Some perspective on this entire DeepSeek situation:
1. DeepSeek is a legitimate lab and well-respected. The V3 was genuinely novel and performed above expectations
2. Reinforcement Learning (RL) used by DeepSeek is a genuinely novel improvement
3. DeepSeek was trained on OpenAI's o1 output. OpenAI remains the first to cross the "four minute mile", so to speak. DeepSeek just borrowed from their technique
4. The core innovation here is RL, which essentially means that DeepSeek improves itself through self-reinforcement.
5. No, this isn't a psyop. Yes, CCP is likely involved - impossible for any large org (DeepSeek parent org is a $8B AUM fund - okayish size for China). That's par for the course when dealing with Chinese businesses
6. The model is genuinely nice and has a lot of personality
7. No, this doesn't destroy Nvidia. And no, it doesn't destroy OpenAI - remember that these were the first to come up with this reasoning technique. That said, their path to profitability is much harder now that open source LLMs have caught up
8. No, Nvidia isn't rekt. The bulk of AI costs are in inference (i.e. delivering results) not so much in training. Inference at scale will keep demanding Nvidia GPUs
As things stand, the hierarchy for models is still O1 Pro > DeepSeek R1.
But given that O1 Pro costs $200/month and R1 costs $0, R1 gets an edge.
This might change when OpenAI O3 launches.
But until then, it's off to the races