Summary:
The launch of Chinese AI application DeepSeek in the U.S. has raised national security concerns among officials, lawmakers, and cybersecurity experts. The app quickly became the most downloaded on Apple’s store, disrupting Wall Street and causing a record 17% drop in Nvidia’s stock. The White House announced an investigation into the potential risks, with some lawmakers calling for stricter export controls to prevent China from leveraging U.S. technology.
Beyond economic impact, experts warn DeepSeek may pose significant data security risks, as Chinese law allows government access to company-held data. Unlike TikTok, which stores U.S. data on Oracle servers, DeepSeek operates directly from China, collecting personal user information. The app also exhibits censorship, blocking content on politically sensitive topics like Tiananmen Square. Some analysts argue that, as an open-source model, DeepSeek may not be as concerning as TikTok, but critics worry its widespread adoption could advance China’s influence through curated information control.
First time you do something is always harder. OpenAI just didn’t think it was 1000x harder and thought they’d have more time to cash in.
Myself, I think that being able to throw billions of dollars at hardware, and their focus on next-quarter results discouraged them from putting in the human effort to analyze and optimize their process. It turns out there were some fantastic optimizations to do.
MVP in Technology. OpenAI just sat around throwing salt to the wind piling up “value” until they can convince people it is worth some obscene amount of money to sell out. Once you give someone a literal milestone and show them the path, boom.
This really really feels like a real life Tortoise and the Hare story. Like real hard, and I don’t feel the least bit bad for the hare.
oh yeah, not denying that the prototype will be more expensive and resource intensive than following versions, but the whole “US overspends on novel technology, China blows that technology out of the water and shows this tech is both accessible and affordable, US bans Chinese product because American companies don’t want to compete” shtick is just getting old
Hmm, what are the previous examples?
Electric cars and Huawei are two recent examples off the top of my head
They spent tens of billions of dollars already. Of course they don’t want cheap competition. That’s basic capitalism, nothing pro or against China.