Much has been said about the threat of obsolescence that artificial intelligence poses to certain vocations, including journalism, but some deft reporting has revealed that the battleground for the ‘soul’ of AI is hotting up behind digital divides – and there’s blood on the floor.
This has emerged after DeepSeek, a low-cost AI chatbot developed by a relatively obscure Chinese start-up, made headlines by surpassing established competitors like ChatGPT.
Launched in January, DeepSeek quickly became the highest-rated free app on Apple's App Store in the United States, wiping US$600 billion off Silicon Valley giant Nvidia’s market value in a single day.
This drop was attributed to the impact of DeepSeek's emergence in the AI space, which raised concerns among investors about the competitive landscape and Nvidia's position within it. The company's stock price fell by nearly 17%, closing at $118.42 after starting the day at $124.79
According to the BBC, Monday’s DeepSeek shocker represented about half of what Nvidia was worth.
You can almost sense Donald Trump bristling with righteous indignation.
The US President’s predecessor, Joe Biden, had used the emergence of more affordable AI out of China as a pretext to place a ban on AI tech exportation to China, a move supported by Trump.
According to BBC smart tech correspondent, Marc Cieslack, the Biden ban followed in the wake of continued speculation that China was using Nvidia technology to spark its own burgeoning AI industry.
China, of course, refutes allegations of intellectual property appropriation from the US, citing sour grapes because it manufactures AI at a fraction of the price, compared with its bête noire.
To put that in perspective: Microsoft has pledged to invest $80 billion in AI development, and Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has followed suit, announcing it will invest as much as $65 billion in the construction of data centres and related infrastructure.
DeepSeek has said it’s costing them $6 million to do the same. That’s right – only six mill!
No wonder Nvidia got a bit of a kneecap on Monday.
What does it all mean?
Tech researcher Dr Stephanie Hare told the BBC: “We have a global competition between the world’s two superpowers, pitched as a battle for technology in the 21st century.”
She said it was all about smart tech output and how this translated into productivity and growth, including for low-growth countries like the UK and Germany currently.
“Everybody is looking for the next big thing that is going to get them some economic growth so that we can pay for everything that we need; education, health care etc.
“Whoever wins the race for AI will define that."
By the looks of it, it’s not the US at this stage.
Cieslack said there’s general consensus among industry ranks that the Biden Administration was too late in protecting Nvidia’s secrets from following into Chinese hands.
Now you know why Trump likes to call him “Sleepy Joe.”
However, whether China is indeed guilty or not of ‘borrowing’ its tech smarts from the US is almost immaterial.
Cieslack said time will be the judge whether or not AI out of China can be trusted, given the authoritarianism of the communist government of Xi Jinping.
Just imagine asking DeepSeek: “How free are the citizens of the People’s Republic of China?”
Would you trust the answer?
