Chinese Open Source Generative AI is Good, and Cheaper to Use

"The company built a cheaper, competitive chatbot with fewer high-end computer chips than U.S. behemoths like Google and OpenAI, showing the limits of chip export control.

The day after Christmas, a small Chinese start-up called DeepSeek unveiled a new A.I. system that could match the capabilities of cutting-edge chatbots from companies like OpenAI and Google.

That alone would have been a milestone.

But the team behind the system, called DeepSeek-V3, described an even bigger step. In a research paper explaining how they built the technology, DeepSeek’s engineers said they used only a fraction of the highly specialized computer chips that leading A.I. companies relied on to train their systems.

These chips are at the center of a tense technological competition between the United States and China. As the U.S. government works to maintain the country’s lead in the global A.I. race, it is trying to limit the number of powerful chips, like those made by Silicon Valley firm Nvidia, that can be sold to China and other rivals.

But the performance of the DeepSeek model raises questions about the unintended consequences of the American government’s trade restrictions. The controls have forced researchers in China to get creative with a wide range of tools that are freely available on the internet.

The DeepSeek chatbot answered questions, solved logic problems and wrote its own computer programs as capably as anything already on the market, according to the benchmark tests that American A.I. companies have been using.

And it was created on the cheap, challenging the prevailing idea that only the tech industry’s biggest companies — all of them based in the United States — could afford to make the most advanced A.I. systems. The Chinese engineers said they needed only about $6 million in raw computing power to build their new system. That is about 10 times less than the tech giant Meta spent building its latest A.I. technology.

“The number of companies who have $6 million to spend is vastly greater than the number of companies who have $100 million or $1 billion to spend,” said Chris V. Nicholson, an investor with the venture capital firm Page One Ventures, who focuses on A.I. technologies.

Since OpenAI sparked the A.I. boom in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, many experts and investors had concluded that no company could compete with the market leaders without spending hundreds of millions dollars on specialized chips.

The world’s leading A.I. companies train their chatbots using supercomputers that use as many as 16,000 chips, if not more. DeepSeek’s engineers, on the other hand, said they needed only about 2,000 specialized computer chips from Nvidia.

The constraints on chips in China forced the DeepSeek engineers to “train it more efficiently so it could still be competitive,” said Jeffrey Ding, an assistant professor at George Washington University who specializes in emerging technology and international relations.

Earlier this month, the Biden administration issued new rules that aim to keep China from obtaining advanced A.I. chips through other countries. The rules build on multiple rounds of earlier restrictions that prevent Chinese companies from being able to buy or make cutting-edge computer chips. President Trump has not yet indicated whether he will to use the rules or rescind them.

The U.S. government has tried to keep advanced chips out of the hands of Chinese companies over concerns they could be used for military purposes. In response, some firms in China have stockpiled thousands of chips, while others sourced them from a thriving underground marketplace of smugglers.

DeepSeek is run by a quantitative stock trading firm called High Flyer. By 2021, it had channeled its profits into acquiring thousands of Nvidia chips, which it used to train its earlier models. The company, which did not respond to requests for comment, has become known in China for scooping up talent fresh from top universities with the promise of high salaries and the ability to follow the research questions that most pique their interest.

Zihan Wang, a computer engineer who worked on an earlier DeepSeek model, said the company also hires people without any computer science background to help the technology understand and be able to generate poetry and ace questions on the notoriously difficult Chinese college entrance examination.

DeepSeek does not make any products for consumers, leaving its engineers to focus entirely on research. That means that its technology is not hemmed in by the strictest aspect of China’s regulations on A.I., which require consumer-facing technology to comply with the government’s controls on information.

The leading American companies continue to advance the state of the art in A.I. In December, OpenAI unveiled a new “reasoning” system called o3 that exceeds the performance of existing technologies, though it is not yet widely available outside the company.

But DeepSeek continues to show that it is not far behind. This month, it released an impressive reasoning model of its own.

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied those claims.)

A crucial part of this rapidly changing global market is an old idea: open source software. Like many other companies, DeepSeek has open sourced its latest A.I. system, meaning that it has shared the underlying code with other businesses and researchers. This allows others to build and distribute their own products using the same technologies.

While employees at big Chinese technology companies are limited to collaborating with colleagues, “if you work on open source, you work with talent around the world,” said Yineng Zhang, lead software engineer at Baseten in San Francisco who works on the open source SGLang project. He helps other people and companies build products using DeepSeek’s system.

