A Chinese artificial intelligence technology, DeepSeek, is getting the world's attention as a major competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Reported by Antara, at the opening of the 2025 World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting, Chinese AI company DeepSeek introduced its latest open source model, DeepSeek-R1. This model marks a major breakthrough with the use of pure deep learning.
DeepSeek claims that in math, coding, and natural language reasoning tasks, DeepSeek-R1's performance is comparable to leading models from global AI research laboratories such as OpenAI.
What is DeepSeek?
DeepSeek is a generative AI platform designed to understand, process, and respond to various contexts in human language. This Chinese startup is one of the artificial intelligence laboratories where they claim that their AI models, such as DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1, are equivalent to technology from OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, and Meta, the parent of Facebook.
In recent days, DeepSeek, which is said to rival ChatGPT, has gone viral and filled the author's social media homepage, especially YouTube. Interestingly, this technology is from China. Sure enough, Deepseek is a very interesting AI.
Just like ChatGPT, DeepSeek can be used for conversation, content creation, and data analysis. However, what makes DeepSeek different is that it only uses less sophisticated chips to drive its AI models.
Reported from the USA Today page, DeepSeek claims that the cost to train the DeepSeek-V3 model is only around $6 million, much cheaper than the more than $100 million that OpenAI spent to train the latest version of ChatGPT.
Interestingly, even though the United States government under Joe Biden's leadership restricted the export of advanced AI chips, DeepSeek said that this chip restriction did not stop it from releasing models that were 20 to 50 times cheaper than the OpenAI o1 model, depending on the task.
This surprised many parties, including the Director of Market Insights for AI marketing firm SOCi, Damian Rollison. "We had expected that AI development would grow rapidly since the public launch of ChatGPT, but the US was surprised when the latest leap came from China," he told USA Today in an emailed statement.
What makes DeepSeek good?
The DeepSeek application using the DeepSeek-V3 AI model has successfully achieved the top position in the Apple App Store since its launch on January 10, 2025. This startup claims that their application carries "advanced" AI technology that is equivalent to leading international models. In fact, this application is rated higher than TikTok and RedNote. This application has attracted the attention of many users and is ranked as the "top free application".
However, DeepSeek's success is not free from controversy regarding security issues. This application connected to China is predicted to raise geopolitical issues related to the AI arms race and could affect the development of transformative technology as stated by Damian Rollison.
"It seems that the AI arms race, as has been mentioned, will have geopolitical implications that go beyond economic competition, which in turn will impact the future of this transformative technology," he said.
As reported by Reuters, DeepSeek's success has attracted the attention of China's political elite. At the launch of DeepSeek-R1, the company's founder, Liang, attended a closed symposium hosted by Premier Li Qiang.
Liang's presence at the event signals that DeepSeek's success could support Beijing's policies in overcoming export restrictions imposed by Washington and supporting self-sufficiency efforts in strategic sectors such as artificial intelligence.
Is DeepSeek legal?
DeepSeek is one of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) from China that is capable of performing various tasks given to it. Such as answering questions, helping with programming, and analyzing data. The founder of DeepSeek is Liang Wenfeng. He had used AI to predict market trends and optimize investment decisions.
Then in 2021 he bought thousands of microprocessors from Nvidia for personal experiments, until DeepSeek was discovered. Professor Keyu Jin, a female economics professor from China born in 1982, author of the book The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism, stated that China cannot be punished by other countries.
For example, being punished by the United States , in the form of restrictions on technology imports, including restrictions on AI imports from the US. This punishment will actually encourage China to create its own AI. This is because China's industry continues to grow. And China really needs the things that are restricted.
Therefore, instead of being sluggish because of restrictions on AI imports, for example, China is looking for solutions and innovations to create the things that are restricted, so that their industrial needs are met.
How is DeepSeek so much more efficient?
While developing ChatGPT requires funds of up to billions of dollars, DeepSeek only spent around 5.6 million dollars. So the release of Deepseek provides one fact that can be learned from, that something that has been done at a very high cost, can actually be done at a much lower cost because of efficiency.
The company also has incorporated sparsity techniques, allowing the model to predict which parameters are necessary for specific inputs, improving both speed and efficiency. DeepSeek's hardware and system-level optimizations further enhance performance.
What are the advantages of DeepSeek?
Here are some of the advantages of DeepSeek technology:
- Cheaper and more efficient. The DeepSeek subscription fee is only around $ 0.5 per month, much more affordable compared to ChatGPT which starts at $ 20 per month.
- More sophisticated. Since its inception, DeepSeek has had two series, namely V3 and R1. DeepSeek R1 even has the advantage of being able to break down complex questions into smaller chunks of questions, thus answering questions more accurately.
- Open source. Open source can simply be interpreted as technology whose development is open, so that anyone can develop DeepSeek into a more sophisticated innovation or modify DeepSeek according to their needs.
DeepSeek's Disadvantages
Although it is reported that DeepSeek has many advantages, there is still information circulating about DeepSeek's shortcomings. These shortcomings include:
- Data privacy. User data is stored in a Chinese data center and must comply with Chinese government regulations.
- Information Censorship. This is also subject to Chinese government regulations, so not all information can be accessed, especially those related to the Chinese government.
- Hacker Threats. Vulnerable to being misused by hackers, namely hackers taking over user data.
Impact of the Birth of DeepSeek Technology
Here are some of the impacts of the birth of DeepSeek technology:
1. DeepSeek overtakes ChatGPT
Marked by the number of DeepSeek downloaders which has increased significantly. In a short time, DeepSeek was ranked 6th as the most downloaded application. While ChatGPT dropped to 4th place.
2. Balance of world technological development
The existence of DeepSeek also balances technological development, which will have many impacts and benefits. Among other things, no country is a superpower, there will be a price monopoly; and this technology will continue to develop in a better direction.
3. The emergence of Nvidia competitors
Deepseek caused Nvidia shares to plunge by 16.9%. Investors dumped stocks before the Chinese New Year. So stocks such as meta, google, alphabet, fell significantly.
Conclusion
DeepSeek is a living proof of how artificial intelligence can make our lives easier. In the future, this technology is predicted to be more sophisticated and integrated with various aspects of life, such as education, business, health, and entertainment.
DeepSeek is a smart search technology that utilizes artificial intelligence to help us find information faster and more accurately. With its ability to understand context and display relevant results, it can be a very useful tool in everyday life. So, if you want to search for information more efficiently, DeepSeek is a solution worth trying..
