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Notes on DeepSeek

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Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#61

Post by xyzsparetimexyz »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #19
boristsr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely mind boggling to see claims of model distillation being theft, a class of attack, and all sorts of claims all the while Meta is in court for copyright violation, anthropic has had to settle a case with authors. With distillation "attacks" at least they paid API fees.

There are 2 things worth separating. 1) China distills and is therefore morally bad. As you rightly point out, that's not a great argument. 2) China distills and is therefore possibly not that competent. I think that makes sense. If they only catch up to the frontier through distillation then 1) Their model will never be as good as the model they are distilling from. 2) They will never reach the frontier - they need…

Deepseek models are on the Pareto frontier of cost/performance. Thats the far more important one than just making a top scoring model.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#62

Post by pqtyw »

kaliqt wrote: post #58
sheept wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that it's unreliable, it's just lazy research. Wikipedia, like all encyclopedias, is a tertiary source, but ideally your essay should be a mix of primary and secondary sources, while Wikipedia discourages original research and prefers only secondary sources. Wikipedia itself recommends against citing it as research[0] for this reason. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia

Laziness should never be the issue. The issue is that Wikipedia can be wrong and you’d only know that by going to the source (or lack thereof), or checking other sources.

All secondary sources can be just as wrong, while standards of course might differ being published doesn't prove much on its own. Also of course in many/most non theoretical fields you find plenty of conflicting sources so relying on a "consensus" based high quality encyclopaedia article seems like a more reliable approach if you are new to the field and don't really understand what you are reading.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#63

Post by SXX »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #53
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #3

"As a whole, China seems to treat AI as just another technology, rather than as some kind of singularity moment." This is a refreshing perspective.

The CCP is very active in the matter of AI. In fact, the DeepSeek moment was responsible for Xi calling for a private meeting with tech bosses, including the exiled Alibaba founder Ma. Which is practically unheard of in China politics. I don't have enough information to say whether the Chinese leadership sees AI "just as the next technology" or they are more cautious due to its double-sword nature. But the immense ef…

> I don't think it can be seen as similar to other ordinary techs.

Not saying its a bad thing, but US and EU limited exports of chips and litography equipment to China for decades.

There is literally nothing else China can do to secure their supply of chips. They would do it even without AI bubble.

Its military tech now and this is not just about LLMs. Autonomous flying killbots need GPUs too.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#64

Post by pstuart »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #53
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #3

"As a whole, China seems to treat AI as just another technology, rather than as some kind of singularity moment." This is a refreshing perspective.

The CCP is very active in the matter of AI. In fact, the DeepSeek moment was responsible for Xi calling for a private meeting with tech bosses, including the exiled Alibaba founder Ma. Which is practically unheard of in China politics. I don't have enough information to say whether the Chinese leadership sees AI "just as the next technology" or they are more cautious due to its double-sword nature. But the immense ef…

There's plenty to not like about the CCP, but their strategic investment in the country as a whole is impressive. It would be great to have that on our side as well but with the current state of things that is a non-starter.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#65

Post by hsuduebc2 »

manishsharan wrote: post #57
hsuduebc2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are subsidized by the Chinese government. This is literally a tactic to destroy global competition. It's a smart move to make everyone dependent on them.

Any evidence to back that up?

Back what exactly? That China subsided it's domestic companies?

https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/subsidies-and-the-solar...

https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#66

Post by SXX »

culi wrote: post #49
flawn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CCP knows, whatever the heck this technology will bring with itself, the current power dynamic inside of the country is on their side, and AI will solidify it. I hypothesize that, rather than slowly having it disperse in society and allow people to harness it in ways they don't want, they might as well accelerate everything until AI becomes the totalitarian swiss knife - which they can make use of in the best way…

US used AI (Claude on Maven) to determine a girl's elementary school as a target in war[0] and then triple tapped it and you're still more worried about hypothetical misuses of the single country responsible for this technology not being concentrated in the hands of a few powerful elite? ffs [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/03/11/...

Its horrible event, but it was hit because Iranian regime builds schools and hospitals across the street from military bases.

Nothing to do with AI and can happen in any war. Do some research, check sattelite imagery:

https://goo.gl/maps/ZoAXkw1iFwyF7exQ8?g_st=ac

PS: I not trying defend bombing schools, but posting that its "AI" resposible is opposite of what you need to do if you care.

Its military - there been specific people who found this location for the strike, then some senior officers who choose it without checking and specific people who executed it. And its all logged with "paper" trail in chain of command.

It was all people with specific names who are responsible to avoid bombing schools. They failed. Not "AI".

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#67

Post by sometimelurker »

swyx wrote: post #41
quadruple wrote: post #23

Post appears to have been removed, I caught a copy of it: https://pastebin.com/rcAqEFG1 I assume it will get reposted at some point.

thanks. this really isnt that long, might as well paste in full here since OP deleted. Notes on DeepSeek: We visited the company HQ last Tuesday. It was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng and operated out of his hedge fund, High-Flyer, until somewhat recently. The company released their R1 model in January 2025, so it was interesting to see what they’ve been doing The company is located in an unmarked, 12-story buildin…

> They were not at all concerned with some kind of hostile / AGI takeover scenario.

this doesn't sound belivable, or at least it seems off. competent ai engineers should have good intution about how agents work, and what happens when they don't do what you want them to do: https://www.forbes.com/sites/boazsobrado/2026/03/11/alibabas...

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#69

Post by throawayonthe »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #46
swyx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks. this really isnt that long, might as well paste in full here since OP deleted. Notes on DeepSeek: We visited the company HQ last Tuesday. It was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng and operated out of his hedge fund, High-Flyer, until somewhat recently. The company released their R1 model in January 2025, so it was interesting to see what they’ve been doing The company is located in an unmarked, 12-story buildin…

I don't get the part of "AI models are not regulated directly, the government instead has restrictions on how those models can be used in software, services". Is it not the same thing? When I chat with DeepSeek about any (Chinese) political/social issue, it immediately begins aligning with the party's line or just cut off the conversation abruptly.

isn't that exactly what the quote says? the software service (presumably their web chat) has restrictions that the model itself does not

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#70

Post by throawayonthe »

hsuduebc2 wrote: post #51
slaw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In every market China dominates, Chinese products are still inexpensive. Solar panels, batteries, EVs, drones,..

Because they are subsidized by the Chinese government. This is literally a tactic to destroy global competition. It's a smart move to make everyone dependent on them.

1. this seems to be based on misconceptions about how the chinese economy works 2. why haven't they done it yet? is the implication that they will wait until they're dominant in some x number of industries worldwide and then... raise prices?

p.s. how would such "subsidization" work on a such a scale? if you think the EVs, PV panels, etc are cheap because the govt like, just covers the loss on every sale(?) where do they get all that surplus finance to cover labour and resources?

have you considered 'subsidies' can be used for accelerating R&D for national interest rather than some monopolistic plot

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