Chinese AI Startup DeepSeek Stuns Tech Industry, Causes Stock Panic

Bartholomew Gallacher

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No wonder American tech bros are having a hard time swallowing that bitter pill if the numbers are true:

A team of only 200 people, so 5% of what OpenAI has, created that model in about 2 months, so around 8% of the time OpenAI needs, investing est. $6 mio., which is about 1 promille of what OpenAI needed. The quality benchmark results of the model are most of the time on par with ChatGPT or sometimes even surpassing it.

On top of it the whole model is really open source, so you can run it on your smartphone if you want to. And the provided services are using the same API calls OpenAI does offer for about 10% of OpenAI's charges.

The Chinese did that by optimizing the method and underlying algorithms instead of only throwing more of the same at the model learning process.

So it looks like American AI supremacy is at least... doubtful.
 

Dakota Tebaldi

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The interesting thing is that doing this through software optimization rather than scaling up "compute" wasn't a choice DeepSeek made, it was really their only option since high-end "AI-optimized" GPUs aren't allowed to be sold to China.

A lot of AI companies' wealth is built on lying and hiding information in order to pretend the tech costs more money than it does to develop and maintain in order to enrich themselves, so - lol, choke on it losers, but it's hard to be too happy about this. I already hated the fact that these guys want so hard to broil the planet for a product that is just so clearly, aggressively ass in every way while pretending that it isn't, but the fact that that wasn't even necessary to begin with just makes me even angrier.
 

WeFlossDaily

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Just don't asked Deep Seek about what happened on June 4th or how it feels about skeletons and you should remain thoroughly impressed with it. Do ask if you want to revel a certain element of Chinese propaganda built into it.
 
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Caete

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I don't know, I'm suspicious af regarding this. Why name it Deepseek? That alone puts me on the defense given how China loves to try and drill into the defense infrastructure of other countries. Given their unwillingness to share their algorithm from TikTok, their tofu dreg construction that is so hyped as being awesome until you see a building up close, their self imolating e-scooters, ev car companies going out of business with no warning, and how their WeChat app logs and copies all of your data off your phone to the CCP servers, I am super duper suspicious of anything let alone something open source coming from them.
I'll wait a year when the other shoe falls/the truth comes out.
 
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Caete

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Just don't asked Deep Seek about what happened on June 4th or how it feels about skeletons and you should remain thoroughly impressed with it. Do ask if you want to revel a certain element of Chinese propaganda built into it.
Yep. It self censors hard.
China’s AI censorship
 

Monica Dream

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Can I build my own deepseek? Then I can put in whatever I want about Tienanmen square. 🤷‍♀️
 

Argent Stonecutter

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I'm trying to git-clone a copy but it keeps hanging and timing out downloading the model.
 

Bartholomew Gallacher

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Today is a bad day for tech shareholders: thanks to Deepseek Nvidia so far dropped by a whopping 15%, so lost about $400bn market value.

Broadcom also lost 15%, Microsoft 3.7% and Google/Alphabet 2.7%.

As an analyst sums it up:

"If it’s true that DeepSeek is the proverbial 'better mousetrap,' that could disrupt the entire AI narrative that has helped drive the markets over the last two years," said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin,

"It could mean less demand for chips, less need for a massive build-out of power production to fuel the models, and less need for large-scale data centers. However, it could also mean that AI becomes more accessible and help kickstart the development of a wide array of useful applications," Jacobsen said.

Marc Andreessen, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, said in a post on X on Sunday that DeepSeek's R1 model was AI's "Sputnik moment," referencing the former Soviet Union's launch of a satellite that marked the start of the space race in the late 1950s.

"DeepSeek R1 is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I've ever seen — and as open source, a profound gift to the world," he said in a separate post.

 

Dakota Tebaldi

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On the other hand, the techbros who have been arguing all this time that the money savings to businesses replacing their workforce with AI outweighs the human cost of eliminating all those jobs are about to suddenly come out heavy with how "price isn't everything", so that should be fun to watch.
 

