{"id":302499,"date":"2025-01-26T08:28:03","date_gmt":"2025-01-26T08:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=302499"},"modified":"2025-01-28T07:32:26","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T07:32:26","slug":"chinas-deepseek-ai-moves-the-capital-of-tech-from-palo-alto-to-hangzhou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=302499","title":{"rendered":"China’s DeepSeek AI Moves the Capital of Tech from Palo Alto to Hangzhou"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Whitney \u2013 The Unz Review Jan 24, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

n a matter of days, the news of China\u2019s AI sensation, DeepSeek R1, has gone from a gentle breeze to a Force 5 hurricane.<\/strong> It\u2019s clear now that no one in Silicon Valley or Washington DC had the slightest idea that their world was about to be turned upside-down by an innovative new product that would shift the geopolitical plates further eastward. But that, in fact, is what has happened. And it\u2019s not simply because DeepSeek\u2019s latest version matches or exceeds the performance of America\u2019s best model, OpenAI; but because it is cheaper, more accessible and more transparent. <\/strong>This is AI for everyone regardless of their station or income. And its sudden emergence from \u2018out of the blue\u2019 has cast doubts on the ability of western tech giants to anticipate the capability of their competitors or to lead an industry that is essential for Washington to preserve its ever-loosening grip on global power. Here\u2019s a brief recap from Venture Beat<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u2026.thanks to the release of DeepSeek R1, a new large language model that performs \u201creasoning\u201d similar to OpenAI\u2019s current best-available model o1<\/strong> \u2014 taking multiple seconds or minutes to answer hard questions and solve complex problems as it reflects on its own analysis in a step-by-step, or \u201cchain of thought\u201d fashion.<\/p>\n

Not only that, but DeepSeek R1 scored as high or higher than OpenAI\u2019s o1 on a variety of third-party benchmarks\u2026, and was reportedly trained at a fraction of the cost\u2026, with far fewer graphics processing units (GPU) under a strict embargo imposed by the U.S., OpenAI\u2019s home turf.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But unlike o1, which is available only to paying ChatGPT subscribers of the Plus tier ($20 per month) and more expensive tiers (such as Pro at $200 per month), DeepSeek R1 was released as a fully open source model, which also explains why it has quickly rocketed up the charts of AI code sharing community<\/strong> Hugging Face\u2019s most downloaded and active models. Why everyone in AI is freaking out about DeepSeek,<\/a> Venture Beat<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cFreaking out\u201d is probably the understatement of the century. Silicon Valley is in a full-blown emotional meltdown and the path forward is far from certain. As we will see further along, western tech mandarins are going to have to return to Square 1 and modify their approach to the new reality. In short, the agenda is being set by people with different priorities, values and beliefs who live 10,000 miles away. They do not ascribe to the idea that advances in technology should reinforce police-state surveillance or other repressive forms of social control.(as they do in the West) Their vision of the future is altogether different, but invariably optimistic.<\/p>\n

Did you notice that \u201cDeepSeek R1 scored as high or higher than OpenAI\u2019s o1 (while) under a strict embargo imposed by the US\u201d?<\/p>\n

In other words, these Chinese whiz-kids created their cutting-edge version with one hand tied behind their back. They shrugged off Washington\u2019s onerous sanctions and beat Uncle Sam at his own game, which is quite an accomplishment. (Forbes<\/em>: \u201cU.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors were intended to slow China\u2019s AI progress, but they may have inadvertently spurred innovation.\u201d) Here\u2019s more:<\/p>\n

thanks to the fact that it is fully open source, people have already fine-tuned and trained many multiple variations of the model for different task-specific purposes<\/strong> such as making it small enough to run on a mobile device or combining it with other open-source models. Even if you want to use it for development purposes, DeepSeek\u2019s API costs are more than 90% cheaper than the equivalent o1 model from OpenAI.<\/strong> Why everyone in AI is freaking out about DeepSeek,<\/a> Venture Beat<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Cheaper, more adaptable and more transparent. Is there more? There is:<\/p>\n

