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There's no doubt about it, DeepSeek R1 is a Very. Big. Deal. There's a great deal of buzz in the AI company, as is the way with many new innovations. But sometimes a newcomer shows up which truly does have a real claim as a significant disruptive force. DeepSeek R1 is such an animal (you can access the model for yourself here).

As reported by CNBC, DeepSeek app has actually currently exceeded ChatGPT as the top totally free app in Apple's App Store. And several tech giants have actually seen their stocks take a major hit. This includes Nvidia, which is down 13% today.

On the face of it, it's simply a new Chinese AI design, and there's no scarcity of these launching weekly. But there are 2 essential things which make DeepSeek R1 different.

- What is DeepSeek? - whatever to understand - DeepSeek's Janus Pro AI image generator is here to take on Midjourney and DALL-E

First, people are talking about it as having the exact same efficiency as OpenAI's o1 design. To recap, o1 is the existing world leader in AI designs, due to the fact that of its ability to reason before providing a response. This makes it very powerful for more complex jobs, which AI normally has problem with.

The reality that a newbie has actually jumped into contention with the marketplace leader in one go is astonishing.

Second, not only is this new design providing almost the same performance as the o1 design, but it's also open source. This means that any AI researcher or engineer throughout the world can work to enhance and fine tune it for different applications.

That's a breakthrough in terms of the possible speed of advancement we're most likely to see in AI over the coming months. This is no longer a scenario where a couple of business manage the AI area, now there's a big worldwide neighborhood which can contribute to the development of these remarkable brand-new tools.

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To rub salt in the wound, the DeepSeek family of designs was trained and developed in simply 2 months for a paltry $5.6 million. This compares to the billion dollar development expenses of the significant incumbents like OpenAI and Anthropic.

To say it's a slap in the face to these tech giants is an understatement. The Chinese hedge fund owners of DeepSeek, High-Flyer, have a performance history in AI advancement, so it's not a total surprise. What is a surprise is for them to have actually produced something from scratch so rapidly and cheaply, and without the advantage of access to cutting-edge western computing innovation.

Obviously ranking well on a criteria is one thing, however many people now try to find real world evidence of how models perform on an everyday basis. Early reports recommend that the DeepSeek criteria aren't lying, with a number of users adopting it for AI programs in preference over Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 3.5.

Surprisingly the R1 design even seems to move the goalposts on more creative pursuits. One Reddit user posted a sample of some creative composing produced by the design, which is shockingly good.

Early days for DeepSeek

My own testing suggests that DeepSeek is likewise going to be popular for those desiring to use it in your area by themselves computers. In three little, admittedly unscientific, tests I finished with the design I was astonished by how well it did.

In one test I asked the design to help me find a non-profit fundraising platform name I was searching for. A standard Google search, OpenAI and Gemini all failed to provide me anywhere near the best answer. DeepSeek struck it in one go, which was .

We are living in a timeline where a non-US company is keeping the original objective of OpenAI alive - truly open, frontier research that empowers all. It makes no sense. The most amusing result is the most likely.DeepSeek-R1 not just open-sources a barrage of designs but ... pic.twitter.com/M7eZnEmCOYJanuary 20, 2025

It's early days to pass last judgment on this new AI paradigm, but the results so far seem to be exceptionally promising. Something I did notification, is the fact that triggering and the system prompt are incredibly important when running the design locally.

Without an excellent timely the results are absolutely mediocre, or a minimum of no real advance over existing regional designs. But when it gets it right, my goodness the sparks absolutely do fly.

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Nigel Powell is an author, writer, and specialist with over thirty years of experience in the technology market. He produced the weekly Don't Panic innovation column in the Sunday Times paper for 16 years and is the author of the Sunday Times book of Computer Answers, released by Harper Collins. He has been a technology expert on Sky Television's Global Village program and a regular contributor menwiki.men to BBC Radio 5's Men's Hour.

He has an Honours degree in law (LLB) and a Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA), and his work has made him a professional in all things software application, AI, security, privacy, mobile, and other tech developments. Nigel presently resides in West London and enjoys costs time practicing meditation and listening to music.

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