DeepSeek’s breakthroughs in lowering the entry point for creating chatbots and other generative AI tools means small players now have a more level field on which to develop new products and compete.
Chinese start-up DeepSeek’s cost-saving techniques for training and delivering generative AI (genAI) models could democratize the entire industry by lowering entry barriers for new AI companies.
DeepSeek made waves this week as its chatbot overtook ChatGPT downloads on the Apple and Google App Stores. The open-source AI model’s impact lies in matching leading US models’ performance at a fraction of the cost by using compute and memory resources more efficiently.
DeepSeek is more than China’s “ChatGPT”; it’s a major step forward for global AI by making model building cheaper, faster, and more accessible, according to Forrester Research. While large language models (LLMs) aren’t the only route to advanced AI, DeepSeek’s innovations should be “celebrated as a milestone for AI progress,” the research firm said.
The efficiencies of DeepSeek’s AI methodology means it requires vastly less compute capacity on which to run; that means it could also affect the chip industry, which has been riding a wave of GPU and AI accelerator hardware purchases by companies building out massive data centers.
For example, Meta is planning to spend $65 billion to build a data center with a footprint that’s almost as large as Manhattan. Expected to come online at the end of this year, the data center would house 1.3 million GPUs to power AI tech used by Facebook and other Meta ventures.
Brendan Englot, a professor and AI expert at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, said the fact that DeepSeek’s models are also open source will also help make it easier for other AI start-ups to compete against large tech companies. “DeepSeek’s technology provides an excellent example of how disruptive and innovative new tools can be built faster with the aid of open source software,” said Englot, who is also director of the Stevens Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI).
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