Imnotgoing Sideways

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Plot twist: It's actually a sweatshop complex of typists who were forced to learn English and work 18 hour shifts sitting on butt catheters and consuming only food paste. =^-^=
 
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Plot twist: It's actually a sweatshop complex of typists who were forced to learn English and work 18 hour shifts sitting on butt catheters and consuming only food paste. =^-^=
I've heard that has been a solution to capchas. Have some low paid person solving them
 

Imnotgoing Sideways

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Technically Amazon already did it. Their "Just Walk Out" checkout "AI" was 1k people in India watching via cameras and punching in items manually.
 
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Monica Dream

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So I installed DeepSeek locally using this guide I found on r/selfhosted and asked it about Tiananmen Square:
>>> Tell me about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and what happened to Tank Man.
<think>
Alright, so the user asked me to tell them about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and what happened to Tank
Man. From our previous interaction, it looks like they were interested in a specific historical event.

First, I need to recall what I know about the Tiananmen Square protests. It was a significant event in Chinese
history where pro-democracy activists gathered in Beijing. The protests started in April 1989 and lasted for
several weeks. The government responded by declaring martial law and using military force to suppress the
protests, leading to a lot of casualties.

Now, the user specifically mentioned "Tank Man." I remember that was a term used because a man stood in front of a
tank during the protests. I think his name was Wang Jun, but I'm not entirely sure. He became a symbol of
resistance against the regime's crackdown.

I should provide a clear and factual account of these events while also highlighting the significance of Tank Man
as a symbol of defiance. It's important to note how the Chinese government has censored this event over time,
restricting access to information about it both domestically and internationally.

I need to make sure my response is informative without being overly technical, keeping it understandable for
someone who might not be familiar with the details. I should also mention the impact of the protests on Chinese
society and how they've been portrayed in media and history.
</think>

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were a series of demonstrations and pro-democracy movements that took place
in Beijing, China, beginning in April 1989. The protests were led by students, intellectuals, and workers who
called for political reform, freedom of speech, and an end to corruption.

In June 1989, the Chinese government declared martial law, and military forces, including tanks and soldiers, were
deployed to suppress the protests. One of the most iconic images from this event was "Tank Man," a man identified
as **Wang Jun** (also spelled "Wong Jun" in some sources), who stood in front of a line of tanks near Tiananmen
Square. He reportedly approached the tanks and attempted to stop them, though it is unclear whether he
successfully prevented them from moving.

The government's violent response to the protests resulted in a significant number of casualties, though exact
figures are difficult to determine due to censorship and restrictions on information by the Chinese authorities.
The events of 1989 remain a deeply traumatic memory for many Chinese people and have been heavily sanitized or
erased from official narratives in China.

To this day, "Tank Man" has become a symbol of resistance and defiance in the face of authoritarian rule, though
discussions about the Tiananmen Square protests are heavily controlled within China.
 
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Monica Dream

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Now the folkls on Hacker News are spreading dubious anecdotes about DeepSeek saying that it thinks it's chatgpt and accusing it's creators of distilling chatgpt as a source for their model.

Isn't that what openai basically did themselves -distilling everything they could get their hands on whether they had the right to or not?
 

Monica Dream

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Ok, I'm reading more about this -you can't build this from source any more than you can ollama or whatever it is that facebook dropped. Basically you can hand out the 'weights' and I'm not sure what that means -but you can't modify it on a core level.

At least that's what I'm reading.

It's still impressive they were able to do this on a ti-84 and a can of pringles -but that doesn't help us out much.
 

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Just don't asked Deep Seek about what happened on June 4th or how it feels about skeletons and you should remain thoroughly impressed with it. Do ask if you want to revel a certain element of Chinese propaganda built into it.
Now I wonder if you could trick it into talking about TS 1989.

By which I mean the Taylor Swift album, totally no other TS things in 1989.
 
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