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Isn't it easy to read this very cynically, as an offensive move intended to devalue and hurt US AI companies?
by madeofpalk 2y ago
Isn't it easy to read this very cynically, as an offensive move intended to devalue and hurt US AI companies?
- piva00 2y agoWhat exactly is the problem of showing that other AI companies are trying to create advantages where they don't exist? That they can do it and not price gouge nor try to create moats, and instead push forward the innovation without becoming a greedy fuck like Sam Altman? I actually praise that offensive move, if AI companies can lost so much value from DeepSeek's open research then it's well deserved, they shouldn't be valued as much.
- hahamaster 2y agoIt's a problem because it's done by a Chinese company and not an American company.
- watwut 2y agoWell, that is how US tech companies themselves regularly operate, so it should be withing the game? Selling at loss or giving out for free, until you kill the companies that are actually operating a business is something US tech is normally proud about doing.
- piva00 2y agoI always called it VC-backed price dumping, many American tech companies got successful by taking enormous amounts of VC capital to simply price dump competition. I get side eyes from Americans when I bring this up as a key factor when they try to shit on Europe for "lack of innovation", it's more a lack of bottomless stacks of cash enabling undercutting competition on price until they fold, then jacking up prices for VC ROI.
- amarcheschi 2y agoBut this time the technology is open sourced, it's not like Uber operating at a loss to make other startup fail. It might however become like that when there is no more competition. However, at least for now it's not like that
- lenerdenator 2y agoThey aren't "giving out for free", though. If you're not paying for something from a US tech company, unless it's explicitly a non-profit, it's fairly safe to assume that you, dear reader, are the product. You pay with your data. This could very well be the long-term plan with DeepSeek, or it could be the AI application of how China deals with other industries: massive state subsidies to companies participating in important markets. The profit isn't the point, at least not at first. Driving everyone else out is. That's why it's hard to get any real name brands off of Amazon anymore. Cheap goods from China undercut brand-name competition from elsewhere and soon, that competition was finding it unprofitable to compete on Amazon, so they withdrew. I used to get HEPA filters from Amazon that were from a trusted name brand. I can't find those anymore. What I can find is a bunch of identical offerings for "Colorfullfe", "Der Blue" and "Extolife", all priced similarly. I cannot find any information on those companies online. Given their origin it's safe to assume they all come from the same factory in China and that said factory is at least partially supported by the state. Over time this has the net effect of draining the rest of the world of the ability to create useful technology and products without at least some Chinese component to the design or manufacture of the same. That of course becomes leverage. Same here. If I'm an investor in an AI startup, I'm not looking at the American offerings, because long-term geopolitical stability isn't my concern. Getting the most value for my investment is, so I'm telling them to use the Chinese models and training techniques for now, and boom: it just became a little less profitable for Sam Altman to do what he does. And that's the point.
- themgt 2y agoNo one ever explains how it's possible for China to simply give "massive state subsidies" and take over the entire global economy from a starting point of Haitian-level GDP per capita 25 years ago. It sounds extremely easy though - I assume it should be in econ 101 textbooks and India, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc will soon follow this playbook?
- thisrod 2y agoIt's called capitalism. Take one billion times Haiti's GDP per capita, pour it all into a few blocks in Shenzhen, and reinvest the profits.
- Arnt 2y ago"Disrupt" is the common verb.
- spamizbad 2y agoWas open-sourcing Linux a cynical, offensive move to devalue commercial Unix (a scheme hatched by duplicitous Finns)? But more seriously, DeepSeek is a massive boon for AI consumers. It's price/performance cannot be beat, and the model is open source so if you're inclined to run and train your own you now have access to a world-class model and don't have to settle for LLaMA.
- sho_hn 2y ago> Was open-sourcing Linux a cynical, offensive move to devalue commercial Unix (a scheme hatched by duplicitous Finns)? No, but the same sort of people certainly told us that we were :-) Cf. the whole "the GPL is viral and will kill the industry" spiel we got to hear for years.
- harrall 2y agoAt the end of the day, some people think like Linus Torvalds and others think like Bill Gates.
- mistermann 2y agoAnd most people "choose" which of the two they will use depending on which best serves them under the given circumstances.
