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On DeepSeek and export controls

darioamodei.com

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Re: On DeepSeek and export controls

#21

Post by Palmik »

kalkin wrote: post #14
Palmik wrote: post #12

> All of this is to say that DeepSeek-V3 is not a unique breakthrough or something that fundamentally changes the economics of LLM’s; it’s an expected point on an ongoing cost reduction curve. What’s different this time is that the company that was first to demonstrate the expected cost reductions was Chinese. Says the CEO whose product [1] costs 15-50x times more. (This is not just the DeepSeek's API, but also 3p pr…

Where does he imply that it's 2x larger than Sonnet?

I inferred that from the other statement:

> Since DeepSeek-V3 is worse than those US frontier models — let’s say by ~2x on the scaling curve, which I think is quite generous to DeepSeek-V3

He says that it's 2x worse. So if it has the ~same quality [1], it would imply it's 2x larger. Unless I misunderstood what he meant there, of course.

[1]: "DeepSeek produced a model close to the performance of US models" -- in his own words.

Re: On DeepSeek and export controls

#22

Post by simplyluke »

From my perspective it’s very convenient that all the new information and competition supports his existing priors that:

1) we need to do various forms of regulation to entrench US closed source market leaders, which happens to increase his company’s value

2) the best way towards improvement in models is not efficiency but continuing to burn ever increasing piles of money, which happens to increase his company’s value

Re: On DeepSeek and export controls

#23

Post by BizarreByte »

throwaway_32u10 wrote: post #20

I'm kind of tired of the entire narrative that "US good, everyone else bad", as if only US deserves to hold powerful technology because it will be used for "the greater good", rather than employ it in military applications, as if Anthropic didn't partner with Palantir. And it amazes me how many people can't seem to see past the "US is good, everyone else are bad" smoke mirror.

[flagged]

Re: On DeepSeek and export controls

#25

Post by rcarmo »

I like a lot of what Dario writes, but in this case I just can't follow the reasoning. Everything I've picked up about how DeepSeek did what they did (including going a level lower than CUDA to better take advantage of the limited hardware[1], and the balance of techniques used[2]) points to some very smart Chinese engineers having out-smarted US ones (to put it in terms that matter to US folk, because I'm European and I ordinarily wouldn't care):

    1 - https://stratechery.com/2025/deepseek-faq/
    2 - https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-has-deepseek-improved-the-transformer-architecture
This post comes across as overly defensive of the US export controls and leaning on the authoritarian regime angle far too much to feel like it isn't just a way to shore up interest in US-based AI companies and widen the moat (or just make sure someone else shores it up politically while they catch up technically).

Anyway, this will always be a deep pocket race. But I wish it wasn't so much about brute-forcing GPUs and wasting power to (as yet) uncertain outcomes as far as model capabilities are concerned, and to me what DeepSeek achieved was to point out ingenuity and better techniques should be something that both OpenAI and Anthropic ought to be pursuing instead of burning cash.

Re: On DeepSeek and export controls

#26

Post by AlanYx »

This piece ignores recent news that DeepSeek is doing inference on Huawei’s Ascend 910C GPUs.

The simplified export control analysis Amodei gives here gets a lot more complicated when increasing export controls potentially ends up spurring additional R&D in Nvidia competitors.

Re: On DeepSeek and export controls

#27

Post by StefanBatory »

throwaway_32u10 wrote: post #20

I'm kind of tired of the entire narrative that "US good, everyone else bad", as if only US deserves to hold powerful technology because it will be used for "the greater good", rather than employ it in military applications, as if Anthropic didn't partner with Palantir. And it amazes me how many people can't seem to see past the "US is good, everyone else are bad" smoke mirror.

I mean, in the end, USA is still better than the alternative.

Re: On DeepSeek and export controls

#28

Post by rcarmo »

suraci wrote: post #5

> Thus, in this world, the US and its allies might take a commanding and long-lasting lead on the global stage. This is just like Captain America giving a pre-battle speech to the Avengers—it's so inspiring! Hail Hydra!

I just had to upvote this for the tongue in cheek call to arms, even though I am really sad that the US is turning out the way it is today...

Re: On DeepSeek and export controls

#29

Post by tuyguntn »

StefanBatory wrote: post #27
throwaway_32u10 wrote: post #20

I'm kind of tired of the entire narrative that "US good, everyone else bad", as if only US deserves to hold powerful technology because it will be used for "the greater good", rather than employ it in military applications, as if Anthropic didn't partner with Palantir. And it amazes me how many people can't seem to see past the "US is good, everyone else are bad" smoke mirror.

I mean, in the end, USA is still better than the alternative.

USA is still better for whom?

Can't remember which countries where bombed by China in last 50 years, but I can give you plenty of examples for the USA

Re: On DeepSeek and export controls

#30

Post by CamperBob2 »

suraci wrote: post #11
jonathanstrange wrote: post #6

It's shortsighted to believe that export controls are relevant. China will be able to manufacture as good or better chips than the US in the not too distant future anyway.

This is a choice between the lesser of two evils, or what could be called "drinking poison to quench thirst." Export controls might lead China to develop its own advanced chips, but without them, China will certainly gain powerful AI capabilities

Point being, they will gain those capabilities either way. The only question is whether we in the US choose to hamstring ourselves with bureaucracy while we watch them do it.
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