s latest and has granted license for individuals interested in developing chatbots on the technology to build on it. Though not fully detailed by the company, the cost of training and developing DeepSeek’s models appears to be only a fraction of what’s required for OpenAI or Meta Platforms Inc.’s best products. The much better efficiency of the model puts into question the need for vast expenditures of capital to acquire the latest and most powerful AI accelerators from the likes of Nvidia Corp.
Read more on livemint.com
