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Notes on DeepSeek

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#81

Post by nikolay »

I can't recall the scientist's name, but he said months ago that DeepSeek is best for Physics (maybe it was on The Diary of a CEO podcast). So I had a long chat about the Simulation Hypothesis, and I was really surprised by how good, deep, and straight to the point it was.

What's brutal is that Google, which started this AI revolution, has literally the worst coding model! I tried 3.5 Flash last week (the stupid still pays for Ultra due to Google One's storage), and before I gave up on 3.1 Pro, I saw a coding agent hallucinate for the first time in months, even at the highest effort level!

Meanwhile, I've tried DeepSeek with the DeepSeek TUI (now CodeWhale), and it didn't do any worse than Codex or Claude Code. I know there are benchmarks and all, some of them gamed, I'm sure, but in real-world experience, DeepSeek is absolutely amazing for its price! If you have software engineering skills and are not an accidental vibe-coder, honestly, try it out and stop burning money. I'm sure you will get even better results with OpenCode! Human Intelligence + Artificial Intelligence beats the highest AI model without the guidance of a HI!

Meanwhile, I burned through my entire budget on the $200 Max for Fable 5, for a modest-amount project in Python using its own CLI coding agent. What a waste!

I keep hearing "always use the bestest model" - no, always use the most practical one for the job! I got so many issues with Fable on a very small project that even Copilot found that it's simply not worth it for 99% of your tasks!

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#82

Post by dang »

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #55
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…

[flagged]

Please don't post personal attacks.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#83

Post by SequoiaHope »

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.

Very similar to why the New York Times publishes a narrow set of opinions. The government doesn’t have to ask NYT to restrict opinions. It’s just that a series of forces have come together such that one does not become an editor at NYT if they’re a militant vegan pacifist. You have to have a certain set of moderate opinions to get in the door. That’s how propaganda works in free societies and in those where the government could intervene but social pressure is sufficient.

https://chomsky.info/consent01/

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#84

Post by _ache_ »

throwaw12 wrote: post #52
sinuhe69 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is not, just downlaod the model and ask same questions.

Note that Qwen from Alibaba choose to align the model with the PCC. It's not a same as DeepSeek who ensure it at the "service" level.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#85

Post by applicative »

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/...

This was obviously a story - a telltale 'admission' - devised by the military.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#86

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#87

Post by alphabetting »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #83
sinuhe69 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Very similar to why the New York Times publishes a narrow set of opinions. The government doesn’t have to ask NYT to restrict opinions. It’s just that a series of forces have come together such that one does not become an editor at NYT if they’re a militant vegan pacifist. You have to have a certain set of moderate opinions to get in the door. That’s how propaganda works in free societies and in those where the gover…

>The government doesn’t have to ask NYT to restrict opinions.

This 1988 model of the flow of information in free societies and their media gatekeepers was probably correct. Nearly 40 years later it is not. The digital content flows in free societies is so diverse today that widely read content extremely critical of whichever parties or power-holders you'd like to read about is everywhere and easy to find. Not the case in authoritarian systems.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#88

Post by slopinthebag »

Funny this was posted here the same day the Anthropic CEO posted a doomsday prediction begging for government regulation. I was curious how the Chinese feel about AI risks considering I would expect them to be more cautious than the Americans, but they clearly aren’t. Which indicates to me that the Anthropic CEO is probably just pushing for regulatory capture. I mean, maybe he believes what he is saying, but I don’t.

Re: Notes on DeepSeek

#89

Post by slopinthebag »

sometimelurker wrote: post #67
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…

> 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...

I think a competent engineer understands that they are statistical next-token prediction machines and aligns their expectations around that.
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