DeepSeek: Reshaping AI in a West-dominated world

In the cutthroat world of artificial intelligence, long dominated by Silicon Valley titans, DeepSeek has emerged as a formidable new player. Since its debut in late 2023, this Chinese AI has stirred global attention, representing more than just another technological innovation. It's a complex phenomenon that reflects the shifting landscape of innovation, power and cultural influence in the AI-driven era.

Developed by QuantumThink Labs in Shenzhen, DeepSeek was created by a team of ex-Google Brain engineers and Peking University experts. DeepSeek is not your average chatbot. Trained on a staggering 20 trillion tokens, this multimodal model showcases linguistic proficiency, code generation capabilities and reasoning skills that rival or surpass its Western counterparts. What truly sets DeepSeek apart is its remarkable efficiency, delivering GPT-4-level performance with 30 percent less computational power.

In a strategic move, QuantumThink made a "lite" version of DeepSeek open source, a decision that has sparked widespread adoption across the globe. Developers from cities like Lagos to Jakarta have quickly embraced it to create a wide range of applications ranging from Swahili poetry generators to AI-powered farm management tools for rural India.

DeepSeek's meteoric rise is no accident. It capitalized on three significant gaps in the AI market that set it apart from established players. Firstly, it achieved benchmark dominance, outperforming GPT-4 in logic puzzles and multilingual tasks on LMSYS Chatbot Arena, particularly in languages like Chinese, Arabic and Swahili. A Nairobi hackathon team used it to build a real-time Maasai-to-English legal translator that outperformed tools from Google and Meta. Secondly, it sparked a cost revolution. Argentine startups reported slashing their cloud computing expenses by 40 percent while using DeepSeek for tasks like generating telenovela scripts and tax code analysis. This cost advantage is a game-changer for emerging economies, allowing them to harness cutting-edge AI at a fraction of the cost. Thirdly, DeepSeek brings a unique narrative edge. It understands niche internet slang like "xiaoxianrou" (literally "little fresh meat") and even K-pop references, which resonates with users in the Global South who feel alienated by AI products that seem like exports from the US.

However, DeepSeek's growing influence is not without challenges. There are concerns that US government may block American firms from using DeepSeek, citing data security concerns. Tariff warfare could also be on the cards. Yet, such moves might backfire, potentially harming US startups that benefit from DeepSeek's cost advantages.

The future of AI, with DeepSeek at the center, remains uncertain. Will it trigger a splinternet tech bloc battle between the US and China, or will its open-source roots foster global collaboration? DeepSeek's story is not just about technology; it's about the power of innovation and agency.

For too long, the AI narrative has been dominated by Western powers. Now, a Chinese lab has shown that innovation is not exclusive to the West. Whether we enter an AI arms race or usher in a new era of global cooperation depends on how we choose to use and share this technology. As a Brazilian coder said, the future of AI must speak the language of both the developed and developing world to truly succeed.

The author is a Shenzhen-based English tutor. The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.

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