5 ms·

DeepSeek and other Chinese companies. Not only do they publish research, they also put their resources where their mouth (research) is. They actually use it and

by Palmik 10mo ago

DeepSeek and other Chinese companies. Not only do they publish research, they also put their resources where their mouth (research) is. They actually use it and prove it through their open models. Most research coming out of big US labs is counter indicative of practical performance. If it worked (too) well in practice, it wouldn't have been published. Some examples from DeepSeek: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.04434 https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.04434 https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.11089 https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.11089

abbycurtis33 10mo ago
[flagged]
- CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - elmomle 10mo ago
    Your comment seems to imply "these views aren't valid" without any evidence for that claim. Of course the theft claim was a strong one to make without evidence too. So, to that point--it's pretty widely accepted as fact that DeepSeek was at its core a distillation of ChatGPT. The question is whether that counts as theft. As to evidence, to my knowledge it's a combination of circumstantial factors which add up to paint a pretty damning picture: (1) Large-scale exfiltration of data from ChatGPT when DeepSeek was being developed, and which Microsoft linked to DeepSeek (2) DeepSeek's claim of training a cutting-edge LLM using a fraction of the compute that is typically needed, without providing a plausible, reproducible method (3) Early DeepSeek coming up with near-identical answers to ChatGPT--e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1idqi7p/deepseek_and_chatgpt_gave_me_same_answer_what/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1idqi7p/deepseek_a...
    - grafmax 10mo ago
      That’s an argument made about training the initial model. But the comment stated that DeepSeek stole its research from the US which is a much stronger allegation without any evidence to it.
      - elmomle 10mo ago
        That's a fair point. I suspect that to one outside the field, their touting major breakthroughs while trying to conceal that their first model was a distillation may cause a sense of skepticism as to the quality of their research. From what I've gathered, their research actually has added meaningfully to understandings of optimal model scaling and faster training.
      - epsteingpt 10mo ago
        [flagged]
        CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
        Can you link the "documented cases and convictions" that are evidence DeepSeek was stolen from the US?
        epsteingpt 10mo ago
        Yes, a cursory google search will show dozens of convictions at all sorts of sensitive technical labs, but I'll post them for HN: [1] Ji Wang convicted recently of stealing DARPA laser tech https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/fiber-laser-expert-convicted-federal-jury-economic-espionage-and-theft-trade-secrets https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/fiber-laser-expert-convicted-... [2] Leon Ding indicted for stealing AI tech - https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/chinese-national-residing-california-arrested-theft-artificial-intelligence-related-trade https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/chinese-national-res... [3] Pangang Companies ongoing and rejected appeals for stealing Titanium Dioxide production [https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/22-10058/22-10058-2025-04-28.html https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/22...] Here's an umbrella doc from the USTR, and the good stuff: China used foreign ownership restrictions, such as joint venture (JV) requirements and foreign equity limitations, and various administrative review and licensing processes, to require or pressure technology transfer from U.S. companies. 2. China’s regime of technology regulations forced U.S. companies seeking to license technologies to Chinese entities to do so on non-market-based terms that favor Chinese recipients. 3. China directed and unfairly facilitated the systematic investment in, and acquisition of, U.S. companies and assets by Chinese companies to obtain cutting-edge technologies and IP and generate the transfer of technology to Chinese companies. 4. China conducted and supported unauthorized intrusions into, and theft from, the computer networks of U.S. companies to access their IP, including trade secrets, and confidential business information. As mentioned - no one has claimed that DeepSeek in its entirety was stolen from the U.S. It is almost a certainty based on decades of historical precedent of systematic theft that techniques, research, and other IP was also systematically stolen for this critical technology. Don't close your eyes when the evidence, both rigorously proven and common sense, is staring you in the face.
    - tim333 10mo ago
      And slightly off topic but it's interesting Shi Zheng-Li et al are still cooking up gain of function viruses in BSL-2 labs https://x.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1993308364059848949 https://x.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1993308364059848949 Hope it goes better this time.
