Trump warns new Chinese DeepSeek AI is a ‘wake up call’ for US tech firms | EUROtoday

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Donald Trump has praised China’s new AI breakthrough as a “wake-up call” for American tech corporations that in the end “could be good” for the U.S.

Shares in {hardware} maker Nvidia and quite a few different Silicon Valley firms plunged by a complete of greater than $1 trillion after Hangzhou-based start-up DeepSeek launched its newest AI mannequin.

Known as R1, the mannequin reportedly beats rivals corresponding to Meta and ChatGPT creator OpenAI in a number of key metrics whereas costing only a fraction to coach and develop.

While he issued a warning in a speech at a Republican retreat in Miami on Monday, President Trump was additionally bullish about American firms’ capacity to take the strain.

“The release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries — that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win,” he mentioned.

“We have the greatest scientists in the world. Even Chinese leadership told me that …. ‘Silicon Valley,’ they said, ‘there’s nobody like those people.'”

He then mentioned the breakthrough might be “very much a positive development” as a result of it will save American firms “billions and billions” of {dollars}, although it wasn’t clear precisely what he meant.

“Under the Trump administration we’re going to unleash our tech companies and we’re going to dominate the future like never before,” he vowed.

The information comes after Trump scrapped Joe Biden’s 2023 safeguards on AI growth and introduced a brand new $500 billion funding fund for brand new information facilities and energy vegetation to gasoline the business.

He has beforehand argued that though it is doable AI will “take over the human race,” American companies must “take the lead over China” and dominate the technology.

Like ChatGPT, DeepSeek R1 is a “large language” model — a type of “generative” AI that uses neural networks to digest and process vast quantities of human-generated text and learn how to create its own.

Unlike ChatGPT, though, R1 is open-source, meaning that its code can be freely studied by anyone. That stands in contrast to OpenAI and Anthropic, whose executives have argued that open-source AI models are potentially more unsafe for the world.

Over the weekend DeepSeek’s chatbot app shot to the top of Apple’s App Store charts, overtaking ChatGPT as the top-rated free iPhone application in the US.

“DeepSeek R1 is AI’s Sputnik second,” wrote venture capitalist Marc Andreessen on X on Sunday, referring to the Soviet Union’s shock satellite launch in 1957 that galvanized the space race.

One anonymous worker at Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, claimed on an insiders’ forum that Meta was in “panic” mode and was “transferring frantically” to “copy” everything it could from the new rival.

U.S. tech firms have had to dig deeply into their pockets to fund the vast expense of training more powerful generative AI systems and running existing ones, buying or renting ever-growing armadas of specialized microchips to perform the energy-intensive work.

Heightening the tension is the fact that generative AI has so far largely failed to turn a profit, leading some analysts to believe that the current hype is actually a bubble.

American tech bosses put on a brave face on Monday. OpenAI boss Sam Altman called R1 “a formidable mannequin, notably round … value,” however promised to ship “better” alternate options and mentioned it was “invigorating to have a new competitor.” A spokesperson for Nvidia likewise called R1 “a superb AI development.”

Meanwhile, Chinese social media customers expressed jubilation at DeepSeek’s success, based on BBC News, hailing it as “the real deal” and “the best new year gift” for the nation.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-deepseek-ai-china-b2687418.html