Chinese state-linked accounts hyped DeepSeek AI launch ahead of US stock rout | Hacker News Reader

Chinese state-linked accounts hyped DeepSeek AI launch ahead of US stock rout

reuters.com

11 pointscscurmudgeon8 comments

It will be interesting to see if there was short selling of NVIDIA by the hedge fund behind deep seek. However in the coming months it will become clear how many of DeekSeeks claims prove to be true. In the short term testing out the promised improvements in efficiency by other frontier models will be something to watch for. The next test will be is there genuine advancement in the space in capability. Let’s see how frontier models respond over the coming months. Should make for some fast paced action in this space

That would be a smoking gun and add credibility to this. However, with hindsight—and especially if you had inside or advanced knowledge of something groundbreaking—it would be obvious to capitalize on it in some way, as long as it didn't violate stock market trading standards.

For example, if a company developed a revolutionary drug that would disrupt an entire market and weaken competitors, purchasing options against those competitors wouldn’t constitute insider trading or breach stock market regulations, as I understand it. However, buying shares in the company itself based on that inside knowledge would.

A country taking pride in a major AI breakthrough, with people celebrating the achievement, is now being framed as a deliberate attack on the U.S. stock market. If we're being fair and impartial, that feels like sour grapes.

The reality is that stock market values are shaped by large companies operating in dynamic, cutting-edge fields. Any significant advancement in those fields will naturally impact shares.

For example, if a photonic-based CPU were released tomorrow, it would affect companies like AMD, Intel, and ARM—just the way markets work. History is full of similar disruptions, from pharmaceutical breakthroughs reshaping the drug industry to the rise of electric vehicles. Tesla’s emergence didn’t exactly boost traditional car manufacturers, but that was widely accepted because it was an American company.

Market disruption happens more often than people realize. The difference here is that AI has been heavily hyped, leading to inflated stock values. When a field like this is so dominant, any leap forward—especially from a competitor—will inevitably have an impact. If investors put too many eggs in one basket, volatility is to be expected.

Ultimately, China achieved something impressive despite adversity. Instead of blaming them for their progress or for sharing their advancements with the world, we should applaud it. Spinning this into a conspiracy misses the point. If anything, the real issue lies in the hype-driven nature of the AI market itself.

As they say—diversity solves many things, stock markets included, though I'm sure in the days/weeks/months ahead - I expect a campaign of Deepseek is just wanting to capture people's data with it for the Chinese government and others more sinister allegations, though I'm sure China could claim the same from GPT and the like just as equally. Still, we never hear about that.

There is organic celebration which is good. But we should be wary of and point out astroturfing.

Are we going to pretend astroturfing is not a thing?

It depends on how granular and selective it is, or how it is framed.

Could leverage that at any company that gets a government grant or assistance which has a marketing department. Heck could say MAGA is astroturfing and even GPT would agree if you ask ("Is MAGA astroturfing?") it that (yet ask the same question of DeepSeek and the response is less clear-cut, that it feels more unbiased, so that I recommend trying for yourselves), but then politics is very much deep into that on all party politics in many countries.

Chinese bots need to just chill. There is no big need to gloat and run half baked influence ops in an environment where people cant even remember what they were worrying about last week.

The US is drowning under an info tsunami for not recognizing human attention is finite while content is allowed to explode.

The Chinese just need to sit back and stop reacting.

Last year, it was Russian bots; this year, it's Chinese bots. So much debate gets dismissed under these labels, shutting down common sense. Of course, such bots exist—but so do American ones, and, in reality, every country and even corporations deploy them in some form.

Sometimes, I wonder what could truly unite the world. Sadly, it often seems like only a global catastrophe—something as extreme as an alien invasion—could bring humanity together. Religion, politics, and countless other factions keep us divided. Even race, which should be a meaningless distinction, has been weaponized. I've always believed we are one race—the human race—but at times, it feels like we've drifted so far from that truth. When you take a step back and see the whole picture, it's enough to make anyone with a heart just sit down and weep.

I think we know who is behind all this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_Manchu

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