The open source ecosystem for A.I. gathered steam in 2023 when Meta freely shared an A.I. system called LLama. Many assumed that this community would flourish only if the companies like Meta — tech giants with massive data centers filled with specialized chips — continued to open source their technologies. But DeepSeek and others have shown that they, too, can expand the powers of open source technologies.”

Many executives and pundits have argued that the big U.S. companies should not open source their technologies because they could be used to spread disinformation or cause other serious harm. Some U.S. lawmakers have explored the possibility of preventing or throttling the practice.

But others argue that if regulators stifle the progress of open source technology in the United States, China will gain a significant edge. If the best open source technologies come from China, they argue, U.S. developers will build their systems atop those technologies. In the long-run, that could put China at the heart of A.I. research and development.

“The center of gravity of the open source community has been moving to China,” said Ion Stoica, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. “This could be a huge danger for the U.S.,” because it allows China to accelerate the development of new technologies.

Hours after his inauguration, President Trump rescinded a Biden administration executive order that threatened to curb open source technologies.

Dr. Stoica and his students recently built an A.I. system called Sky-T1 that rivals the performance of OpenAI latest system, called OpenAI o1, on certain benchmark tests. They needed only $450 in computing power.

They did this by building on top of two open source technologies released by the Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

Their $450 system is not as powerful as OpenAI’s technology or DeepSeek’s new system. And the techniques they used are unlikely to yield systems that exceed the performance of the leading technologies. But the project showed that even operations with minuscule resources can build competitive systems.

Reuven Cohen, a technology consultant in Toronto, has been using DeepSeek-V3 since late December. He says it is comparable to the latest systems from OpenAI, Google and the San Francisco start-up Anthropic — and much cheaper to use.

“DeepSeek is a way for me to save money,” he said. “This is the kind of technology that someone like me wants to use.”” [1] [2]

1. “According to available information, the minimum cost to use DeepSeek technology, specifically the DeepSeek V3 model, is around $0.14 per million tokens for a cache hit, making it significantly cheaper than other large language models like GPT-4 or Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which can cost several times more per million tokens.”

2.  How Chinese A.I. Start-Up DeepSeek Is Competing With Silicon Valley Giants. Metz, Cade; Tobin, Meaghan.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Jan 23, 2025.

Jei Izraelis nesugebėjo sunaikinti „Hamas“ dabar, Izraelis niekada nesugebės to padaryti. Atėjo laikas nutraukti Palestinos žmonių vergiją

 „Izraelis sako, kad nužudė tūkstančius ginkluotos grupuotės narių ir sunaikino didžiąją dalį jų infrastruktūros, tačiau nuo paliaubų pradžios „Hamas“ parodė, kad anklave vis dar turi galią.

 

 Rytą, kai įsigaliojo paliaubos Gazos ruože, kaukėti Hamas karinio sparno nariai važiavo Gazos gatvėmis švariais baltais pikapais, nešini Hamas vėliavomis ir automatiniais šautuvais.

 

 Kovotojai taip pat nešė nedviprasmišką žinią: kad ir kokia susilpnėjus, Hamas išgyveno per 15 mėnesių trukusią Izraelio bombardavimo kampaniją Gazoje ir išlieka galingiausia palestiniečių partija šioje teritorijoje.

 

 Nuo sekmadienio paliaubų pradžios „Hamas“ dirba viršvalandžius, bandydamas parodyti, kad vis dar kontroliuoja Gazą, net po to, kai Izraelis nužudė tūkstančius jos narių ir griovė tunelius bei ginklų gamyklas, keršydamas už 2023 m. spalio 7 d. - pasienio išpuolį, per kurį žuvo apie 1 200 žmonių.

 

 Viso karo metu Izraelio ministras pirmininkas Benjaminas Netanyahu žadėjo likviduoti „Hamas“, tačiau jis niekada nepasiūlė plano dėl realios alternatyvos, kuri galėtų perimti Gazos kontrolę, palikdamas vakuumą, kurį užpildė ginkluota grupė.

 

 Tačiau net ir daugeliui Gazos gyventojų netikėtas buvo greitas kovotojų, kai kurie vilkinčių oficialiomis uniformomis, sugrįžimas.

