Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The path to open-sourcing the DeepSeek inference engine

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 69 posts

Re: The path to open-sourcing the DeepSeek inference engine

#51

Post by choonway »

avodonosov wrote: post #17

What motivates the commercial AI companies to share their research results and know-how? Why did Google published the Transformer architecture instead of keeping it to themselves? I understand that people may want to do good things for humanity, facilitate progress, etc. But if an action goes against commercial interest, how can the company management take it and not get objections from shareholders? Or there is a co…

If you don't allow them to publish research work, your greatest talents will leave.

I used to work in such a restrictive environment. Nobody worth their salt stayed long.

Re: The path to open-sourcing the DeepSeek inference engine

#52

Post by bobxmax »

avodonosov wrote: post #17

What motivates the commercial AI companies to share their research results and know-how? Why did Google published the Transformer architecture instead of keeping it to themselves? I understand that people may want to do good things for humanity, facilitate progress, etc. But if an action goes against commercial interest, how can the company management take it and not get objections from shareholders? Or there is a co…

It's worth noting that, while a noteworthy paper, nobody really expected the Transformer at the time to be the breakthrough it eventually became.

Re: The path to open-sourcing the DeepSeek inference engine

#53

Post by kmacdough »

esperent wrote: post #37
anon373839 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or there is a commercial logic that motivates sharing of information and intellectual property? What logic is that? There absolutely is a sound commercial justification to share research: long-term growth through advancement of the field. (Deep learning would never have made the progress it has without open research!) If this seems quaint, it’s because we’re too accustomed to short-term, transactional, Wall Street…

It's not so much that it seems quaint, it's that we are accustomed to short-term, transactional, Wall Street thinking from companies like Google. For very good reason, because that's exactly how they behave in all other areas. The question remains, why do they appear altruistic when it comes to sharing papers? I find it hard to believe that it's actual altruism. It's far more likely that it's transactional behavior t…

It's such a rapidly developing field with much of the progress happening in small labs on the open source models. Eventually, the field will coverage and stabilize. For now, the bet is too be open and supportive, to be close to the progress and be in best position when the dust settles.

Re: The path to open-sourcing the DeepSeek inference engine

#54

Post by nialv7 »

bobxmax wrote: post #52
avodonosov wrote: post #17

What motivates the commercial AI companies to share their research results and know-how? Why did Google published the Transformer architecture instead of keeping it to themselves? I understand that people may want to do good things for humanity, facilitate progress, etc. But if an action goes against commercial interest, how can the company management take it and not get objections from shareholders? Or there is a co…

It's worth noting that, while a noteworthy paper, nobody really expected the Transformer at the time to be the breakthrough it eventually became.

and back then in 2017, AI hasn't really been productized yet, people behind Transformer were researchers, publishing their results were the norm.

Re: The path to open-sourcing the DeepSeek inference engine

#55

Post by timClicks »

avodonosov wrote: post #17

What motivates the commercial AI companies to share their research results and know-how? Why did Google published the Transformer architecture instead of keeping it to themselves? I understand that people may want to do good things for humanity, facilitate progress, etc. But if an action goes against commercial interest, how can the company management take it and not get objections from shareholders? Or there is a co…

There are a few commercially valid strategies.

1. Goodwill and mindshare. If you're known as "the best" or "the most innovative", then you'll attract customers.

2. Talent acquisition. Smart people like working with smart people.

3. Becoming the standard. If your technology becomes widely adopted, and you've been using it the longest, then you're suddenly be the best placed in your industry to make use of the technology while everyone retools.

4. Deception. Sometimes you publish work that's "old" internally but is still state of the art. This provides your competition with a false sense of where your research actually is.

5. Freeride on others' work. Maybe experimenting with extending an idea is too expensive/risky to fund internally? Perhaps a wave of startups will try. Acquire one of them that actually makes it work.

6. Undercut the market leader. If your industry has a clear market leader, the others can use open source to cooperate to erode that leadership position.

Re: The path to open-sourcing the DeepSeek inference engine

#56

Post by animal531 »

I spent the last two or so months using it as an assistant for code and my conclusion is that it is terrible compared to even the free model of ChatGPT.

The incidence of bugs, it not understanding what you're asking or just generating code that is straight up wrong is much worse. Even with guidance it will often be unable to fix issues, leaving you to do all the manual legwork to get things working. Usually you're better off just having done everything yourself from the start.

During those two months they really improved GPT as well, its generation speed is now much much faster, and the quality of its output has become a lot better.

Re: The path to open-sourcing the DeepSeek inference engine

#57

Post by CrimpCity »

animal531 wrote: post #56

I spent the last two or so months using it as an assistant for code and my conclusion is that it is terrible compared to even the free model of ChatGPT. The incidence of bugs, it not understanding what you're asking or just generating code that is straight up wrong is much worse. Even with guidance it will often be unable to fix issues, leaving you to do all the manual legwork to get things working. Usually you're be…

That’s interesting since this has been my exact opposite experience.

What type of coding are you doing? Did you locally roll your own coding assistant with a local model of DeepSeek or are you prompting via the web?

Re: The path to open-sourcing the DeepSeek inference engine

#58

Post by robertlagrant »

esperent wrote: post #37
anon373839 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or there is a commercial logic that motivates sharing of information and intellectual property? What logic is that? There absolutely is a sound commercial justification to share research: long-term growth through advancement of the field. (Deep learning would never have made the progress it has without open research!) If this seems quaint, it’s because we’re too accustomed to short-term, transactional, Wall Street…

It's not so much that it seems quaint, it's that we are accustomed to short-term, transactional, Wall Street thinking from companies like Google. For very good reason, because that's exactly how they behave in all other areas. The question remains, why do they appear altruistic when it comes to sharing papers? I find it hard to believe that it's actual altruism. It's far more likely that it's transactional behavior t…

> it's that we are accustomed to short-term, transactional, Wall Street thinking from companies like Google.

Out of all of the companies in the world, I wouldn't put Google near the bottom of the list in terms of stuff they've discovered and released to the world.

Re: The path to open-sourcing the DeepSeek inference engine

#59

Post by Zambyte »

behnamoh wrote: post #26
bcoughlan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess it comes down to that the best researchers in the world want their work out in the open

Ilya doesn't. He's a strong proponent of closed source and censorship.

Let's hope Totally Safe Intelligence doesn't end up having the same relationship with their name as Totally Open AI.

Re: The path to open-sourcing the DeepSeek inference engine

#60

Post by buyucu »

avodonosov wrote: post #17

What motivates the commercial AI companies to share their research results and know-how? Why did Google published the Transformer architecture instead of keeping it to themselves? I understand that people may want to do good things for humanity, facilitate progress, etc. But if an action goes against commercial interest, how can the company management take it and not get objections from shareholders? Or there is a co…

Deepseek is not a commercial AI company. They are the hobby of a hedge fund, something they do on the side for fun and glory.
Post reply on HN