Hi Trish! Everyone seems to be freaking out over DeepSeek AI…why is it such a big deal?
Hi there, and welcome back to another week of Ask Trish! I hope you’re well and having a wonderful February.
I hope you enjoyed last week’s post and the truly incredible Safer Internet Day 2025 resources that ConnectSafely has made available–remember that those resources are accessible (and completely free!), so definitely take advantage of them. (One SID 2025 video a day can help keep internet harms away! Okay, okay, I know…corny. But I tried!)
This week, as promised, I’m finally getting around to a question that I’ve received a lot lately, from friends, colleagues, and readers alike…what exactly is DeepSeek, this new Chinese AI app that everyone is freaking out about? Indeed, last month, DeepSeek grabbed headlines across the world and astonished users, technologists, and policymakers in the West. The story of DeepSeek–and what it means for the AI world–is a fascinating one. In that vein, this week, I’ll walk y’all through (1) what DeepSeek is and why so many believe that its creation was an extraordinary feat and (2) how the world is responding to DeepSeek.
Sound like a plan? Let’s get into it:
First and foremost, what is DeepSeek? DeepSeek is a newly released, free AI-powered chatbot that is quite similar to other chatbots on the market (like the incredibly popular ChatGPT). It can do much of what other chatbots can do, like compose poems, help with difficult problems, brainstorm ideas, and so forth…and like ChatGPT’s o1 model (which was released at the end of last year), DeepSeek is a “reasoning model,” meaning that it simulates the way that humans think through a problem or take on a task. In other words, if you input a request into the DeepSeek app, it won’t just immediately produce an answer…instead, it will take you through the steps of how it got there. Of course, the app is not identical to other chatbots; for instance, because DeepSeek is a Chinese chatbot, it doesn’t answer politically sensitive questions. (A BBC team that asked the app what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989–referencing the Tiananmen Square Massacre–said that the app did not provide any details.) Okay, so that’s the app in a nutshell…but why is everyone freaking out about it?! Well, for a while, most of the world thought that it would be impossible for a Chinese company to build an app as sophisticated as DeepSeek. Why? Well, recognizing how strategic the AI space is, back in 2022, the United States banned the export of the sophisticated Nvidia computer chips that fancy AI models need to China. In other words, the US attempted to keep China from getting the chips…and thus, to keep China from becoming a key player in the AI space. (For context, “the world’s top companies typically train their chatbots with supercomputers that use as many as 16,000 chips or more.”) DeepSeek had only built up a small store of these chips at that time…and so it seemed that the company (like other Chinese AI companies) was out of the running. In fact, the DeepSeek app that was released in January is just as sophisticated as American models…and it only required 2,000 Nvidia chips. In other words, DeepSeek showed the world that another way forward was possible, effectively challenging the assumption that AI companies require these sophisticated chips. (Experts believe that DeepSeek paired its sophisticated chips with less sophisticated ones, ultimately realizing a more efficient process.) Some called it AI’s “Sputnik moment” (if you’re wondering what that’s referencing…Sputnik was the first satellite to orbit earth. It was launched by the Soviet Union in the 60s…and shocked the United States.)
Okay, so now we have a sense of what happened and why it was so significant. But how is the world responding to all of this? Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, tech stocks went tumbling down. It’s very clear now that companies like Google, Meta, and OpenAI have serious competition. In particular, the realization that sophisticated AI could be built with a fraction of the specialized computer chips that most American companies are using sent chipmaker Nvidia’s stock spiraling downwards…the stock lost 16.9% and roughly $600 billion in market value. (Yikes.) In the West, lots of folks are saying that DeepSeek is a wake-up call; so said US President Donald Trump: “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…” But the response hasn’t entirely been about competition. In South Korea, for instance, the focus has been on privacy and security, and indeed, just yesterday, the country temporarily banned downloads of DeepSeek until it could ensure that the app compiled with South Korean privacy laws. In general, though, it’s been a big jolt to the system…with no doubt, much more to come.
I hope you found this post an informative first look at DeepSeek–with an emphasis on “first”! If you’re curious to learn more, I definitely encourage you to use this post as a launchpad for further research. There’s definitely much more to come in this arena (for instance, just this morning, X CEO Elon Musk released Grok-3, an AI chatbot that mimics DeepSeek’s approach to explaining its thought process to users!). I’ll be sure to keep an eye on the latest updates, and keep y’all posted…
And if, in the meantime, you have additional AI questions–or entirely different tech/internet-related questions–please feel free to share your thoughts with me here. Remember, nothing is off limits…whatever you’re wondering about is 100% valid (and I’m sure others are too!). So go ahead: take 30 seconds and fill out the form. I can’t wait to hear from you!
Have a great week,
Trish