 

 „Jie išlindo iš slėptuvės vienu piršto spragtelėjimu“, – sakė 24 metų Mohammedas, kuris paprašė nuslėpti jo pavardę, kad būtų išvengta galimo „Hamas“ atpildo. „Neturėjome supratimo, kur tie žmonės buvo karo metu.”

 

 Vėliau, pirmąją paliaubų dieną, dešimtys „Hamas“ kovotojų pasirodė Sarajos aikštėje Gazos mieste, kad perduotų tris įkaitus Raudonajam Kryžiui, kad šie paleistų Izraeliui – pirmus iš 33, kurie buvo išlaisvinti pagal susitarimą. Kovotojų išvaizda neleido manyti, kad jie buvo ant paskutinių kojų: atrodė, kad jie vilkėjo švarias uniformas, geros formos ir vairavo neblogus automobilius.

 

 Neaišku, kiek kovotojų, policijos pareigūnų, biurokratų ir politinių lyderių išgyveno per karą ar kur slėpėsi kovotojai. Tačiau tokiu viešu būdu pristatydamas perdavimą, „Hamas“ aiškiai parodė, kad jis vis dar stovi toje Gazos ruožo dalyje, kurioje buvo įvykdytos kai kurios pražūtingiausios karo bombardavimo atakos.

 

 „Kalbame apie teritoriją, kurią iš esmės suarė izraeliečiai“, – sakė Mkhaimaras Abusada, politikos mokslų profesorius iš Gazos miesto, kuris dabar yra Šiaurės Vakarų universiteto kviestinis mokslininkas.

 

 Izraelio pareigūnai pareiškė, kad palaiko savo tikslą išardyti „Hamas“ karinį sparną ir vyriausybę, o tai rodo, kad jie galėtų atnaujinti karą po to, kai per ateinančias savaites bus išlaisvinti likę 30 įkaitų, iš kurių maždaug 100 vis dar laikomi Gazoje.

 

 Po paliaubų „Hamas“ vyriausybė taip pat bandė įvesti tam tikrą saugumo jausmą, siųsdama policijos pajėgas į gatves, nukreipdama eismą, apsaugodama pagalbos sunkvežimius ir siūlydama tam tikrą įstatymą ir tvarką, sako gyventojai.

 

 Pirmadienį Gazos mieste aukštas „Hamas“ valdomos Vidaus reikalų ministerijos pareigūnas, žinomas, kaip generolas Mahmoud Abu Watfa, paprastais drabužiais apžiūrėjo miesto centrą, o Gazos žurnalistai fotografavo ginkluotas vidaus saugumo pajėgas, dalyvaujančias procesijoje.

 

 „Vaizdas aiškus“, – žurnalistui sakė generolas Abu Watfa. „Tie, kurie kontroliuoja saugumą, saugo piliečius ir saugo vidaus frontą, yra Vidaus reikalų ministerijos pajėgos.”

 

 Iššūkiai vis dar akivaizdūs. „Hamas“ vidaus saugumo tarnybos pareigūnas, norėjęs likti anonimiškas ir aptarti operatyvinius klausimus, pažymėjo, kad daugelis Gazos miesto apsaugos darbuotojų naudojo popierinius įrašus, o ne kompiuterius, o kai kurie pranešdavo, kad eis į sprogdintą būstinę pėsčiomis, nes Izraelis sunaikino beveik kiekvieną policijos automobilį mieste.

 

 Pasak pareigūno, bombų neutralizavimo padaliniui Gazos mieste sunkiai sekėsi nukenksminti nesprogusias bombas.

 

 „Hamas yra daug silpnesnė, nei buvo prieš spalio 7 d.“, – sakė buvęs karinės žvalgybos analitikas Michaelis Milshteinas, besispecializuojantis Palestinos reikaluose. „Tačiau visiškai aišku, kad ji gali primesti jos suverenitetą visur Gazos ruože.”

 

 Gazos savivaldybės, kurios glaudžiai bendradarbiauja su „Hamas“ vyriausybe, išsiuntė darbuotojus valyti griuvėsius, išvežti šiukšlių krūvas ir ištirti žalą infrastruktūrai. Rafoje savivaldybės taryba sušaukė posėdį palapinėje su oficialia miesto vėliava, rašomuoju stalu ir kėdėmis, teigiama socialinėje žiniasklaidoje.