- fuzztester 2y agoLinus is not too different from Bill, actually. He has also spoken about world domination ;) https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
- johnnyanmac 2y agoI'll find the quote eventually, but this caught my eye: >If you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and should fix your program. Got me thinking. I might heighten up to 4 or 5 simply because modern code needs 2 indents just to start writing a function in a struct. But the quote wasn't as crazy as I thought, even 30 years later.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoJust a few days ago the Wall Street Journal ran an interview with OpenAI's Chief Product Officer (https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp500-nasdaq-live-01-22-2025/card/openai-to-release-new-gpt-model-ai-agents-soon-MrUYupSuChEdJh07oIWp https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp50...), the headline was: > OpenAI Hails $500 Billion Stargate Plan: 'More Compute Leads to Better Models' The cynic in me is much more likely to see this as western companies giving up on innovation in favor of grift, and their competition in the east exposing the move for what it is. This is why competition is good. Let's make this about us (those who would do this in the open) and them (those who wouldn't) and not us (US) and them (China).
- smj-edison 2y agoI just realized, this sounds almost exactly like Japan's Fifth Generation AI project[1], where the Japan government funded a massive AI project where they built lots of specialized hardware (symbolic AI). Unfortunately, Intel kept chipping away to the point that it made more sense to just run Intel. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Generation_Computer_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Generation_Computer_Syst...
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoI agree, there's a lot of similarity there. Although it sounds like that project, if successful, would've been pretty fantastic for computing in general. I'm far less interested to see proprietary models secure dominance, whichever country they're in.
- tarkin2 2y agoOf course. China wants to beat the US in innovation, and gain the economic and militaristic advantages which that brings. And they're going about it the right way if there's any substance behind that press statement.
- bgnn 2y agoI'm not sure why. They are doing honest work and publishing it. If they are faking it, it will be known. Whereas what's Sam doing? Announcing a non-existing 500 billion dollar investment with the president, while all AI companies in the wesy support a trade ban for Nvidia GPUs in China.
- Vegenoid 2y agoI don't think it makes sense to be that cynical about a company opening their research and powerful technology to the public. The only underhanded thing they could be doing is lying, and it doesn't look like they are - but if they are, we'll know soon enough. If the goal is to erode the moat around powerful US tech companies, by making tech that rivals theirs and releasing it to the public, it's just good for the world. The only way it isn't is if you believe that power should remain in the hands of certain elites.
- dgfitz 2y ago[flagged]
- Vegenoid 2y agoThis absurd denial of "anything coming out of China" has no place here, and ignoring groundbreaking research simply because it is from China will only leave you falling behind. I have no love for the CCP, and I believe that they are deceptive - but China has 1.4 billion people in it. It is not a monolith, and it is unsurprising that there would be good people doing good research in such a massive population.
- dgfitz 2y ago> will only leave you falling behind. Works for me! This whole llm movement and the insane amounts of money sloshing around aren’t setting off alarm bells for anyone else huh, just me?
- Vegenoid 2y agoYou are just shifting to another nebulous criticism instead of substantiating anything about skepticism of research from Chinese people. It is clear to everyone in the room that recent ML innovations are incredibly powerful and actively being used in many areas to substantial effect. It may be overhyped, but there is clearly real fuel behind it, it's not all hot air.
- 2y ago
- lurking_swe 2y agowhy not both? deepseek is owned by a hedge fund. if i was them id certainly have an NVDA short position. short term it’s a big opportunity for them.
- christina97 2y agoHow is this different to Llama from Meta?
- selcuka 2y agoExactly. Meta specifically opened their models to "commoditise their complement" [1]. Does it automatically become a national issue When a Chinese company does the same? [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoThe models are open because if the enemy uses them they will be lagging behind. Seems like this tactic didn't work with the chinese.
- Salgat 2y agoTechnically the llama licensing is closed to their main competitors, although it's a short list of companies like google and microsoft.
- dbtc 2y agoYes I believe that would be the point of view of those corps and their investors. But for the rest of humanity it doesn't look so bad.
- h0l0cube 2y agoWhy couldn't this be viewed from the capitalistic lens of good old fashioned competition? No cynicism is required in viewing the export restrictions on ASML's lithography technology and nVidia's most advanced chips as blantantly anti-competitive.
- Yeul 2y agoBecause empires don't want competition they want hegemony.
- h0l0cube 2y agoA lot of sour grapes on here, and the attendant cognitive dissonance. Communism and open-source development have overlapping ideals, and there's no better project for worldwide cooperation than AI. But that's at odds of the US having monopolistic control over the SOTA. Ultimately capitalism horseshoes into the authoritarianism, gross inequality, and poverty of the Soviet states it likes to contrast itself to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
- IAmGraydon 2y agoThe funny part about that - Deepseek was started by a hedge fund. Wonder if they bought puts.
