Context:
DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, is revolutionizing the market with its cost-effective, open-source models such as DeepSeek-V3, challenging industry standards and offering advanced AI capabilities.
- It was founded by Liang Wenfeng in Hangzhou in 2023, and quickly rose to prominence with its innovative chatbot, surpassing established models like ChatGPT in popularity.
About DeepSeek AI
- DeepSeek stands out for its high-performing, open-source AI models, like DeepSeek-V3, which was trained with just $5 million—far less than the hundreds of millions invested by companies like OpenAI, Meta, and Google.
- It surpassed models like GPT-4 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet in benchmarks and uses a unique Mixture-of-Experts (MOE) architecture, where multiple specialized models collaborate on tasks.
- It’s trained on 14.8 trillion tokens, enhancing language understanding and task-specific skills, while a new technique, Multi-Head Latent Attention (MLA), boosts efficiency and reduces training costs.
- The Chinese company recently unveiled its new model, DeepSeek-R1.
- Features of DeepSeek-R1
- The new model features the ability to “think,” a capability referred to as test-time compute.
- The R1 model uses the same Mixture-of-Experts (MOE) architecture as DeepSeek-V3, allowing specialized models to collaborate on tasks.
- It matches or even surpasses the performance of OpenAI’s frontier models in areas like math, coding, and general knowledge.
- It is reportedly 90-95% more affordable than OpenAI’s O1 model.
Key Features of DeepSeek AI
- Open-Source Technology: It stands out with its open-source AI models, including DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1, allowing developers and researchers to freely access the source code, collaborate, and drive faster breakthroughs through shared improvements.
- Cost Efficiency: It focuses on cost-effectiveness, building its models for just $5.6 million—one-tenth of the cost of OpenAI’s models. This highlights the potential for lower-priced strategies to disrupt the AI market and raises questions about the sustainability of high-priced models.
- Performance Capabilities: It is designed for complex reasoning and benchmarks against top models, showing strong performance in mathematics, programming, and natural language processing.
- Strategic Development Amid Restrictions: It has adapted to U.S. sanctions by using a mix of high-performance and affordable chips, allowing it to develop powerful AI solutions without relying on expensive hardware like Nvidia’s A100 series.
- Market Impact: It has significantly impacted the tech sector, highlighting concerns about the dominance of American AI companies and the shifting dynamics due to competition from Chinese firms.
Difference Between DeepSeek and ChatGPT:
| Feature | DeepSeek | ChatGPT |
| Performance | Competitive with ChatGPT, excels at technical questions and code generation | Strong overall performance, versatile across various tasks |
| Query Type | Text-based queries only | Text-based, with multimodal capabilities (e.g., AI image generation, voice interaction) |
| Custom Features | None | Custom GPTs for personalized tasks |
| Cost | Free, no query limits | Free version available, but advanced features require payment |
| API Pricing | $0.55 per million input tokens, $2.19 per million output tokens | $15 per million input tokens, $60 per million output tokens |
| Usage | Ideal for cost-conscious users and developers | Ideal for users seeking diverse, multimodal features |