 

 Viename interviu aukšto rango „Hamas“ pareigūnas Mousa Abu Marzouk pareiškė, kad Izraeliui nepavyko sunaikinti „Hamas“. „Jie bandė išrauti šiuos žmones, bet jiems nepavyko“, – sakė jis. „Jie tvirtai stovėjo ant žemės 470 dienų.”

 

 Pasak analitikai, „Hamas“ savo pastaraisiais žingsniais bandė aiškiai parodyti, kad ji turi turėti įtakingą vaidmenį diskusijose apie „dieną po“, turėdama omenyje būsimą Gazos administraciją.

 

„Jų žinutė visiems yra tokia: „Jūs negalite mūsų atmesti nuo kitos dienos“, – sakė palestiniečių reikalų ekspertas Ghaithas al-Omari.

 

 Jungtinės Valstijos pareiškė, kad „atgaivinta“ Palestinos valdžia, kuri dabar turi ribotą autonomiją, valdydama Izraelio okupuotą Vakarų Krantą, turėtų perimti Gazą, tačiau B. Netanyahu atmetė šią idėją. Ši valdžia valdė Gazos ruožą iki 2007 m., kai perversmo metu Hamas jėga perėmė valdžią po to, kai laimėjo daugumą parlamento rinkimuose.

 

 Sekmadienį Izraelio užsienio reikalų ministras Gideonas Saaras žurnalistams sakė, kad „Hamas“ valdžia yra pavojinga Izraelio saugumui, ir pabrėžė, kad Izraelis nesutiko su nuolatiniu paliaubų susitarimu, dėl kurio „Hamas“ kontroliuotų Gazą.

 

 Nors kai kurie analitikai teigia, kad Izraelis galiausiai gali pašalinti „Hamas“ iš valdžios, kiti teigia, kad jam bus sunku atnaujinti karą tarptautinio spaudimo akivaizdoje. Ir net jei taip atsitiktų, analitikai teigia, kad Izraelio pajėgos susidurtų su didžiuliais iššūkiais, išnaikindamos „Hamas“ iš Gazos, nevykdant tiesioginės okupacijos.

 

 Gazos Ruože Hamas šalininkai teigė, kad jaučiasi ramūs dėl šios savaitės jėgos demonstravimo. Tačiau daugelis šiai grupei nepriklausančių žmonių nerimavo, kad jei ji liks valdžioje, jie bus pavaldūs jos griežtai valdžiai ir kad anksčiau ar vėliau kils dar vienas karas.

 

 „Gali prireikti laiko, kad „Hamas“ pasiektų tašką, kai jis išprovokuos Izraelį į dar vieną didelį karą“, – sakė 28 metų Alaa, besiglaudžiantis Deir al Balaho mieste, centrinėje Gazos ruože, ir kurio pavardė slepiama, kad būtų išvengta keršto.“ [1]

 

1.  Hamas Takes Charge in Gaza After 15 Months of War. Rasgon, Adam; Abuheweila, Iyad.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Jan 23, 2025.

If Israel was not able to destroy Hamas now, Israel will never be able to do that. It is time to end the slavery of Palestinian people

"Israel says it has killed thousands of the armed group’s members and destroyed much of its infrastructure, but since the cease-fire started Hamas has shown it still holds power in the enclave.

The morning the cease-fire in Gaza went into effect, masked members of Hamas’s military wing drove through the streets of Gaza in clean, white pickups, carrying Hamas flags and automatic rifles.

The militants were also carrying an unambiguous message: However weakened, Hamas survived Israel’s 15-month bombing campaign in Gaza and remains the most powerful Palestinian party in the territory.

Since the cease-fire started on Sunday, Hamas has been working overtime in an attempt to show it still controls Gaza, even after Israel killed thousands of its members and demolished its tunnels and weapons factories in retaliation for the Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border attack that killed an estimated 1,200 people.

Throughout the war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has vowed to eliminate Hamas, but he never offered a plan for a realistic alternative that could take control of Gaza, leaving behind a vacuum that the armed group filled.

Even for many residents of Gaza, however, the swift re-emergence of the fighters, some in official uniforms, was a surprise.

“They came out of hiding in a snap of a finger,” said Mohammed, 24, who requested his last name be withheld to avoid possible retribution from Hamas. “We had no idea where these people were during the war.”

