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> This title is misleading though - where it tries to state that DeepSeek only focuses on research and not revenue.

IMO, the title is quite accurate and supported by the content of the article. The team is prioritizing AI research at the expense of short term profit.

If the title was "DeepSeek is solely a research effort" you would have a case.

Agreed, per Liang Wenfeng's public comments, his aim was and remains to inspire his fellow Chinese geeks to lead in innovation and not be satisfied at simply following the lead, and creating better versions, of foreign (read Western) mind products.

Lest we forget, this is an option because others did figure out the expensive way how most of the things DeepSeek relies upon work. You might even call it research.

Yes, but the real question is: Why are they able to do that? I understand we're debating nuances here, but my concern is about the overall impression the title gives. It positions DeepSeek as some kind of higher ideal, yet the article achieves this impression by deliberately overlooking key facts.

For example, why can Google afford to run Waymo, a self-driving car company? Is it because Google prioritizes self-driving cars and safety over profit?

No. It's because Google's core business—selling advertisements, monetizing personal data, and essentially profiting from surveillance—generates enormous amounts of money.

With all of this said. I am a fan of DeepSeek and the amount of openness they have.

I really miss the ZIRP days when every company had some robotics R&D bototmless money pit

If anything, it sounds more like an "EA working as intended" story.

"Focuses on" does not mean "exclusively undertakes".

Hence "I focus on enjoying life more than chasing money" does not imply "I don't do anything for money". It does not preclude me from engaging in paid activities. It simply means they are not the main priority.

So pointing out that I have earned money is not a contradiction of my claim.

The comment seems to be entirely ignorant of the basic semantics of "focus".

> DeepSeek has strong backing from the government now that they have made a break through

This is one thing I'd like western governments to implement as well. When such a potentially world changing technology comes up, fund its research and socialize its benefits. Instead, all we take from China is more surveillance, censorship, and anti-encryption laws (UK)

ONLY if it's Open Source!

I am done paying taxes upon taxes upon taxes (not US based) and helping others becoming richer.

It's totally fine for the government to add backing, but then it must be Open Source OR it must partly belong to the citizens!

Quid pro quo!

Yeah the research result and IP should belong to the public commons, if the initial researchers get a head start with exploiting the IP im fine with that.

We do massively back research and innovation with public money.

But then we privatize the gains.

And open source models.

They are. There's a ton of research taking place at public institutions and by government contract. We socialize the benefit by charging taxes on the profits.

If you instead mean something like "we should give already rich billionaires even more billions to toy around with" then no. We should not do that. Let's cut the parasitic billionaires out, and just fund the researchers. You know, like we are doing.

By "Socialize the benefits" I mean open sourcing and preventing corporations from abusing it to suppress wages

you can complain about "parasitic billionaires", and some probably qualify, but academic institutions aren't majority-responsible for LLMs. transformers came out of google and, although some academics toyed with them, most of the interesting work has been from companies. i care more about results than sticking it to the "evil billionaire" or whatever.

perhaps the better question is why "parasitic billionaires" and their companies are producing better results than academic institutions, and how we can fix said institutions to get them running well again.

Better results in what way? Why do they need “fixing”? Do you think shareholder value is a real proxy for scientific progress?

Yes they do. There have been broken by neoliberal policies for quite some time. Rich have gutted them out to force researchers into selling out to the private sector instead of just giving the fruits of the research to everyone under equal conditions.

entirely aside from where value accrues relative to where it's created, it's just true that universities aren't building what are pretty interesting and promising new technologies. you're mistaking a positive statement for a normative one, which is a depressingly common turn of events on the internet. it is simply true that all this stuff is getting built by corporations, which is not a value judgement as to that being good. as i said, we should be thinking about why corporations are beating out our academic institutions, because that's the starting point to fix them.

Opinions can vary on what is "interesting". Personally, I find LLMs extremely boring from a scientific standpoint. If they turn out to be a product, they could be extremely valuable, but if they fail in the marketplace, they don't offer any interesting insights into the nature of the universe of computer science. LLMs are a technology of engineering, not science.

What is clear though is that none of that "interesting" AI stuff would exist without the mountains of research done by academic institutions. Google may have cemented "Attention" as a concept in LLM style AI, but the math to do that didn't come from nowhere. That math isn't thought of as a "technology" because it's not valuable without some product development. Academic institutions don't do that product development. That's precisely what makes you think they're being "beaten"

OpenAI and DeepSeek are not beating academic institutions in any metric the academic institutions should care about. That's just true.

> DeepSeek has received support from Beijing, including access to state-funded data centers.

Source?

The timing between

1. This meeting - https://www.ft.com/content/27f062b4-cf1f-4353-8d7f-8690d972f...

2. This announcement - https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/06/tech/china-state-venture-capi...

Am I surprised they are getting help? No. I think any country who has this type of break through technology should be supporting it.

The first link from FT is paywalled and the second link from CNN does not mention "data center" even once, yet you were stating as a fact that

> DeepSeek has received support from Beijing, including access to state-funded data centers.

I do believe as you said that

> DeepSeek has strong backing from the government now that they have made a break through

but please do not confuse people by stating your beliefs as facts.

Thank you for this feedback. The first part of what I said was right and backed up by facts.

For the second part, I heard it on a podcast but couldn't find proof, so I removed that part - about government funded data centers.

Your focus on facts is what makes this group so good. Thank you for keeping our talks honest.

Well, the FT article itself says:

"The start-up has gained access to state-funded data centres, easing its computing constraints".

However they don't provide a source for their claim.

[1] It’s based in China

I actually see nothing from Liang suggesting that the work is motivated by or relevant for trading. Care to share your quotes? What I do see though are these quotes that mildly contradict your POV:

“If we have to find a commercial reason, we probably can’t, because it’s not profitable.”

“We’re going to do AGI. It’s driven by curiosity.”

“Giants have users, but their cash cows shackle them”

“It’s like someone buying a piano for a home—first, they can afford it, and second, such a group of people are eager to play beautiful music on it.”

“Giving back is an honor, and it attracts talent.”

“We won’t go closed-source. We believe that establishing a robust technology ecosystem matters more.”

> This title is misleading though - where it tries to state that DeepSeek only focuses on research and not revenue.

That's not what the title says though. It says "research over revenue" not only research no revenue.

I found the title misleading for a different reason: the "unlike silicon valley" part. IMHO SV couldn't care less about revenue than innovation, experimentation and ultimately valuation. Stock prices have been long detached from revenue multiples.

Are DeepSeek's publicly models themselves used in the trading operations of the HFT? I'd assume not, I feel even the architecture of models must be significantly different when comparing what R1 does versus what I'd assume trading models would do.

> 3. DeepSeek has strong backing from the government now that they have made a break through.

Maybe a bit more than just "strong backing":

Chinese AI jewel Deepseek reportedly restricts employee travel amid AI security concerns

https://the-decoder.com/chinas-deepseek-reportedly-restricts...

  Chinese AI treasure Deepseek has reportedly restricted some of its developers from leaving the country by requiring them to surrender their passports, likely due to concerns over data security and potential acquisitions.

So you do think they are just volunteers?

which source claiming they are focusing revenue over researching?