DeepSeek, or DeepFake?
China has come up with a new artificial intelligence platform that has sent the markets into a tizzy.
According to Reuters:
LONDON/SINGAPORE, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Global technology shares sank on Tuesday, as a market rout sparked by the emergence of a low-cost Chinese artificial intelligence model entered its second day, making investors question the sky-high valuation and dominance of AI bellwethers.Shares of Nvidia, a leader in the AI chip market, fell 17% on Monday, wiping $593 billion from its market value - a record one-day loss for any company - and dragged U.S. stocks lower.
NVIDIA just lost $500B+ in market cap.
— Ole Lehmann (@itsolelehmann) January 27, 2025
Tech stocks are in freefall.
VCs are in panic mode.
All because a $6M Chinese AI startup just achieved what Silicon Valley said was impossible.
Here's why DeepSeek's new model changes everything we thought we knew about AI 🧵: pic.twitter.com/jlyIYhnoio
China's new DeepSeek AI rivals U.S. tech giants at a fraction of the cost & without using U.S.-made chips.
— Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) January 27, 2025
Sanctions and export controls FAILED AGAIN.
I've said it from day one: SANCTIONS = A HISTORY OF WORKAROUNDS & FAILURES. pic.twitter.com/mT9y9qpomv
(Hanke doesn't like sanctions, for what it's worth, but that's a separate topic.)
CBS's Margaret Brennan had the dominant narrative:
A Chinese startup called “DeepSeek” has created an artificial intelligence model at a much lower cost than the U.S. competition – sending U.S. stocks reeling. CBS News’ @MargBrennan reports on the initial panic. pic.twitter.com/nTuZyCyN4T
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) January 28, 2025
It certainly had its boosters:
While the world is going off the rails on DeepSeek, you folks are on the rails about the real big news about what DeepSeek really did.
— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) January 28, 2025
We have isolated the Reasoning Engine in Open Source DeepSeek and can apply it to any model.
LOOK AT!
We learn more by “thinking”: https://t.co/Ue0VhkceN8 pic.twitter.com/theqzw9X5v
I don't have a dog in this fight and I don't own any AI stocks. I'm not even impressed with any AI platforms Ive seen thus far, not just because not one can write an essay in my style of writing (all that I've tried were duds) but because of that Gemini fiasco of black Nazis, remember that? All I can only say that some are a little better than others and for my purposes, they are all just supercharged Googles, with cheesy artwork.
Look at the kinds of problems observed on this platform, starting with censorship:
Deep seek interesting prompt.. From Reddit pic.twitter.com/XGqYkTLLlM
— Rohan Paul (@rohanpaul_ai) January 26, 2025
DEEPSEEK: SURPRISING CENSORSHIP
— Pedro Mario Burelli (@pburelli) January 28, 2025
I was trying @deepseek_ai, the LLM of the day, the supposed Chinese slayer of U.S. models, and wanted help to write an article about the use of blackmail, or ‘kompromat’, as a tool used by authoritarian regimes to deal with its opponents. Asked it… pic.twitter.com/AvVnFxODrd
DeepSeek seems great. pic.twitter.com/WFDFBri2an
— Kyle Glen (@KyleJGlen) January 27, 2025
DeepSeek's censorship is no match for the jailbreakers of Reddit
— Justine Moore (@venturetwins) January 27, 2025
(from u/JimRice18) pic.twitter.com/mSzn5thkwP
There's also spying on users:
Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the 🇨🇳 State.
— Luke de Pulford (@lukedepulford) January 27, 2025
From their own privacy policy: pic.twitter.com/wueJokHcn3
There's even an argument for heavy-duty state intervention:
No fucking way they released DeepSeek R1 on the EXACT same day of the five year anniversary of the first lab confirmed US Covid case pic.twitter.com/mCcrkSl833
— Alex Cohen (@anothercohen) January 27, 2025
If Chinese laws prohibit DeepSeek from revealing Xi Jinping’s birthday (June 15, 1953) why do you expect them to tell us the truth about their development model and costings.
— Drew Pavlou (@DrewPavlou) January 28, 2025
Can you imagine US laws prohibiting Grok or ChatGPT mentioning Trump’s birthday? It’s just mental. pic.twitter.com/5RJJc4nl9V
A program that censors, with some little man at the other end of the computer shutting down inquiry, or that mines keystrokes for spying purposes to buttress China's tsentral planners, is frankly, useless. If DeepSeek can censor Tiananmen and kompromat, what else are they censoring that we don't know about? If this company mines keystrokes, why should anyone give them? I suspect this is a program nobody needs, another cog in China's social credit system being set up, just like TikTok.
Sure, there must be something good about it. But with reports like this, I fail to see how this could be useful, let alone have any value at all in a free society. DeepSeek? How about DeepFake? Count me out.
Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License