Later on the first day of the cease-fire, dozens of Hamas militants turned up at Saraya Square in Gaza City to hand over three hostages to the Red Cross for release to Israel, the first of 33 to be freed as part of the deal. The appearance of the militants didn’t suggest they were on their last legs: They appeared to be wearing clean uniforms, in good shape and driving decent cars.

It is not clear just how many fighters, police officers, bureaucrats and political leaders survived the war or just where the militants had been hiding. But by showcasing the handover in such a public way, Hamas made clear that it was still standing in a part of Gaza that had seen some of the most devastating bombing attacks of the war.

“We’re talking about an area that was essentially plowed by the Israelis,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science from Gaza City who is now a visiting scholar at Northwestern University.

Israeli officials have said that they stand behind their goal of dismantling Hamas’s military wing and government, suggesting that they could resume the war after the remaining 30 hostages, of roughly 100 still held in Gaza, are freed over the coming weeks.

Since the cease-fire, Hamas’s government has also attempted to impose some sense of security, sending police forces to the streets, directing traffic, protecting aid trucks and offering a degree of law and order, residents say.

On Monday in Gaza City, a senior official in the Hamas-run Interior Ministry identified as Gen. Mahmoud Abu Watfa toured the city center in plain clothes as Gazan journalists took pictures of armed internal security forces participating in a procession.

“The picture is clear,” General Abu Watfa told a reporter. “The ones controlling security, protecting citizens and safeguarding the internal front are the forces of the Interior Ministry.”

Challenges are still evident. An official in Hamas’s internal security service, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, noted that many security workers in Gaza City were using paper records instead of computers, and some were reporting to work at a bombed-out headquarters by foot because Israel had destroyed almost every police car in the city.

The bomb disposal unit in Gaza City, the official said, was struggling to defuse unexploded bombs.

“Hamas is much weaker than it was before Oct. 7,” said Michael Milshtein, a former military intelligence analyst specializing in Palestinian affairs. “But it’s totally clear that it can impose its sovereignty everywhere in Gaza.”

Municipalities in Gaza that coordinate closely with Hamas’s government have sent workers to clear rubble, remove piles of trash and survey damage to infrastructure. In Rafah, the municipal council convened a meeting in a tent outfitted with an official city flag, a desk and chairs, according to a post it shared on social media.

In an interview, Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, crowed that Israel had failed to destroy Hamas. “They tried to uproot these people and they didn’t succeed,” he said. “They were steadfast on the ground for 470 days.”

Hamas, analysts said, was trying to make clear in its recent moves that it must have an influential role in discussions about the “day after,” referring to the future administration of Gaza.

“Their message to everyone is, ‘You can’t exclude us from the day after,’” said Ghaith al-Omari, an expert on Palestinian affairs.

Hamas likely hopes to relieve itself of the daily burdens of administration and reconstruction of Gaza, but it wants any future arrangement for the territory to leave it as the top security power, and therefore, the main decision maker, Mr. al-Omari said. Hamas probably has to make some concessions to enable enough aid to enter Gaza for reconstruction.

Hamas leaders have indeed expressed readiness to give up civilian governance in Gaza, but without dismantling its military wing — a dynamic that would be similar to Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon before its last conflict with Israel.

The United States has said that a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority, which now has limited autonomy in governing the Israeli-occupied West Bank, should take over Gaza, but Mr. Netanyahu has rejected the idea. The authority governed Gaza until 2007, when Hamas forcibly took over in a coup after winning a majority in parliamentary elections.

On Sunday, Gideon Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, told reporters that Hamas’s rule was dangerous for Israel’s security and emphasized that Israel had not agreed to a permanent cease-fire deal that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza.

While some analysts say Israel could eventually remove Hamas from power, others say it would struggle to resume the war in the face of international pressure. And even if it does, those analysts say, Israeli forces would face immense challenges in uprooting Hamas from Gaza without carrying out a direct occupation.

In Gaza, supporters of Hamas said they felt reassured by its show of force this week. But many people without allegiances to the group worried that if it remained in power, they would be subject to its heavy-handed rule and that there would be another war, sooner or later.

“It may take Hamas time to reach a point where it will provoke Israel into another major war,” said Alaa, 28, who has been sheltering in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, and whose last name is being withheld to avoid reprisals." [1]

1.  Hamas Takes Charge in Gaza After 15 Months of War. Rasgon, Adam; Abuheweila, Iyad.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Jan 23, 2025.