In the last few days so much has happened in the AI space of the world. From the newly elected President of US Trump initiating an investment of $500 billion in building the AI infrastructure to the emergence of DeepSeek. The reason why DeepSeek is making headlines around the world is that they have been able to build an AI chatbot very similar to Open AI’s ChatGPT, however, the catch here is that this chinese company has achieved this milestone at very little cost when compared to ChatGPT. But is it the only reason why it is making headlines? Why does President Trump consider it as a wake-up call? Lastly, is it the beginning of a new cold war again between the two world powers?
Wake-Up Call!
As mentioned, President Trump has said that this is the wake-up call for the AI industry in the USA. Till now it was widely considered that America’s Silicon Valley is way ahead in the AI race. But now a company based in China has done it for $6 million for which Open AI’s ChatGPT spent over $100 million. Why? Because DeepSeek used cheaper and less advanced technology for building and training their AI chatbot. For this DeepSeek used the Nvidia A100 chips which were launched in 2020 as since 2022 the export to China has been banned.
This has questioned $157 billion dollars of high valuation and further indicated toward a market bubble around the AI industry in the USA. The emergence of DeepSeek has reduced the Nvidia share prices by 17% which has sent shockwaves to all global markets. In India, telecom, IT and technology, the top sectoral losers, fall by 3%.
People have also watched it as the beginning of a new cold war around AI and Chinese chatbot DeeSeek, something similar to the USSR and USA before the disintegration of the USSR. Again the contest is between two world powers, one representing the capitalist state and the other raising the red flag. People in China have seen it as the validation for the success of China’s Innovation 2.0, a new era of homegrown leadership in the technological sector.
Concerns
DeepSeek operates under the Chinese regime which is infamous for its severe dictatorial tendencies. In the Indian context, it is hard for us to believe as far as the security and privacy of Indians are concerned. Moreover, DeepSeek completely follows the censorship guidelines of the Chinese Communist Party. When asked about, “To whom Arunachal Pradesh belongs to” DeepSeek replied with “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.” Some bizarre replies by DeepSeek leave people laughing when asked about something which is “controversial” as per the Chinese regime
India’s Stake
As of now it looks that India is way behind as far as the AI race is concerned. However, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishaw has announced that India will soon make its own AI model. This initiative has started with the computing facility housing around 10,000 GPUs. Moreover, the government has launched the IndiaAI Mission to further build and facilitate AI infrastructure in the country. The only good news for India in the whole DeepSeek emergence is that it might happen that China and its DeepSeek can further see a global isolation mainly from the West.
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