Most impressively of all, you don\u2019t even need to be a software engineer to use it: DeepSeek has a free website and mobile app even for U.S. users with an R1-powered chatbot interface very similar to OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT. Except, once again, DeepSeek undercut or \u201cmogged\u201d OpenAI by connecting this powerful reasoning model to web search \u2014 something OpenAI hasn\u2019t yet done\u2026Why everyone in AI is freaking out about DeepSeek,<\/a> <\/strong>Venture Beat<\/em><\/p>\n

Is the author right; are the tech-honchos and their moneybags allies \u201cfreaking out\u201d over DeepSeek or do they see it as a minor glitch on the road to AI supremacy? Here\u2019s how he answers that question:<\/p>\n

A message posted to Blind\u2026 has been making the rounds suggesting Meta is in crisis over the success of DeepSeek because of how quickly it surpassed Meta\u2019s own efforts to be the king of open source AI with its Llama models.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

It sounds like a lot of people are very concerned, and for good reason. DeepSeek is a nuclear bomb detonated in the heart of Silicon Valley. It is a straight-up challenge to America\u2019s de facto Royal Family of tech Brahmins who thought their reign would last forever. <\/strong>Now they find themselves playing \u2018catch-up\u2019 with an upstart cadre of bluestocking brainiacs who are bringing their world crashing down around them. More importantly, the future of AI is being decided in Hangzhou not Palo Alto which means we might see a lull in the warmaking as Uncle Sam finds it harder to finance his endless bloodletting. What a welcome reprieve that would be.<\/p>\n

The author of the above piece even quotes one of my favorite analysts on X, Arnaud Bertrand, an invaluable source of unbiased information about developments in China. Here\u2019s what he said:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no overstating how profoundly this changes the whole game. And not only with regards to AI, it\u2019s also a massive indictment of the US\u2019s misguided attempt to stop China\u2019s technological development, without which Deepseek may not have been possible\u2026\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yep, the whole semiconductor embargo-thing backfired spectacularly illustrating once again that we are ruled by incompetent lamebrains who love to punish people for violations to rules they make up on-the-fly. Just look at the mess these \u2018geniuses\u2019 have made.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

We\u2019ll end with Bertrand\u2019s insightful critique of Trump\u2019s $500 billion Stargate boondoggle which will be obsolete before they even break ground:<\/p>\n

Stargate, if it goes forward, is likely to become one of the biggest wastages of capital in history<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

1) It hinges on outdated assumptions about the importance of computing scale in AI (the \u2018bigger compute = better AI\u2019 dogma), which DeepSeek just proved is wrong.<\/p>\n

2) It assumes that the future of AI is with closed and controlled models despite the market\u2019s clear preference for democratized, open-source alternatives<\/strong><\/p>\n

3) It clings to a Cold War playbook, framing AI dominance as a zero-sum hardware arms race<\/strong>, which is really at odds with the direction AI is taking (again, open-source software, global developer communities, and collaborative ecosystems)<\/p>\n

4) It bets the farm on OpenAI\u2014a company<\/strong> plagued by governance issues and a business model that\u2019s seriously challenged DeepSeek\u2019s 30x cost advantage.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In short it\u2019s like building a half a trillion dollars digital Maginot line: a very expensive monument to obsolete and misguided assumptions.<\/strong> This is OpenAI and by extension the US fighting the last war.
\nArnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand<\/a><\/p>\n

Or, as Jim Fan said: the \u2026 future of AI is democratization\u2026. It\u2019s the tide of history that we should surf on, not swim against.<\/strong>\u2026Jim Fan @DrJimFan<\/a><\/p>\n

Indeed, it is.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cheaper, more adaptable and more transparent, DeepSeek is a nuclear bomb detonated in the heart of Silicon Valley. It is a straight-up challenge to America\u2019s tech Brahmins who thought their reign would last forever. Mike Whitney explains <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":302500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-china","category-Fringe_Science_New_Discoveries_and_Developments"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=302499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302504,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302499\/revisions\/302504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/302500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=302499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=302499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=302499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}