Budget AI Model DeepSeek Overtakes ChatGPT on App Store

[MacRumors]

A new China-based AI chatbot challenger called DeepSeek has reached the number one position on Apple's App Store free charts in multiple countries, including the US, raising questions about Silicon Valley's perceived leadership in artificial intelligence development.

Released last week, the iOS app has garnered attention for its ability to match or exceed the performance of leading AI models like ChatGPT, while requiring only a fraction of the development costs, based on a research paper released on Monday.

DeepSeek has not raised money from outside funds or made significant moves to monetize its R1 model, which the company claims is on par with GPT-4o and Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet. The Chinese AI startup behind the model was founded by hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng, who claims they used just 2,048 Nvidia H800s and $5.6 million to train R1 with 671 billion parameters, a fraction of what OpenAI and Google spent to train comparably sized models. For example, Microsoft and Meta alone have committed over $65 billion each this year largely to AI infrastructure. Just last week, OpenAI said it was creating a joint venture with Japan's SoftBank, dubbed Stargate, with plans to spend at least $100 billion on AI infrastructure in the US.

Investor Marc Andreessen is already calling DeepSeek "one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs" for its ability to show its work and reasoning as it addresses a user's written query or prompt. DeepSeek has also taken an open-source approach, allowing developers to freely inspect and build upon its technology.

What's particularly notable is that DeepSeek apparently achieved this breakthrough despite US export restrictions on advanced AI chips to China. The company's success suggests Chinese developers have found ways to create more efficient AI models with limited computing resources, potentially challenging the assumption that cutting-edge AI development requires massive computing infrastructure investments.

The emergence of DeepSeek has already sparked debate in Silicon Valley. While some view it as a concerning development for US technological leadership, others, like Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, suggest it could benefit the entire AI industry by making model training more accessible and accelerating real-world AI applications.

The app's success has already impacted financial markets, with some AI-related stocks experiencing volatility as investors reconsider the necessity of extensive capital expenditure for AI development. Shares of Nvidia for example slid 10% in premarket trading on Monday on the news of DeepSeek's popularity.

Article Link: Budget AI Model DeepSeek Overtakes ChatGPT on App Store

 

[Darren.h]

same problem as tie Tok I would think. China could be using app to collect info. spy. record. like amazon and Alexia.

 

[Unggoy Murderer]

I'd rather make use of something that's 1/50th of the speed so I can avoid passing any information over to a Chinese platform.

 

[Isentropic]

US: Let’s find something else to ban…then un-ban temporarily…

 

[WarmWinterHat]

I'm not sure who is more untrustworthy, Sam Altman or China.

I think it's a tossup.

 

[RemedyRabbit]

Governments around the world will be looking very closely at this indeed. $6 million is nothing. A lot of countries out there will be quietly very keen to reduce their dependence on US tech giants.

 

[farkingdom]

same problem as tie Tok I would think. China could be using app to collect info. spy. record. like amazon and Alexia.

Honestly what can China do with your dancing video data?
You would rather have your data given to US companies so they could pass them to your gov, so that they can technically get any info they want or able to quickly take any action on you?

 

[the future]

Is China trustworthy? No. This is open source, though.

 

[leejennis]

I tried asking it about itself and it got confused whether it was built on OpenAi’s framework or DeepSeek; it even apologised for the confusion when I quoted the App Store description to it and it accepted that it believed it was built on OpenAi but will now reconsider its view.

 

[KRBM]

I tried asking DeepSeek about the Tiananmen square massacre. It won’t answer.

 

[aidler]

In this case, the problem is not a potential ban in the US of a Chinese AI service but China's possible leadership in AI technology.

 

[AppliedMicro]

US: Let’s find something else to ban…then un-ban temporarily…

Let’s ban it - unless/until Musk can buy it.

 

[SgtPepper12]

I'd rather make use of something that's 1/50th of the speed so I can avoid passing any information over to a Chinese platform.

If people care enough, they can easily download the weights and host it on their own, American servers then, where surely no data is ever collected and privacy is always respected.

 

[AppliedMicro]

I'd rather make use of something that's 1/50th of the speed so I can avoid passing any information over to a Chinese platform.

Why? What’s the issue? Are you Chinese?

 

[Moi Ici]

Honestly what can China do with your dancing video data?
You would rather have your data given to US companies so they could pass them to your gov, so that they can technically get any info they want or able to quickly take any action on you?

They could steal my moves, I spent hundreds of hours in my bedroom honing those……they’re MINE!!!!

 

[Mike_Trivisonno]

I watched a short demo of ChinAI. You can ask it about the Pythagorean Theorem, it can make a web browser for you, and it can make some 3d models for you, too. Oh, and it can open a PDF file.

Wow.

 

[videosoul]

I wonder what its environmental impact is? Power, and water.

 

[cicalinarrot]

Give it no private information and use it a lot before they cut performance like GPT did.

 

[klasma]

same problem as tie Tok I would think. China could be using app to collect info. spy. record. like amazon and Alexia.

The DeepSeek LLMs are open source. One doesn't need to use their app.

 

[AppliedMicro]

Honestly what can China do with your dancing video data?
You would rather have your data given to US companies so they could pass them to your gov, so that they can technically get any info they want or able to quickly take any action on you?

It’s not even the government, necessarily.
US companies collecting data and selling information is enough for U.S. insurers to raise their insurance premiums.

 

[dannys1]

I tried asking it about itself and it got confused whether it was built on OpenAi’s framework or DeepSeek; it even apologised for the confusion when I quoted the App Store description to it and it accepted that it believed it was built on OpenAi but will now reconsider its view.

LLM's don't know what platform they were on or how they were built - they don't have any innate knowledge of anything other than the words they've been fed.

 

[dannys1]

The DeepSeek LLMs are open source. One doesn't need to use their app.

But you do need some quite beefy hardware to run the LLMs yourself. It'll be very hard to run their biggest model.

 

[God of Biscuits]

same problem as tie Tok I would think. China could be using app to collect info. spy. record. like amazon and Alexia.

More like it interferes with techbros ability to scam $500 Billion away from taxpayers.

 

[God of Biscuits]

Give it no private information and use it a lot before they cut performance like GPT did.

the US has no data privacy laws at all.

 

[dannys1]

I wonder what its environmental impact is? Power, and water.

LLM's really don't use much power for inference. Training sure - but once that is done they really don't take much power which is why, if you've got enough VRAM you can run models at home.

I'm not sure where this notion came from that every time you ask an LLM something half a rain forest is destroyed.