How does China’s “artificial intelligence hero” overcome the United States and curb the shocking Silicon Valley

When ChatGPT rushes into the artificial intelligence world (AI), the inevitable problem is: Is this the trouble of China ’s largest technical competitor in China?

Two years later, the new AI model from China has solved this problem: Can the United States prevent Chinese innovation?

For a while, Beijing seemed to be disappointed with the answer it was, and ChatGPT was unavailable in China.

Ernie, a chat -engine giant Baidu chat robot, laughed at users. Then there are versions of technology companies Tencent and BONTEDANCE, which are regarded as followers of ChatGPT-but not so good.

Washington is full of confidence and hopes to maintain this state. Therefore, the Biden government has increased restrictions to prohibit export of advanced chips and technologies to China.

This is why the launch of DeepSeek surprised Silicon Valley and the world. The company said its powerful model is much cheaper than the billions of dollars spent on AI.

So how does a little -known company (his founder is hailed as a “AI hero” in Chinese social media) to achieve this goal?

This is undoubtedly a blow when the United States prohibits NVIDIA’s leading chip manufacturers such as the world’s leading chip manufacturers to China.

These chips are critical to construct a powerful AI model that can perform a series of human tasks, from answering basic queries to solving complex mathematical problems.

Liang Wenfeng, the founder of Deepseek, described the Chip ban as the “main challenge” in interviews with local media.

According to the MIT Technology Review, a long time before the ban, Deepseek obtained the “large amount of inventory” of the NVIDIA A100 chip -an estimated range of 10,000 to 50,000.

Western -leading AI models use estimated 16,000 chips. But Deepseek said it used 2,000 such chips and thousands of low -level chips to train its AI model, which is why the product is cheaper.

Some people, including Elon Musk, a U.S. technology billionaire, have questioned this claim that the company cannot disclose how many advanced chips are really used under restrictions.

However, experts said that Washington’s ban has brought challenges and opportunities to the Chinese artificial intelligence industry.

Marina Zhang, associate professor at the University of Science and Technology of Sydney, said it has “forcing the innovation of Chinese companies”, so they can do less.

“Although these restrictions constitute challenges, they also stimulate creativity and toughness, and remain consistent with China’s wider policy goals that achieve technological independence.”

The world’s second largest economy has invested in large technology-from electric vehicles and solar panels to AI batteries.

For a long time, turning China into a technology superpower has always been the ambition of President Xi Jinping, so the restrictions of Washington are also challenges facing Beijing.

AI expert Gregory C Allen of Strategy and International Research Center said that on January 20, when Donald Trump swore to work, the new model of Deepseek was deliberately issued.

Former Strategy and Policy Director Allen said: “Delivery of time and method-this is exactly what the Chinese government wants everyone to think of-export control can not work, and the United States is not the global leader of AI.” Intelligent center.

In recent years, the Chinese government has trained AI talents, provided scholarships and research subsidies, and encouraged partnership between universities and industry.

Ms. Zhang said that the national engineering laboratory supported by national deep learning and other countries has helped train thousands of AI experts.

There are many smart engineers in China to recruit.

Taking DeepSeek’s team as an example-Chinese media said that it is less than 140, most of which are the “local talents” of Chinese elite universities.

Ms. Zhang said that Western observer missed the “new generation of entrepreneurs, and they give priority to basic research and long -term technological progress, not fast profits.”

China’s top universities are creating a “rapidly developing AI talent pool”, even if the manager is often under 35 years old.

She added: “After growing up in China’ s rapid technology climbing, they are a strong motivation for self -reliance and innovation. “

Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek, is an example-40-year-old young man learns AI with prestigious Zhejiang University. In an article about technical media 36kr, the person familiar with him said that he was “more like a very guest rather than a boss.”

The Chinese media describes him as “technical idealist” -whelis he insisted on retaining DeepSeek as an open source platform. In fact, experts also believe that a booming open source culture enables young startups to gather resources and increase speed.

According to experts and company staff, unlike the larger Chinese technology companies, DeepSeek is preferred, which can conduct more experiments.

Mr. Liang said in an interview with 36KR: “The top 50 in this field may not be in China, but we can build such people here.”

But experts want to know how much DeepSeek can be developed. Ms. Zhang said: “New United States restrictions may limit access to American user data, which may affect how Chinese models such as DeepSeek are globalized.”

Others say that the United States still has a huge advantage, for example, in Mr. Allen’s words, “their large amount of computing resources” -It is not clear how to continue to use advanced chips to continue to improve the model.

But as far as you are concerned, Deepseek enjoys its moment in the sun, because most people in China have only heard this weekend.

His famous reputation made Mr. Liang a sensation in China’s social media, where he was called one of the “three AI heroes” from Guangdong Province, and bordered Hong Kong.

The other two are the main experts of Tsinghua University, Zhilin Yang and Kaiming He taught in MIT in the United States.

Deepseek made the Chinese Internet happy before the country’s largest holiday Lunarnew. This is good news for the economic and technological industries that are in trouble, and the industry is selling for further tariffs and TIKTOK’s US business.

“Deepseek shows us that only when you have real transactions, you can withstand the test of time,” a famous Weibo comment.

Another person said: “This is the best New Year’s gift. I wish our motherland prosperous and strong.”

Wei Sun, the chief AI analyst of Countpoint Research, described China’s reaction, “Especially in the open source community, especially in the open source community, especially in the open source community.”

Fiona Zhou, a science and technology worker in Shenzhen, the southern city, said her social media feed was “suddenly drowned by posts related to Deepseek yesterday.”

“People call it ‘the glory of made-in-china’, and say it shocked Silicon value, so i download it to see how good it is.”

She asked it for the four pillars of “(her) destiny” or BA -ZI, like a personalized constellation based on the date and time of birth.

But to disappoint her, Deepseek was wrong. Although she has a detailed explanation of her “thinking process”, this is not her real “four pillars” of BA-Zi.

She said she would still work again because it may be more useful for such tasks.