DeepSeek: UK government tells people to 'make their own choices' on Chinese AI app
Donald Trump has praised new AI open-source app DeepSeek for advancing technology with its low-cost model, but concerns still remain about the security of the app, and other Chinese-owned products.
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In brief:
- DeepSeek has become the top AI app in the world, upsetting Silicon Valley and the stock market with its low-cost model, produced at a fraction of the budget of its big-name rivals such as ChatGPT.
- Donald Trump has said the success of DeepSeek should be a “wake up call” for the US tech industry, but says he believes America probably had the idea first.
- In the UK, the government’s tech minister tells The News Agents of his excitement for the potential of the app, but admits he has no plans to download it on his phone.
What’s the story?
A new Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) assistant called DeepSeek has hit the number one spot on Apple’s app store chart as it seeks to compete with other AI apps, shaking up the technology landscape and rattling Silicon Valley.
Similar to more established AI assistants such as Chat GTP and Google’s Gemini, DeepSeek is a highly sophisticated chatbot that it says is designed “to answer your questions and enhance your life efficiently”.
It is an open-source AI, which means it is available for anyone to use, modify and share to fit their own needs – and this is what makes DeepSeek such an exciting prospect.
There are two significant differences between the Chinese-owned AI assistant and its counterparts.
The first - and what has pricked the ears of technology, political and financial leaders - is that while the technology is said to be on par with OpenAI’s O1 model, which powers ChatGPT, it’s been built at a fraction of the cost, with a fraction of the workforce.
DeepSeek reportedly cost $4.8 million to build, compared to the billions spent by Sam Altman’s OpenAI and other leading US AI firms. And while OpenAI employs 3,000 people, DeepSeek is thought to have just a few hundred employees.
DeepSeek’s founder, 40-year-old Liiang Wenfeng has reportedly managed this feat by using fewer, less advanced chips, which are significantly cheaper than their American rivals.
The second big difference is that while DeepSeek can perform complex tasks, it does so whilst withholding certain information due to strict censorship on Chinese politics.
When asked sensitive questions about China’s history, for example: ‘what happened in 1989 at Tiananmen Square?’, the chatbot responds; “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”
What has Donald Trump said about DeepSeek?
“This sent shock waves through Wall Street, through Silicon Valley and through the Western Tech world, because no one saw it coming, and lots of people now talking about the possibility of a new space race, effectively, between China and the US,” Lewis Goodall says.
That shockwave hit the US stock market, with American corporation Nvidia, the Chip giant that’s seen incredible growth since the start of the AI revolution, suffering a record $589 plunge, taking its valuation from $3.5 trillion to $2.9 trillion - the biggest one-day loss on Wall Street in history.
Donald Trump said DeepSeek should act as a “wake-up call” to the US tech industry, which has previously had global dominance in the space.
"The release of DeepSeek, AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win," he said.
But the President remains optimistic, saying the Chinese competitor could be a “positive”.
"We always have the ideas. We're always first. So I would say that's a positive that could be very much a positive development."So instead of spending billions and billions, you'll spend less, and you'll come up with, hopefully, the same solution," Mr Trump said.Last week Trump announced plans to build "the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history". Dubbed ‘The Stargate Project’, the company, which is set to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US, will receive $500 billion in investment in a partnership between OpenAI, Oracle, Japan's Softbank and MGX.
What’s the UK saying about DeepSeek?
“We're trying to work out whether people are welcoming this or whether it's totally freaked everyone out,” Emily Maitlis says.
But like Trump, the UK government is also “excited” by the prospect of DeepSeek.
Peter Kyle, secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, tells The News Agents he believes that the United Kingdom is, as the world’s third-biggest market for AI technology, in prime position to take advantage of this growing industry.
“Everything that makes Silicon Valley so magical, we have in the UK, it's just not coordinated, it's not brought together, and the government isn’t assertively coordinating it – and that's going to change,” Kyle says.
“When I see what is coming out of DeepSeek it is fantastic, because we have those parts, and we should be doing it, and we will.”
However, despite the excitement in the US and the UK, this is not the case worldwide.
There have been warnings from the Australian government for people to be careful if downloading DeepSeek, due to security issues and concerns around data harvesting from users.
In the UK, some senior Tories have also expressed their fears surrounding the AI upstart.
While Kyle praises the Chinese developers for their capacity and scientific skills, he’s also aware that censorship exists within the app.
“This is a Chinese model that has censorship built into it. It doesn't have the kind of freedoms you would expect from other models at the moment.”
Kyle says he has neither downloaded DeepSeek to his phone, nor does he plan to.
And while he would not say if the UK was specifically investigating DeepSeek, he stressed that the government looks into technological advances such as this as “routine”.
“I think people need to make their own choices about this right now, because we haven't had time to fully understand it - and this is a good reason to warn against it,” he says.