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Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

simonwillison.net

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Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#41

Post by rfoo »

simonw wrote: post #24
netdevphoenix wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did DeepSeek not kept this for themselves? Is this a Meta style scorched earth strategy?

There are a bunch of theories floating round. Personally this looks to me like an ego thing: the DeepSeek team are really, really good and their CEO is enjoying the enormous attention they are getting, plus the pride of proving that Chinese AI labs can take the lead in a field that everyone thought the USA was unassailable in. Maybe they are true believers in building and sharing "AGI" with the world? Lots of people…

> none of the people listed on the DeepSeek papers got educated at US universities

"You have been educated at foreign universities / worked at foreign companies" is indeed an excuse they have used at least once to refuse a candidate. n=1 though so maybe that's just a convenient excuse. There's one guy who went to University of Adelaide (IIRC) on the paper.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#42

Post by bbzealot »

pavitheran wrote: post #12
blakesterz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is DeepSeek really that big of a deal that everyone else should worry?

Deepseek is a big deal but we should be happy not worried that our tools are improving.

Why though?

I'm worried these technologies may take my job away and make the balance between capital and labor even more uneven.

Why should I be happy?

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#43

Post by simonw »

punkpeye wrote: post #39

I don't get something. So I tried hosting this model myself. But the amount of minimum GPU RAM needed is 400gb+ Which even with the cheapest GPU providers will be at least USD 15/hour How is everyone running these models?

Using the smaller distilled versions. I'm running this one, which only needs 20GB of VRAM (or regular RAM on Apple Silicon): https://ollama.com/library/deepseek-r1:32b

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#44

Post by Waterluvian »

jeswin wrote: post #31

> 99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1 I hope we can put to rest the argument that LLMs are only marginally useful in coding - which are often among the top comments on many threads. I suppose these arguments arise from (a) having used only GH copilot which is the worst tool, or (b) not having spent enough time with the tool/llm, or (c) apprehension. I've given up responding to these.…

I want this to be true. Actually writing the code is the least creative, least interesting part of my job.

But I think it’s still much too early for any form of “can we all just call it settled now? In this case, as we all know, lines of code is not a useful metric. How many person hours were spent doing anything associated with this PR’s generation and how does that compare to not using AI tools, and how does the result compare in terms of the various forms of quality? That’s the rubric I’d like to see us use in a more consistent manner.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#45

Post by cft »

cft wrote: post #30
simonw wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DeepSeek v3 or DeepSeek R1?

DeepSeek R1

@jetbalsa - HN does not allow me to reply, the reply depth is limited, so replying here.

I was simply clicking the paperclip and attaching the .py files to the prompt.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#46

Post by cjbgkagh »

jeswin wrote: post #31

> 99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1 I hope we can put to rest the argument that LLMs are only marginally useful in coding - which are often among the top comments on many threads. I suppose these arguments arise from (a) having used only GH copilot which is the worst tool, or (b) not having spent enough time with the tool/llm, or (c) apprehension. I've given up responding to these.…

Who would the new applications be for? I figure that it’ll be far easier to build apps for use by LLMs than building apps for people to use. I don’t think there will be this large increase of induced demand, the whole world just got a lot more efficient and that’s probably a bad thing for the average person.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#47

Post by AnotherGoodName »

netdevphoenix wrote: post #16
simonw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it is definitely a big deal. I expect it will be a net positive: they proved that you can both train and run inference against powerful models for way less compute than people had previously expected - and they published enough details that other AI labs are already starting to replicate their results. I think this will mean cheaper, faster, and better models. This FAQ about it is very good: https://stratechery…

Why did DeepSeek not kept this for themselves? Is this a Meta style scorched earth strategy?

It’s a bunch of known optimisations bundled together rather than any single revolutionary change.

More open than any other model (but still a bespoke licence) and bundles together a bunch of known improvements. There’s nothing to hide here honestly and without the openness it wouldn’t be as interesting.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#48

Post by rozap »

jeswin wrote: post #31

> 99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1 I hope we can put to rest the argument that LLMs are only marginally useful in coding - which are often among the top comments on many threads. I suppose these arguments arise from (a) having used only GH copilot which is the worst tool, or (b) not having spent enough time with the tool/llm, or (c) apprehension. I've given up responding to these.…

Broadly agree. Whether or not it is useful isn't really an interesting discussion, because it so clearly is useful. The more interesting question is what it does to supply and demand. If the past is any indication, I think we've seen that lowering to barrier to getting software shipped and out the door (whether it's higher level languages, better tooling) has only made demand greater. Maybe this time it's different because it's such a leap vs an incremental gain? I don't know. The cynical part of me thinks that software always begets more software, and systems just become ever more complex. That would suggest that our jobs are safe. But again, I don't say that with confidence.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#49

Post by horsawlarway »

blakesterz wrote: post #4
simonw wrote: post #3

Given these initial results, I'm now experimenting with running DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B for some coding tasks on my laptop via Ollama - their version of that needs about 20GB of RAM on my M2. https://www.ollama.com/library/deepseek-r1:32b It's impressive! I'm finding myself running it against a few hundred lines of code mainly to read its chain of thought - it's good for things like refactoring where it will thi…

Is DeepSeek really that big of a deal that everyone else should worry?

I would say worry? Yes. Panic? No.

It's... good. Even the qwen/llama distills are good. I've been running the Llama-70b-distill and it's good enough that it mostly replaces my chatgpt plus plan (not pro - plus).

I think if anything - One of my big takeaways is that OpenAI shot themselves in the foot, big time, by not exposing the COT for the O1 Pro models. I find the section of the DeepSeek models to often be more helpful than the actual answer.

For work that's treating the AI as collaborative rather than "employee replacement" the COT output is really valuable. It was a bad move for them to completely hide it from users, especially because they make the user sit there waiting while it generates anyways.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#50

Post by nine_zeros »

jeswin wrote: post #31

> 99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1 I hope we can put to rest the argument that LLMs are only marginally useful in coding - which are often among the top comments on many threads. I suppose these arguments arise from (a) having used only GH copilot which is the worst tool, or (b) not having spent enough time with the tool/llm, or (c) apprehension. I've given up responding to these.…

> Our trade has changed forever, and there's no going back. When companies claim that AI will replace developers, it isn't entirely bluster. Jobs are going to be lost unless there's somehow a demand for more applications

This is a key insight - the trade has changed.

For a long time, hoarding talent - who could conceive and implement such PRs - was a competitive advantage. It no longer is because companies can hire and get similar outcomes, with fewer and mediocre devs.

But at the same time, these companies have lost their technological moat. The people were the biggest moat. The hoarding of people were the reason why SV could stay ahead of other concentrated geographies. This is why SV companies grew larger and larger.

But now, anyone anywhere can produce anything and literally demolish any competitive advantage of large companies. As an example, literally a single Deepseek release yesterday destroyed large market cap companies.

It means that the future world is likely to have a large number of geographically distributed developers, always competing, and the large companies will have to shed market cap because their customers will be distributed among this competition.

It's not going to be pleasant. Life and work will change but it is not merely loss of jobs but it is going to be loss of the large corporation paradigm.

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