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DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

simonwillison.net

51–60 of 420 posts

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#51
post #8

I tweeted about some implementation and review runs that used V4 Pro. Even without the currently discounted pricing, the value is incredible. It takes about twice as long to finish code reviews given an identical context compared to opus 4.7/gpt 5.5 but at 1/10 the cost of less, there's just no comparison. https://twitter.com/aljosa/status/2049176528638902555

Did you do this test through OpenRouter?

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#52
I'm not sure I'd call it "almost on the frontier," but I do think that v4 Pro is the most usable coding model I've seen out of China. I've used it via Ollama Cloud (coding) and OpenRouter (data processing). Feels Sonnet-level to me -- solid at implementation when given a specification, but falls a good bit short of Opus 4.7 max thinking when planning out larger changes or when given open-ended prompts.

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#53
post #14

I'm surprised that people here don't care at all about these models openly training on your data, especially if you use them straight from the model developer. Whereas things like "GitHub now automatically opts everyone into using their code for model training" get hundreds of justifiably angry comments, I never see this brought up anymore on posts like these talking about using Chinese models through OpenRouter. Thi…

My policy is that I don't allow agents to access all code. Some of it is shielded behind bind mounts. Maybe this is a pathetic, artisanal (or ego-driven), reaction of mine to the inevitable. I allow them to work on about 90% of the code (most codebases fully), with some code being considered too valuable to expose to the vendor. When data is involved, LLMs only get to see anonymized data.

This cute policy of mine won't affect anything though. The more we use the models, the more the models will replace this kind of work. Centralisation of power is inevitable; in Medival Europe, we used to have state & church ruling. In modern times but before the internet, it was probably state and banks. Maybe with ongoing digitization (bank offices disappearing) making banks less costly to operate; combined with with bank bailouts, maybe govenments will fully nationalize or at least banks will consolidate.

Then the AI companies will consolidate with the internet information and communication companies (Google/Meta for the US, and Alibaba/Tencent for China). Maybe we'll end up with a few de-facto governmental megacorps that rule in tandem and close cooperation with the formal government, who might handle mostly infra, utilities and the army. The megacorp would control narrative more and take more of a paternal role (educating and protecting the citizens, normally handled by formal governments).

Does this make sense?

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#54
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the data is opensource on github, then in my opinion it should be fair game.

IMO this is unfair for GPL or similarly licensed code. Seems ok for MIT like licensed code though

I think AI will create an open source dark age. Gradually, we'll see a lot less new good open source code. A gradual shift back to the proprietary world. Simmilar to the 1950-1990 period.

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#55
post #14

I'm surprised that people here don't care at all about these models openly training on your data, especially if you use them straight from the model developer. Whereas things like "GitHub now automatically opts everyone into using their code for model training" get hundreds of justifiably angry comments, I never see this brought up anymore on posts like these talking about using Chinese models through OpenRouter. Thi…

AWS Bedrock has DeepSeek models running on their infrastructure. That should be enough to prevent training on user data (there's a markup compared to DeepSeek's pricing though). And unfortunately AWS doesn't have prepaid billing, so you can't just give the internet access to your API key without getting FinDDoS'd.

If anyone is looking for a solution in this space. Fire me an email, I have a partner whose focussed closely on that problem set!

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#57

I tried deepseek v4 through open code at the weekend. I'm a daily Claude/Claude code user. I tried to build something simple and while it got the job done the thinking displayed did not fill me with confidence. It was pages and pages of "actually no", "hang on", "wait that makes no sense". It was like the model was having a breakdown. Bear in mind open code was also new to me so I could be just seeing thinking where…

I feel the reasoning might be tuned for hard questions and not agentic work. I feel it overthinks, good for a very hard question, not for small incremental agentic steps. In theory, disabling thinking and using really well formed instruction, forcing it to still emit a bunch of tokens each step prior to taking action, could help. Only one way to find out though.

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#58

I tried deepseek v4 through open code at the weekend. I'm a daily Claude/Claude code user. I tried to build something simple and while it got the job done the thinking displayed did not fill me with confidence. It was pages and pages of "actually no", "hang on", "wait that makes no sense". It was like the model was having a breakdown. Bear in mind open code was also new to me so I could be just seeing thinking where…

Before CC and Codex removed thinking/verbose and hid most of it, both do that .

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#59
post #52

I'm not sure I'd call it "almost on the frontier," but I do think that v4 Pro is the most usable coding model I've seen out of China. I've used it via Ollama Cloud (coding) and OpenRouter (data processing). Feels Sonnet-level to me -- solid at implementation when given a specification, but falls a good bit short of Opus 4.7 max thinking when planning out larger changes or when given open-ended prompts.

Keep in mind that DeepSeek has a max thinking mode of its own in the API.
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