🧵about Deepseek 1/6
Andreessen and Schumer call Deepseek a “Sputnik moment.”
We would be smarter to view it as a lucky break.
OpenAI, Microsoft, Google et al have claimed that AGI is coming soon, that it will be wonderful for humanity, but there is only one way to do it: their way.
Andreessen and Schumer call Deepseek a “Sputnik moment.”
We would be smarter to view it as a lucky break.
OpenAI, Microsoft, Google et al have claimed that AGI is coming soon, that it will be wonderful for humanity, but there is only one way to do it: their way.
Comments
Their way may cost about $1 Trillion. The energy load is distorting the power grid and accelerating climate change. Their way uses huge amounts of drinking water. It steals copyrights and private information. It will eliminate millions of creative jobs.
AGI makes that okay.
Altman et al have persuaded politicians and CEOs that LLMs are The Big Thing and the US must get there first. They say the only way to get to AGI is their way.
Deepseek just introduced a product with similar functionality that used a tiny fraction of the resources.
Oops.
Walk Street freaked out …
LLMs do some interesting things today, but there is no evidence that applying statistics to historical data will ever get you to anything that approximates intelligence.
If that goal is unlikely, how do you justify investing $1 trillion?
Industry has already invested $250B, much of which could suffer instant depreciation if Deepseek is real.
But if we are smart, we will study Deepseek and see how to get where OpenAI, Google et al are now for a lot less capital, energy, water.
It could be a lucky break.
My bet is we will screw it up.
OpenAI, MSFT, GOOG et al like “their way” because it limits competition.
Trump and Schumer listen to Big Tech and can be persuaded by the testosterone-heavy messaging.
But that may not be in the best interests of the US or humanity.
/end
Deepseek doesn't solve that AI is inherently regressive just like their other binary masquerades, degrading on its own data once adopted. Even using less energy it is a total waste.
https://bsky.app/profile/moonalice.com/post/3lgsxpizqqk2y
Crux