    - orbital-decay 10mo ago
      >Your comment seems to imply "these views aren't valid" without any evidence for that claim. No, your comment seems to be a deflection. You made an outstanding claim, that DS stole some IP, and have been asked for outstanding evidence, or at least some evidence. You need to provide it if you want to be taken seriously. >Large-scale exfiltration of data from ChatGPT when DeepSeek was being developed, and which Microsoft linked to DeepSeek Where's the evidence for that? I also have a claim that I can't back up with anything more than XLab's report: before the release of R1, there were multiple attempts to hack DS's systems, which nobody noticed. [1] You really seem to have no idea what you're talking about. R1 was an experiment on teaching the model to reason on its own, exactly to avoid large amounts of data in post-training. It also partially failed, they called the failed snapshot R1-Zero. And it's pretty different from any OpenAI or Anthropic model. >DeepSeek's claim of training a cutting-edge LLM using a fraction of the compute that is typically needed, without providing a plausible, reproducible method DeepSeek published a lot more about their models than any top tier US lab before them, including their production code. And they're continuing doing so. All their findings in R1 are highly plausible and most are replicated to some degree and adopted in the research and industry. Moonshot AI trained their K2 on DeepSeek's architecture with minor tweaks (not to diminish their novel findings). That's a really solid model. Moreover, they released their DeepSeek-Math-7B-RL back in April 2024. [2] It was a tiny model that outperformed huge then-SOTA LLMs like Claude 3 Opus in math, and validated their training technique (GPRO). Basically, they made the first reasoning model worth talking about. Their other optimizations (MLA) can be traced back to DeepSeek v2. >Early DeepSeek coming up with near-identical answers to ChatGPT--e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1idqi7p/deepseek_and_chatgpt_gave_me_same_answer_what/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1idqi7p/deepseek_a... That's n=1 nonsense, not evidence. GPT contamination was everywhere, even Claude used to claim to be GPT-3 occasionally, or Reddit Anti-Evil Team. (yes, really) All models have overlapping datasets that are also contaminated with previous models outputs, and mode collapse makes them converge on similar patterns which seem to come and go with each generation. [1] https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202501/1327676.shtml https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202501/1327676.shtml [2] https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/deepseek-math-7b-rl https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/deepseek-math-7b-rl
    - nl 10mo ago
      > Large-scale exfiltration of data from ChatGPT when DeepSeek was being developed, and which Microsoft linked to DeepSeek This is not the same thing at all. Current legal doctrine is that ChatGPT output is not copyrightable, so at most Deepseek violated the terms of use of ChatGPT. That isn't IP theft. To add to that example, there are numerous open-source datasets that are derived from ChatGPT data. Famously, the Alpaca dataset kick-started the open source LLM movement by fine tuning Llama on a GPT-derived dataset: https://huggingface.co/datasets/tatsu-lab/alpaca https://huggingface.co/datasets/tatsu-lab/alpaca
  - moralIsYouLie 10mo ago
    corporate espionage was my first thought back then. unfolding events since indicate that it wasn't theft but part of a deal. the magic math seems to check out, too
  - grosswait 10mo ago
    Could have picked a much stronger example of a false talking point.
- pylotlight 10mo ago
  which of the 5-10~ papers DS published were stolen exactly..?
  - epsteingpt 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - FpUser 10mo ago
      You were asked pretty precise question. Instead of addressing it directly your proof is that China in general does do economic espionage. So does fucking every other developed country, US including.
      - deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
      - est 10mo ago
        this guy's name is literally "epsteingpt" you are probably arguing with a bot.
        epsteingpt 10mo ago
        no. but appreciate someone with your karma jumping in. name is just topical. although it says something about 2025 that we can't tell!
    - nl 10mo ago
      Pot, Kettle, meet black. "some elements of the indictment concern cyber-snooping in connection with trade disputes, which at least sounds a lot like the kind of cyber-snooping on firms that the United States does." https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/why-did-doj-indict-chinese-military-officers https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/why-did-doj-indict-chin... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-brazil-oil-petrobras https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-bra... https://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/30/news/airbus-germany-nsa-spying https://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/30/news/airbus-germany-nsa-s...

