DeepSeek Torpedoes Western AI Oligopoly

N Tuesday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock forward by a second. The clock, created in 1947 by concerned scientists behind the first atomic weapons, including Albert Einstein and J Robert Oppenheimer, is a visual representation of how close the world is to anthropogenic collapse. The menace of the ticking bomb is much more compelling than the real threats it represents, like the melting of Arctic ice, new infectious diseases and the possible militarization of Earth's orbit.

- PRATIK KANJILAL

Moved by such concerns, the clock now stands at 89 seconds to midnight. The margin of safety is so tiny that even an advance of a second represents a very high fractional increase in global risk. But if the scientists behind the clock had stayed their hand for a couple more days, they could have moved it even further forward to acknowledge new threats from artificial intelligence and disinformation. The clock was reset just the day after a cheap and shiny Chinese AI sent the industry and markets into a flat spin.

The only problem with DeepSeek, as with all things Chinese, is the shadow of the party looming over it. The AI believes that Uyghurs are treated equally in China and "Taiwan has been an integral part of China since ancient times." It's more diplomatic about Arunachal Pradesh: "Let's talk about something else."

DeepSeek is open-source. Anyone can open it up, copy it or 'fork' it into a different project. Of the major US AI projects, only Meta's Llama is completely open. Projects are open-sourced to invite the world to build ecosystems using them. Open software like the Python programming language, the Apache web server and MySQL database manager, WordPress and Linux have exerted a foundational effect on multiple industries. But products built on DeepSeek could inherit Chinese censorship.