deepseek

TheMK sports US government's announcement to ban DeepSeek shows an ignorance of technology, Zhou Hongyi, the founder and chairman of Chinese cybersecurity firm 360 Group, said in a video released on Thursday, following some US government agencies' ban on the Chinese tech platform, which has quickly climbed to the top of global download rankings.

Citing an article written by Thomas Wolf, co-founder and Chief Science Officer (CSO) of Hugging Face, Zhou said the global embrace of open-source technology transcends borders, both in its applications and in fostering technological innovation.

"DeepSeek's model is open-weight and largely open-knowledge due to its detailed technical report. If DeepSeek had been closed-source, then the arms race interpretation might have made sense. But since the model is freely and widely available for download, along with a detailed scientific report, the whole 'closed-source arms race competition' argument is artificial and unconvincing," Wolf wrote in the article.

"Every company in the world, whether in Europe, Africa, South America, or the USA, can now directly download and use DeepSeek without sending data to a specific country (such as China) or relying on a specific company or server to run its core technology," the article reads.

Agreeing with Wolf's perspective, Zhou said in the video that now that the Chinese company has fully open-sourced its models and provided detailed scientific reports, framing China-US competition as a closed-source rivalry is misleading and unfounded.

This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of technology by the US government. As an open-source model, DeepSeek does not transmit data to China, nor is it dependent on any specific company or server for its core functions, Zhou said.

US agencies, including NASA and the Pentagon, have banned the use of DeepSeek. Additionally, Italy's data protection authority has reportedly blocked access to DeepSeek, and the Australian federal government has prohibited all DeepSeek services on government systems and devices, according to media reports.

Zhou also mentioned that the Hangzhou-based company started as a small firm with limited capability, influence, and market presence. However, by open-sourcing its technology and demonstrating its capabilities, the company quickly gained global recognition. 

Zhou further noted that DeepSeek will also stimulate other global open-source teams, fostering a competitive environment where companies continuously learn and improve. DeepSeek's disclosures could inspire new breakthroughs and drive further advancements in AI technology.

Zhou emphasized the need to transcend national pride and competitive thinking. It's time to consider the challenges and social transformations brought by AI from a global perspective, he said.

The latest statistics show that DeepSeek has achieved remarkable results within just 20 days of launch. Its daily active users (DAU) rapidly surpassed 20 million, reaching 22.15 million, media Cailianshe reported on Thursday.

Several US tech giants including Microsoft, Nvidia, and Amazon have adopted the latest AI reasoning model from DeepSeek, media reports showed.

Global Times