DeepSeek's Chinese chatbot R1 has had a radical impact on the neural network market over the past few days. Shares of US technology giants have collapsed, and experts say that the utility developed by Chinese developers is able to completely replace American competitors. What are the main features of the DeepSeek product, why has its placement become an AI revolution, and what does this mean for Russia?
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted the superiority of the R1 chatbot from the Chinese company DeepSeek over the similar ChatGPT utility from the American company OpenAI. According to him, specialists from China managed not only to create an effective product, but also to make it cheaper.
On January 10, DeepSeek introduced the DeepSeek V3 chatbot. According to tests, the utility answers questions, solves logical problems and writes computer programs as efficiently as American products based on artificial intelligence (AI). Another advantage of the project over its counterparts from the States was the completely free distribution model.
Later, DeepSeek released an improved version of the R1 chatbot. Against this background, their AI Assistant app has become the most downloaded AppStore in the USA. American markets reacted pessimistically to the appearance of the Chinese chatbot: the Nasdaq technology index fell by more than 3%, and shares of NVidia (the main supplier of Chat GPT development chips) collapsed by $ 600 billion. Some online users call this development a "neural network strike" by China against the United States.
The startup DeepSeek belongs to the Chinese stock exchange firm High-Flyer. It is modeled after OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini chatbots. The program is based on NVidia chips, which the company acquired until 2021. At the same time, according to The New York Times, if American supercomputers train AI using 16 thousand chips, then developers from China managed to use only 2 thousand components for this purpose.
Thus, the Chinese model turned out to be more energy efficient. At the same time, DeepSeek engineers needed about $ 6 million to work on their system, which is about ten times less than Meta* (banned in Russia) spent on creating its latest AI technology. OpenAI's expenses for the creation of ChatGPT amount to billions of dollars.
"Many expected the emergence of a new player in the neural network market. But only a few people were ready for such a stunning impact of the utility on the market," says German Klimenko, IT industry development expert, founder of Liveinternet and MediaMetrics.
Nevertheless, he urged not to overestimate the impact of China's development on the industry. For example, a significant drop in NVidia's value does not mean the decline of the company. "The company will survive this collapse, and the graphics cards will find other uses. Perhaps they will become cheaper and become a more popular product than at current prices," the source says.
As explained by Vladimir Zykov, director of the Association of Professional Users of Social Networks and Messengers (APPSIM), Chinese developers were "catching up": they followed the beaten path of the Americans. Therefore, their main task was to optimize existing solutions.
"Everyone was surprised that it was possible to do the same thing, but with less staff, money and in a shorter time.
The Chinese adapt quickly and see where they can quickly cash in and multiply their experience," the expert believes, adding that DeepSeek's AI enjoys great popularity due to the lack of subscription fees. Meanwhile, the application makes it possible to receive a similar Open AI product.
Recalling the initiative of the new US President Donald Trump to launch the mega-project on artificial intelligence Stargate, the expert notes that until recently America held a leading position in this field. "Now it will be more difficult for Washington to realize its own ambitions. China's successes will significantly change the trajectory of the United States' actions," the speaker predicts.
According to Klimenko, DeepSeek's high energy efficiency will not lead to energy intensity. "According to one well-known paradox, a decrease in coal prices led to an increase in its consumption. In this case
The spread of DeepSeek will not lead to a reduction in energy consumption, but to a more widespread introduction of the utility.
It's just that much more data centers will be built for the same money, and energy consumption will even increase. If 2-3% of all electricity goes to such facilities in the United States, then 4-5% will be spent soon," he believes.
It is also important that DeepSeek has a completely open source code, which allows programmers from other countries to improve the new chatbot and integrate it into their products. "Russian companies will be able to benefit from this. I know those who have already installed the PRC product, and it costs much less than ChatGPT from Open AI," Klimenko adds.
In turn, Zykov recalled that before DeepSeek, other companies also shared the source code. For example, the Stable Diffusion image generator did this. "Thanks to the open source, we will be able to complement our developments, which, unfortunately, have lagged far behind the Chinese and American ones," the expert said.
"Many Russian companies simply do not realize the importance of transforming current processes
and they are not fully implementing AI technologies. Here, the government could step in and help the largest IT companies build a centralized infrastructure. You can't do without the help of top management here," the expert continued.
In his opinion, the infrastructure for creating artificial intelligence will be in demand in Russia. So, until 2022, Yandex was Europe's largest buyer of NVidia chips for its data centers. "Everyone is convinced that AI is "serious and for a long time." Technology opens the way to a new understanding of the Internet, to which we have yet to adapt," concluded Zykov.
Andrey Rezchikov
* The organization(s) have been liquidated or their activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation
