2025-02-02 18:46:00
The AI business model is built on hype. That’s the real reason the tech bros fear DeepSeek | Kenan Malik
The launch of DeepSeek R1 by Chinese developers has caused significant disruption in the tech industry, leading to stock market fluctuations and discussions about US technological dominance. However, while DeepSeek is a notable achievement, it does not represent a technical leap over existing large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT or Claude; instead, it demonstrates that advanced AI can be developed at a lower cost using less sophisticated technology. DeepSeek's impact lies more in its economic implications and the democratization of AI through open-source availability, challenging perceptions of AI as神秘的和遥不可及的技术。这一成就揭示了美国在AI领域的宣传策略,并质疑了通过“规模扩展”而非重大科学突破来推进AI技术的有效性。
N
o, it was not a âSputnik momentâ. The launch last month of
DeepSeek R1
, the Chinese generative AI or chatbot, created mayhem in the tech world, with stocks plummeting and much chatter about the US losing its supremacy in AI technology. Yet, for all the disruption, the Sputnik analogy reveals less about DeepSeek than about American neuroses.
The original Sputnik moment came on 4 October 1957 when the Soviet Union shocked the world by launching Sputnik 1, the first time humanity had sent a satellite into orbit. It was, to anachronistically borrow a phrase from a later and even more momentous landmark, âone giant leap for mankindâ, in Neil Armstrongâs historic words as he took a âsmall stepâ on to the surface of the moon.
It was a significant moment in the cold war, too. A confidential White House report worried that âAmerican prestigeâ had âsustained a severe blowâ, giving the USSR âclear advantage in the cold warâ. That fear spurred Washington into reshaping its space programme, and catalysed the Apollo missions, culminating with Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin becoming, on 20 July 1969, the first humans to walk upon another celestial body.
DeepSeek, sponsored by a Chinese hedge fund, is a notable achievement. Technically, though, it is no advance on large language models (LLMs) that already exist. It is neither faster nor âclevererâ than OpenAIâs ChatGPT or Anthropicâs Claude and just as prone to â
hallucinations
â â the tendency, exhibited by all LLMs, to give false answers or to make up âfactsâ to fill gaps in its data. According to NewsGuard, a rating system for news and information websites, DeepSeekâs chatbot
made false claims
30% of the time and gave no answers to 53% of questions, compared with 40% and 22% respectively for the 10 leading chatbots in
NewsGuardâs most recent audit
.
The figures expose the profound unreliability of all LLMs. DeepSeekâs particularly high non-response rate is likely to be the product of its
censoriousness
; it refuses to provide answers on any issue that China finds sensitive or about which it wants facts restricted, whether Tiananmen Square or Taiwan.
The true impact of DeepSeek is not on the technology but on the economics of AI. It is a chatbot as capable, and as flawed, as other current leading models, but built at a fraction of the cost and from inferior technology. The
US ban
on the sale to China of the most advanced chips and chip-making equipment, imposed by the Biden administration in 2022, and tightened several times since, was designed to curtail Beijingâs access to cutting-edge technology. Paradoxically, it may have spurred Chinese researchers into becoming more innovative.
DeepSeek is also free to use, and open source. The combination of low cost and openness may help democratise AI technology, enabling others, especially from outside America, to enter the market. There is a certain irony that it should be China that is opening up the technology while US firms continue to create as many barriers as possible to competitors attempting to enter the field.
And here lies perhaps the biggest impact of DeepSeek. It has ripped off the veil of mystique that previously surrounded AI. Silicon Valley has nurtured the image of AI technology as a precious and miraculous accomplishment, and portrayed its leading figures, from
Elon Musk
to
Sam Altman
, as prophets guiding us into a new world. The technology itself has been endowed with almost magical powers, including the promise of âartificial general intelligenceâ, or AGI â superintelligent machines capable of surpassing human abilities on any cognitive task â as being almost within our grasp.
Last April, Musk predicted that AI would be â
smarter than any human
â by the end of 2025. Last month, Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the driving force behind the current generative AI boom, similarly claimed to be âconfident we
know how to build AGI
â and that âin 2025, we may see the first AI agents âjoin the workforceââ.
Almost a decade ago, the Nobel prize-winning computer scientist Geoff Hinton urged nations to â
stop training radiologists
â, and similar medical technicians, because âitâs completely obvious within five years, deep learning [AI] is going to do betterâ. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, a corporation founded by former OpenAI employees, has claimed that
AI could double the human lifespan
within five to 10 years. These fantasy claims have been shredded by critics such as the
American cognitive scientist Gary Marcus
, who has even
challenged Musk to a $1m bet
over his âsmarter than any humanâ claim for AI.
Nevertheless, for all the pushback, each time one fantasy prediction fails to materialise, another takes its place. Such claims derive less from technological possibilities than from political and economic needs. While AI technology has provided hugely important tools, capable of surpassing humans in specific fields, from the solving of mathematical problems to the recognition of disease patterns,
the business model depends on hype
. It is the hype that drives the billion-dollar investment and buys political influence, including a seat at the presidential inauguration.
skip past newsletter promotion
after newsletter promotion
It is also an approach that seeks to advance AI less through major scientific breakthroughs than through a
brute force strategy of âscaling upâ
â building bigger models, using larger datasets, and deploying vastly greater computational power. The disruptive quality of DeepSeek lies in questioning this approach, demonstrating that the best generative AI models can be matched with much less computational power and a lower financial burden.
The hype around DeepSeek is in part a reflection of the hype around AI. It is a reflection, too, of geopolitical tensions. Had DeepSeek been created by geeks at a US university, it would most likely have been feted but without the global tumult of the past two weeks. Beneath the panic lies fear of DeepSeekâs Chinese origins and ownership.
Yet, too great an obsession with the geopolitics of DeepSeek can distort the lessons we take from it. The promise of more open access to such vital technology becomes subsumed into a fear of its Chinese provenance. Concerns about privacy, censorship and surveillance, rightly raised by a model such as DeepSeek, can help obscure the reality that such issues
bedevil all AI technology
, not just that from China. Particularly at a time of threatened trade wars and threats to democracy, our capacity to navigate between the hype and the fear assumes new importance.