by Palmik 10mo ago

abbycurtis33 10mo ago

[flagged]

CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
[flagged]
- elmomle 10mo ago
  Your comment seems to imply "these views aren't valid" without any evidence for that claim. Of course the theft claim was a strong one to make without evidence too. So, to that point--it's pretty widely accepted as fact that DeepSeek was at its core a distillation of ChatGPT. The question is whether that counts as theft. As to evidence, to my knowledge it's a combination of circumstantial factors which add up to paint a pretty damning picture: (1) Large-scale exfiltration of data from ChatGPT when DeepSeek was being developed, and which Microsoft linked to DeepSeek (2) DeepSeek's claim of training a cutting-edge LLM using a fraction of the compute that is typically needed, without providing a plausible, reproducible method (3) Early DeepSeek coming up with near-identical answers to ChatGPT--e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1idqi7p/deepseek_and_chatgpt_gave_me_same_answer_what/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1idqi7p/deepseek_a...
  - grafmax 10mo ago
    That’s an argument made about training the initial model. But the comment stated that DeepSeek stole its research from the US which is a much stronger allegation without any evidence to it.
    - elmomle 10mo ago
      That's a fair point. I suspect that to one outside the field, their touting major breakthroughs while trying to conceal that their first model was a distillation may cause a sense of skepticism as to the quality of their research. From what I've gathered, their research actually has added meaningfully to understandings of optimal model scaling and faster training.
    - epsteingpt 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      - CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
        Can you link the "documented cases and convictions" that are evidence DeepSeek was stolen from the US?
        epsteingpt 10mo ago
        Yes, a cursory google search will show dozens of convictions at all sorts of sensitive technical labs, but I'll post them for HN: [1] Ji Wang convicted recently of stealing DARPA laser tech https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/fiber-laser-expert-convicted-federal-jury-economic-espionage-and-theft-trade-secrets https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/fiber-laser-expert-convicted-... [2] Leon Ding indicted for stealing AI tech - https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/chinese-national-residing-california-arrested-theft-artificial-intelligence-related-trade https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/chinese-national-res... [3] Pangang Companies ongoing and rejected appeals for stealing Titanium Dioxide production [https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/22-10058/22-10058-2025-04-28.html https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/22...] Here's an umbrella doc from the USTR, and the good stuff: China used foreign ownership restrictions, such as joint venture (JV) requirements and foreign equity limitations, and various administrative review and licensing processes, to require or pressure technology transfer from U.S. companies. 2. China’s regime of technology regulations forced U.S. companies seeking to license technologies to Chinese entities to do so on non-market-based terms that favor Chinese recipients. 3. China directed and unfairly facilitated the systematic investment in, and acquisition of, U.S. companies and assets by Chinese companies to obtain cutting-edge technologies and IP and generate the transfer of technology to Chinese companies. 4. China conducted and supported unauthorized intrusions into, and theft from, the computer networks of U.S. companies to access their IP, including trade secrets, and confidential business information. As mentioned - no one has claimed that DeepSeek in its entirety was stolen from the U.S. It is almost a certainty based on decades of historical precedent of systematic theft that techniques, research, and other IP was also systematically stolen for this critical technology. Don't close your eyes when the evidence, both rigorously proven and common sense, is staring you in the face.
  - tim333 10mo ago
    And slightly off topic but it's interesting Shi Zheng-Li et al are still cooking up gain of function viruses in BSL-2 labs https://x.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1993308364059848949 https://x.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1993308364059848949 Hope it goes better this time.
  - orbital-decay 10mo ago
