DeepSeek Is Chinese But Its AI Models Are From Another Planet
OpenAI and the US are in deep trouble
As my #1 prediction for AI in 2025 I wrote this: “The geopolitical risk discourse (democracy vs authoritarianism) will overshadow the existential risk discourse (humans vs AI).” DeepSeek is the reason why.
I’ve covered news about DeepSeek ten times since December 4, 2023, in this newsletter. But I’d bet you a free yearly subscription that you didn’t notice the name as something worth watching. It was just another unknown AI startup. Making more mediocre models. Surely not “at the level of OpenAI or Google” as I wrote a month ago. “At least not yet,” I added, confident. Turns out I was delusional. Or bad at assessing the determination of these people. Or perhaps I was right back then and they’re damn quick.
Whatever the case, DeepSeek, the silent startup, will now be known. Not because it’s Chinese — that too — but because the models they’re building are outstanding. And because they’re open source. And because they’re cheap. Damn cheap.
Yesterday, January 20, 2025, they announced and released DeepSeek-R1, their first reasoning model (from now on R1; try it here, use the “deepthink” option). R1 is akin to OpenAI o1, which was released on December 5, 2024. We’re talking about a one-month delay — a brief…