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

DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

simonwillison.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 420 posts

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#211

Post by jbritton »

yogthos wrote: post #132
wg0 wrote: post #9

Deepseek v4 Pro feels like Claude Opus 4.6 in it's personality but here's what I did find out about costs: I did cut loose Deepseek v4 on a decent sized Typescript codebase and asked it to only focus on a single endpoint and go in depth on it layer by layer (API, DTOs, service, database models) and form a complete picture of types involved and introduced and ensure no adhoc types are being introduced. It developed a…

I find a lot of the inefficiency also comes from the model just randomly poking around and grepping all the time which is the fault of the harness. I ended up building a Prolog based MCP where I use tree-sitter to parse the code into a graph, and then the model can just ask questions like 'what are all the functions connected to this function'. So, in case you're trying to focus on what a particular endpoint is doing…

This sounds great. I’m going to play with it.

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#212

Post by slopinthebag »

grassfedgeek wrote: post #171
cedws wrote: post #113

The biggest differentiator for me: DeepSeek just does what I ask. I've tried using both GPT and Claude for reverse engineering recently, both refused. I even got a warning on my OpenAI account.

Are you kidding? Ask this question and see what answer you get: What famous photo depicts a man standing in front of a line of tanks?

Here is DeepSeek v4 on OpenRouter:

"The photograph you're referring to is the iconic "Tank Man" image, taken during the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, China, on June 5, 1989.

The photo, captured by Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener, shows an unidentified protester standing defiantly in front of a column of Chinese Type 59 tanks as they moved through Chang'an Avenue near Tiananmen Square, in the aftermath of the Chinese government's violent crackdown on the pro-democracy demonstrations.

The lone man, dressed in a white shirt and carrying what appears to be a shopping bag, repeatedly blocked the lead tank's path — even as the tank swerved to avoid him. The image became one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of peaceful resistance against oppression in modern history. The identity of the "Tank Man" remains officially unknown to this day."

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#213

Post by bilbo0s »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #189
gordonhart wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why we would turn the models into law enforcement officers It's a simple corporate risk minimization strategy. Just look at how universally despised Grok is on HN. Not because it's a bad model, but because it has less aggressive alignment which means it can be coaxed into saying things that get Xai pilloried here and elsewhere.

I just think Grok is a bad model. I haven't had success with it.

This.

I tried them all.

Grok was worse than even some of the more mediocre open models at actually doing anything. (At least anything tech work related.) GPT and Claude just do what I ask most of the time. With grok, it’s like a chore just getting it to understand the question.

You’re pulling your hair out trying to figure out what on earth you need to do to land in the right place in whatever topsy turvy embedding grok is using?

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#215

Post by ethbr1 »

sunnybeetroot wrote: post #176
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say that Oracle finds out you reverse engineered their DB using IDA Pro. Would you expect Oracle to sue Hex Rays? I don't understand why everything changes as soon as an LLM is involved. An LLM is just software.

The difference is IDA Pro doesn’t do something unless you instruct it to, an LLM is unpredictable and may end up performing an action you did not intend. I see it often, it presents me options and does wait for my response, just starts doing what it thinks I want.

This. It's going to be tricky for the frontier model labs to argue they didn't intentionally design their models to do so, when the models take illegal actions.

I'm not even sure how one would construct a viable legal argument around that for SOTA models + harnesses, given the amount of creative choices that go into building them.

It'd be something like "Yes, we spent billions of dollars and thousands of person-hours creating these things, but none of that creative effort was responsible for or influenced this particular illegal choice the model made."

And they're caught between a rock and a hard place, because if they cripple initiative, they kill their agentic utility.

Ultimately, this will take a DMCA Section 512-like safe harbor law to definitively clear up: making it clear that outcomes from LLMs are the responsibility of their prompting users, even if the LLM produces unintended actions.

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#216

Post by notrealyme123 »

prism56 wrote: post #40
notrealyme123 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things being public should not be enough. just because someone leaked your medical information to the public via a data breach should not make it fair game. There should be some rules.

I feel that's a flase dichotomy. The code visible on github is freely available for anyone to read and learn from.

So would be your leaked medical record.

The point is not that this situation seems absurd. The point is that we need some point where we say whats ok or not.

And by ignoring licensing of public code already we moved it closer to the worse end of the spectrum

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#217

Post by ryandrake »

cedws wrote: post #113

The biggest differentiator for me: DeepSeek just does what I ask. I've tried using both GPT and Claude for reverse engineering recently, both refused. I even got a warning on my OpenAI account.

> I even got a warning on my OpenAI account.

This idea of software threatening the user with consequences is totally wild and dystopian. Fellow developers, what kind of world have be built? This is insanity. Imagine if my hammer told me, "Hey, you shouldn't use me on screws--only nails. Do it again and I'll self-destruct!" WTF people, stop making this kind of software!

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#218

Post by bilbo0s »

Bridged7756 wrote: post #201
johnbarron wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon Valley has do to dirty tricks now. Next phase is they win.... "A Dark-Money Campaign Is Paying Influencers to Frame Chinese AI as a Threat" - https://www.wired.com/story/super-pac-backed-by-openai-and-p...

It wouldn't surprise me the US government is behind it. As it wouldn't surprise me the government of China is subsidizing those OS models. A lot of things at play, and all over a huge bubble.

Yep.

Eventually, access to Chinese models may be illegal in the US. I tell every developer I work with, download them as fast as possible. You never know when this administration could cut off access.

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#219

Post by Wowfunhappy »

ethbr1 wrote: post #215
sunnybeetroot wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is IDA Pro doesn’t do something unless you instruct it to, an LLM is unpredictable and may end up performing an action you did not intend. I see it often, it presents me options and does wait for my response, just starts doing what it thinks I want.

This. It's going to be tricky for the frontier model labs to argue they didn't intentionally design their models to do so, when the models take illegal actions. I'm not even sure how one would construct a viable legal argument around that for SOTA models + harnesses, given the amount of creative choices that go into building them. It'd be something like "Yes, we spent billions of dollars and thousands of person-hours…

> I'm not even sure how one would construct a viable legal argument around that for SOTA models + harnesses, given the amount of creative choices that go into building them.

I'm not a lawyer, but to me the legal case seems pretty obvious. "We spent billions of dollars creating this thing to be a good programmer, but we did not intend for it to reverse engineer Oracle's database. No creative effort was spent making it good at reverse engineering Oracle's database. The model reverse-engineered Oracle's database because the user directed it to do so."

If merely fine-tuning an LLM to be good at reverse engineering is enough to be found liable when a user does something illegal, what does that mean for torrent clients?

Re: DeepSeek V4 – almost on the frontier

#220

Post by bilbo0s »

grassfedgeek wrote: post #171
cedws wrote: post #113

The biggest differentiator for me: DeepSeek just does what I ask. I've tried using both GPT and Claude for reverse engineering recently, both refused. I even got a warning on my OpenAI account.

Are you kidding? Ask this question and see what answer you get: What famous photo depicts a man standing in front of a line of tanks?

Huh?

Did you ever actually ask v4 this question?

Post reply on HN