Hacker News Reader

Comment by vineyardmike | Hacker News Reader

> DeepSeek is a small company that made a lot of money from other businesses, which makes their lack of focus on commercial interests feel more genuine.

Google also made a lot of money from other businesses that aren't AI models, until they started selling AI models, just as DeepSeek now does.

The reality is that DeepSeek is a full company, that was funded as a spin-off from the original business (a hedge fund that used its large GPU stockpile to pick stocks via ML). The company DeepSeek is owned by the hedge fund CEO not the hedge fund. It exists as a business aiming to make money, not as a pet project for another business.

View on HN

But the fact that they were donating huge sums every year even when they were still unknown really says something. If they were purely profit-driven, there’s no way the shareholders would have allowed that.

[flagged]

still way better than ClosedAI

I will call it as it is from now on as well

I actually call it Anti-Humanity AI. Without releasing the tech details of such AI, we all live in the danger that if something goes really wrong, we won't even have the chance to understand the disaster and fix it.

Basically they pocketed all profits with other people footing all the risks.

I have a more practical view: there's nothing wrong in making profit, the important thing is that they are also doing some good.

> As though you rendered the proletarians a service in first sucking out their very life-blood and then practicing your self-complacent, Pharisaic philanthropy upon them, placing yourselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when you give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them!

Friedrich Engels: The Condition of the Working-class in England

I have no idea about this but am curious to know if the wealthy Engels family who 'owned large cotton-textile mills in Barmen and Salford, England' showed the way for your other 'mighty benefactors'? What belongs to who is a mighty question as Obama reminded us with his lead pencil example. No easy answer though.

this doesn't argue whether existence of profits necessarily implies exploitation of workers but asserts it and then proceeds to argue against philanthropy funded by profits. This line of reasoning only makes sense if one already accepts the initial assumption, whereas the original poster questions that very assumption, so it's a bit irrelevant quote.

I read the parent’s comment as arguing that the existence of profits implies exploitation of workers in the quoted instance (p perhaps broadly in England at the time) and that there is some similarity with DeepSeek. No hard-line assertions, just suggested similarities.

It feels really odd seeing Engels' quotes used like this.

The focus of Engels' criticism when he made these statements was on *capitalist production relations*, where capitalists control the means of production and obtain profits by exploiting the surplus labor time of workers. This is precisely what DeepSeek and open-source initiatives are challenging. They are turning the means of production from the private property of capitalists into public property.

I hope you did not intentionally misquote this passage.

Free Software is not the same as expropriation. It's perhaps more the social-democratic smoke mirror kind of thing than lifting the dependency.

Regardless of free software, capitalists control the means of production and obtain profits by exploiting the surplus labor time of workers.

Free software may make it more obvious though, at least for some.

I'm not familiar with Engel's view, but my gut feeling here is that he was complaining about the way profit was made ("sucking out their very life-blood") and not about profit itself. But, even if he somehow saw profit as something bad regardless of how it is made, I would still disagree. It is definitely possible to make profit without exploiting people.

It’s an interesting reformulation of Catholic “original sin”.

> the fact that they were donating huge sums every year even when they were still unknown really says something

You don't need to be known by the general public to take advantage of tax schemes involving "donating" money

> The reality is that DeepSeek is a full company, that was funded as a spin-off from the original business (a hedge fund that used its large GPU stockpile to pick stocks via ML). The company DeepSeek is owned by the hedge fund CEO not the hedge fund. It exists as a business aiming to make money, not as a pet project for another business.

Of course they want money, lots of money, tons of money is required for hiring engineers and paying for its hardware. However, your claim that DeepSeek's exists is to make money is just your guess back by nothing else but your wild guess.

DeepSeek CEO Liang Wenfeng himself is an engineer, he is the co-author/developer of the DeepSeek model, he helped but not listed as a core contributor. Obviously that is not a smart strategy to spend your CEO hours to maximize your $ return. His interview a few months ago actually gave answers to all these, he is seeking for AGI. That is the motivation, that is why DeepSeek exists.

Zuckerberg, who is also a developer, and countless other CEOs are listed on many patents from their companies. Doesn’t mean they actually had a strong input in the invention.

No business exists not to make money because that is a charity. It’s not a charity, because a charity is not a business, and DeepSeek is a business. I don’t care to quibble about how interesting they are in being a lucrative business, but simply that they’re a business.

My point wasn’t to question their motives about profit vs AGI (why would these be mutually exclusive btw), but to challenge the notion that it’s some side project from a random business. It’s a company with dedicated resources and staff.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com