    >Your comment seems to imply "these views aren't valid" without any evidence for that claim. No, your comment seems to be a deflection. You made an outstanding claim, that DS stole some IP, and have been asked for outstanding evidence, or at least some evidence. You need to provide it if you want to be taken seriously. >Large-scale exfiltration of data from ChatGPT when DeepSeek was being developed, and which Microsoft linked to DeepSeek Where's the evidence for that? I also have a claim that I can't back up with anything more than XLab's report: before the release of R1, there were multiple attempts to hack DS's systems, which nobody noticed. [1] You really seem to have no idea what you're talking about. R1 was an experiment on teaching the model to reason on its own, exactly to avoid large amounts of data in post-training. It also partially failed, they called the failed snapshot R1-Zero. And it's pretty different from any OpenAI or Anthropic model. >DeepSeek's claim of training a cutting-edge LLM using a fraction of the compute that is typically needed, without providing a plausible, reproducible method DeepSeek published a lot more about their models than any top tier US lab before them, including their production code. And they're continuing doing so. All their findings in R1 are highly plausible and most are replicated to some degree and adopted in the research and industry. Moonshot AI trained their K2 on DeepSeek's architecture with minor tweaks (not to diminish their novel findings). That's a really solid model. Moreover, they released their DeepSeek-Math-7B-RL back in April 2024. [2] It was a tiny model that outperformed huge then-SOTA LLMs like Claude 3 Opus in math, and validated their training technique (GPRO). Basically, they made the first reasoning model worth talking about. Their other optimizations (MLA) can be traced back to DeepSeek v2. >Early DeepSeek coming up with near-identical answers to ChatGPT--e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1idqi7p/deepseek_and_chatgpt_gave_me_same_answer_what/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1idqi7p/deepseek_a... That's n=1 nonsense, not evidence. GPT contamination was everywhere, even Claude used to claim to be GPT-3 occasionally, or Reddit Anti-Evil Team. (yes, really) All models have overlapping datasets that are also contaminated with previous models outputs, and mode collapse makes them converge on similar patterns which seem to come and go with each generation. [1] https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202501/1327676.shtml https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202501/1327676.shtml [2] https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/deepseek-math-7b-rl https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/deepseek-math-7b-rl
  - nl 10mo ago
    > Large-scale exfiltration of data from ChatGPT when DeepSeek was being developed, and which Microsoft linked to DeepSeek This is not the same thing at all. Current legal doctrine is that ChatGPT output is not copyrightable, so at most Deepseek violated the terms of use of ChatGPT. That isn't IP theft. To add to that example, there are numerous open-source datasets that are derived from ChatGPT data. Famously, the Alpaca dataset kick-started the open source LLM movement by fine tuning Llama on a GPT-derived dataset: https://huggingface.co/datasets/tatsu-lab/alpaca https://huggingface.co/datasets/tatsu-lab/alpaca
- moralIsYouLie 10mo ago
  corporate espionage was my first thought back then. unfolding events since indicate that it wasn't theft but part of a deal. the magic math seems to check out, too
- grosswait 10mo ago
  Could have picked a much stronger example of a false talking point.
pylotlight 10mo ago
which of the 5-10~ papers DS published were stolen exactly..?
- epsteingpt 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - FpUser 10mo ago
    You were asked pretty precise question. Instead of addressing it directly your proof is that China in general does do economic espionage. So does fucking every other developed country, US including.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    - est 10mo ago
      this guy's name is literally "epsteingpt" you are probably arguing with a bot.
      - epsteingpt 10mo ago
        no. but appreciate someone with your karma jumping in. name is just topical. although it says something about 2025 that we can't tell!
  - nl 10mo ago
    Pot, Kettle, meet black. "some elements of the indictment concern cyber-snooping in connection with trade disputes, which at least sounds a lot like the kind of cyber-snooping on firms that the United States does." https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/why-did-doj-indict-chinese-military-officers https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/why-did-doj-indict-chin... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-brazil-oil-petrobras https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-bra... https://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/30/news/airbus-germany-nsa-spying https://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/30/news/airbus-germany-nsa-s...