- tw1984 2y agoI spent quality time thinking about this last night, there is one and only one reasonable motivation that would possibly stop them from doing so - to avoid being killed by the CIA The whole thing is no longer a startup being disruptive
- rswail 2y agoWhy would the CIA get involved in the financial value of NVidia? The US has been trying to find a "space race" challenge to justify its military spending increases for a while, AI is going to be that, but it's more driven by the US oligarchy than the US MIC this time. That means that it's going to be driven by financial wealth accumulation instead of power accumulation.
- woooooo 2y agoI mean, they got involved for United Fruit Company..
- tw1984 2y ago> Why would the CIA get involved in the financial value of NVidia? the AI race between China and the US is going to shape the future of our generation. CIA has all the motivations to just eliminate all those core Chinese members as they pose direct national security threat to the US dominance in AI. you need to be really naive to not being able to see these.
- rswail 2y agoThe hype over AI being somehow the "future" and replacing every/anything of the current generation is completely over the top. A couple of years ago, it was VR/AR (2nd time around for VR, it had been hyped in the '90s), before that it was "cloud" etc etc. The CIA is not going to be going around assassinating AI developers, any more than they are going to kill the people working for ASML because they threaten US dominance in chips.
- yoyohello13 2y agoI don’t know what it says about American companies that a Chinese company being ethical and innovative harms them.
- wavefunction 2y agoIs this business
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- chii 2y ago> as an offensive move intended to devalue and hurt US AI companies? which is fine and dandy to do. In fact, i wish deepseek success. The US tech industry needs disruption.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoYou can say cynically. I say optimistically. US relied too much on secrets and menufactured inefficiency to keep that faux value. It's only natural that talent elsewhere will undercut that. Invisible Hand isn't limited to the US
- cscurmudgeon 2y ago> US relied too much on secrets and menufactured inefficiency You are replying to a thread with the DeepSeek CEO saying the opposite (e.g., DeepSeek built upon transformers, Llama, PyTorch, etc.)
- johnnyanmac 2y agoI was talking about the US and the marketing of insane server racks of GPUs "required" to run popular LLM models. Did I misinterpret something?
- AznHisoka 2y agoAnd if that was the intended purpose, would you prefer a reality where they don’t release it at all? This benefits a lot more consumers of AI, and that’s a good thing IMO. If OpenAI and other AI companies become less valuable, then i am more than eager to live with that
- WiSaGaN 2y agoAmericans need to understand that the Chinese are not obsessed with the US. They don't have a saboteur mindset. They want development not because they want US to fail and China to win. It's really sad to look at US state of affairs right now. It used to have a mindset if abundance. It definitely doesn't right now.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tsimionescu 2y agoThe US has always had a mindset of "abundance for us and allies, scorched earth for anyone who dares to oppose us". But players profiting while helping build up American abundance is OK, but that's about it - as soon as you're challenging US power (not necessarily directly, but just by being as successful as the USA at something), that becomes a huge problem and you need to either swear fealty or be stopped. The USA has never once had friendly relationships with a large power, perhaps with the very special case of the USSR alliance during WWII (and not a second after it). The European powers and Canada are extremely US friendly and support US policies (at the head of state level) in almost everything. Relations with China were good while China was a weak and poor state, acting as almost slave labor for the USA - not great now that they are rising up. Relations with Russia were good for a brief window after the fall of the USSR, while Eltsyn seemed to be "our guy", but quickly soured when it became clear he would not dance to their tune (not to sya that he was a good man or that his disputes with US intentions were good - Russia would have probably been in a better state if it had allied itself more with the USA, rather than becoming the belligerent territorial authoritarian oligarchy that it has).
- zarkenfrood 2y agoIt's essentially the same tactic as META have employed and one of the key pillars of a free market. They also are making important contributions to efficiency sure to their hardware limitations which hopefully has a strong impact on reducing the long term power consumption of these models
- wyager 2y agoGood. Companies screwing each other over like this creates huge social benefits. This is one of the best mechanisms capitalism has to externalize surplus value, a la "commoditizing your complement".
- mitthrowaway2 2y agoIt's okay, OpenAI is a non-profit dedicated to sharing the benefits of AI with all of humanity, I'm sure they're very happy about these developments.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Salgat 2y agoIt absolutely is true. This Chinese model wiped hundreds of billions in value from the American market, positioned China as a leading innovator, and pivoted the world to using a model with heavy Chinese biases. It's a brilliant masterstroke for the advancement of China on the global stage.
- csomar 2y agoYou are just adding a sinister spin to it. Every move that any company (local or foreign) competing in AI is is intended to devalue and hurt US AI companies. That's what "competing" is, the rules are made so that people compete to offer a better service rather than kill one another (ie: mobs).
- animuchan 2y agoThe same AI companies that release proprietary software in an offensive move intended to devalue and hurt work of many professionals, sure. So, a good thing.