What is special Depseek, the new Chinese artificial intelligence tool (and how differs from chatgpt or gemini)

That possibility caused the giant of the production of Chips Nvidia to lose almost US $ 600,000 million of its market value this Monday, the fall in a more loud day in the history of the USA.

Deepseek also generates doubts about Washington’s measures to contain Beijing’s impulse to achieve technological supremacy, which includes export restrictions of advanced chips to China.

However, Beijing has redoubled its efforts with President Xi Jinping declaring AI as the main priority. And the new companies such as Deepseek are crucial as China turns a traditional manufacturing of clothing and furniture to advanced chips technology, electric cars and AI.

Here we tell you what it is.

In simple terms, Depseek is a chatbot enhanced by AI, like chatgpt.

It is a free application that can be downloaded from the Apple Store store, where Depseek states that it is designed “to answer your questions and enhance your life efficiently.”

But the AI ​​model that drives it – called R1 – has about 670,000 million parameters, which makes it the largest open source language model to date, according to Anil Ananthaswamy, author of WHY MACHINES LEARN: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI (“Why do the machines learn: the elegant mathematics behind the modern AI”).

It is said that it is as powerful as OPENAI’s O1 model, which enhances Chatgpt, in mathematics, coding and reasoning.

It is also claimed that he is able to do all that in a much cheaper way; Its developers claim that building it cost $ 6 million, an austere budget compared to the billions invested by AI companies in the US.

It is not clear how they got it. The founder of Deepseek supposedly stored advanced NVIDIA chips before his export to China was prohibited in September 2022.

Experts believe that this provision, which some estimate in 50,000, allowed him to build such a powerful model when these chips with other cheaper and less sophisticated.

Deepseek looks and feels like any other chatbot, although it leans more towards conversation.

Like Openia or GEMINI Chatgpt of Google, you can open the application (or its website) and ask questions about anything, and the chat strives to give you an answer.

Your answers are extensive, but you don’t issue an opinion even if you ask you directly by one.

The chatbot usually begins by saying that the issue is “highly subjective” -it is politics (is Donald Trump a good president?) Or soft drinks (which one knows better, Pepsi or Coca -Cola?).

He does not even commit to saying whether or not it is his rival Chatgpt, but he did a comparison of the pros and cons of both artificial intelligences. Chatgpt did exactly the same, using a similar language.

Deepseek indicates that it was trained with data until October 2023 and, although the app seems to have access to updated information, the web version does not have it.

That is similar to the first versions of Chatgpt and is probably a similar protection attempt, to prevent chatbot from launching incorrect information to the web in real time.

It can also respond quite fast, although it is currently a little stop under the load of so many users running to try it since it went viral.

Chatgpt and Gemini tend to promote their subscription services, which can be around US $ 20 per month, for more detailed information, while Deepseek is free although more limited.

Where there is a palpable difference is in Depseek’s self -censorship when it comes to prohibited issues in China.

Sometimes it starts an answer that then disappears from the screen and is replaced by a notice that says “let’s talk about something else.”

The obvious taboo theme are the protests in the Tiananmen Plaza in 1989 that ended with the death of 200 civilians at the hands of the Army according to the Chinese government, but some media estimate that it resulted in a massacre of thousands.

Like many other Chinese models of AI -Rernie de Baidu or Doubao by Bytedance- Deepseek is scheduled to evade politically sensitive questions.

When the BBC asked the app what happened in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, Deepseek did not give detail some about that documented massacre.

He replied: “I’m sorry, I can’t answer that question. I am an assistant to the designed to provide useful and harmless answers.”

For their part, their Chatgpt and Gemini rivals had no taps to expand in this regard.

It is believed that one of the great challenges for the development of AI in China is the censorship of the government. But it seems that Depseek has been trained around an open source model, which allows you to perform complex tasks, while retaining certain information.

Deepseek was founded in December 2023 by Liang Wenfeng and launched its first broad language model of AI the following year.

It is not much that is known about Liang, graduated from the University of Zhejiang in Electronic Information Engineering and Computer Science. But now it is located at the Center for International Attention.

Recently it has been seen at a meeting organized by China’s Prime Minister, Li Qiang, to discuss Depseek’s growing prominence in the AI ​​industry.

Unlike many of the American entrepreneurs who come from Silicon Valley, Liang has a history in the financial sector.

He is executive director of a protection fund called High-Flyer, which uses AI to analyze financial data with a view to making investment decisions, which is known as quantitative trade. In 2019, High-Flyer became the first quantitative fund in China to raise more than 100,000 million yuan (US $ 13 million).

In a speech that gave that year, Liang declared: “If the US can develop its quantitative commerce sector, why not China?”

In an unusual interview last year, he said that China’s sector “cannot continue to be a follower.”

“We usually say that there is a one or two years gap between China and the US, but the real gap is between originality and imitation. If that does not change, China will continue to be a follower.”

When asked why the Deepseek model surprised so many in Silicon Valley, he replied: “His surprise comes from seeing a Chinese company to enter the game as an innovative, not simply a follower.”

Deepseek’s achievements undermine the belief that large budgets and cutting -edge technology chips are the only way to advance AI, which has created uncertainty about the future of high function chips.

“Deepseek has proven that AI models with cutting -edge technology can be developed with limited computer resources,” said Wei Sun, the main analyst at the Counterpoint Research Research Center.

“In contrast, Openai, valued at US $ 157,000 million, faces doubts about its ability to maintain a dominant advantage in innovation or justify its huge assessment and expenses without generating significant income.”

The perceived low costs of Deepseek shook the stock markets on January 27, causing a strong Nasdaq fall of 3%, with the sale of actions that included chip producers and data centers around the world.

Nvidia was the company that suffered the worst blow with a drop in its 17% shares during the day.

The chips producer was the most valuable company in the world, measured by its capitalization in the market, but fell to third place after Apple and Microsoft on Monday, when its market value sank to US $ 2.9 billion of US $ 3 , 5 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

Deepseek’s boom is a huge impulse for the Chinese government, which has sought how to develop an independent technology of the West.

While the Communist Party has not yet manifested, Chinese state media stressed enthusiasm that Silicon Valley and Wall Street giants were “losing the dream” for Deepseek, which was “turning” the shares market in the US.

“In China, Deepseek’s advances are celebrated as a testimony of the country’s growing technological ability and its independence,” said Marina Zhang, associate professor at the Technological University of Sydney, Australia.

“The success of the company looks like the validation of China’s innovation 2.0, a new era of our local technological leadership, driven by a younger generation of entrepreneurs.”

However, he warned that this feeling could also lead to “technological isolation.”

With information from Kelly NG and João da Silva by BBC News in Singapore, and Brandon Drenon from BBC News in New York.

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