The Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek has taken the tech industry by storm, shocking the US and major tech companies in the race for advanced AI. Its efficient and well-structured responses have led many to consider it a rival to Open AI’s ChatGPT, one of the most well-known AI chatbots available for commercial use—but at a fraction of the cost.
Although DeepSeek’s chatbot platform has only been released for approximately a month, the company was founded in 2023 under a Chinese hedge fund called High-Flyer. DeepSeek was initially created to make bets in the Chinese stock market and only shifted to research and development of advanced AI because of the Chinese government’s regulatory crackdowns.
The growth of DeepSeek was unprecedented, to say the least. Advanced AI chips developed in the US were limited to China by Washington, yet the DeepSeek chatbot has proven to be faster in certain aspects and cheaper than other AI models made in the US. DeepSeek surpassed ChatGPT as the most downloaded free iOS app in the US and dropped Nvidia’s (AI chip-making company) market value by over $600 billion in one day.
“I played around with DeepSeek a few times over the past few weeks and I think it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that it is the most advanced AI app yet,” David Lee (10), computer science enthusiast, said. “When comparing its response to ChatGPT when asking mathematical questions regarding theorems and problems, DeepSeek’s responses were easier to understand and better structured. I would personally recommend DeepSeek when you’re having a hard time solving a math problem or when you need help understanding math concepts.”
Because the model was created in small specific domains, the AI is able to answer with expertise in these areas such as mathematics. It allows DeepSeek to be more responsive and accurate at solving competition-level problems compared to larger models like ChatGPT.
DeepSeek claims to have reduced the processing time by using strategies that decrease the total computation time and the memory needed to store it. The training process of the DeepSeek AI cost less than six million dollars while it cost well over $100 million to train the rival AI chatbot GPT-4 of the US.
“I think DeepSeek is amazing because of how human it sounds,” Luke Lee (10), AI enthusiast, said. “From what I have heard, DeepSeek is better than any other AI application due to its clarity and speed. Its explanations sound more natural and easy to follow. People around me tell me that DeepSeek is much better at analyzing text compared to ChatGPT.”
Despite DeepSeek’s remarkable performance, the app faces security and privacy issues due to its ties to the Chinese government. The data stored on the DeepSeek app is sent to databases located in China and Chinese companies, meaning the Chinese government can access the files. Due to this security risk, the Australian government banned the use of DeepSeek from all of its systems and devices.
President Donald Trump has called DeepSeek a “wake-up call” for US tech companies like Open AI. DeepSeek is proof that smaller AI models made from fewer resources can be made to be more efficient and proficient than AI models made from large funds and training data. More AI models like DeepSeek will appear, making AI more accessible to people around the globe.
