US President Donald Trump has called the rise of the Chinese AI program DeepSeek “a wake-up call” for the US IT sector after it startled financial markets.
DeepSeek’s assertion that its R1 artificial intelligence (AI) model was developed at a fraction of the price of its competitors has sparked concerns about the industry’s future and led to a decline in the value of some of the largest businesses in the world.
Within a week of its release, DeepSeek has risen to the top of the US app download charts.
How does it stack up against its more well-known and reportedly more costly US competitors, including Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT?
Help with Writing
Asked about the most common reasons individuals use ChatGPT, ChatGPT states that helping people write is one among them.
Many people in various workplaces now use ChatGPT as an AI companion for everything from collecting and summarizing information in a useful way to even creating blog articles about a subject.
I requested that ChatGPT and DeepSeek summarize the greatest Scottish football players in history before requesting the chatbots to “draft a blog post summarising the best Scottish football players in history” because I am a devoted supporter of the sport.
In a matter of seconds, DeepSeek produced a list of the top 10, with Kenny Dalglish of Celtic and Liverpool at the top. It provided a useful summary of the players’ clubs, positions they played in, and a synopsis of their accomplishments.
Real-time updates as US stock markets resume trading after the investor shock of DeepSeek
Everything you should know about the AI software that is making people talk
Australia questions whether the technology is safe to use.
How China’s “AI heroes” stunned Silicon Valley by overcoming US restrictions
Watch: The Shockwave Effect of DeepSeek
Two non-Scottish players were also described by DeepSeek: Celtic icon Henrik Larsson and Rangers legend Brian Laudrup, who is Danish. In regard to the latter, it stated “although Swedish, Larsson is often included in discussions of Scottish football legends due to his impact at Celtic” .
It did elaborate on Laudrup’s nationality in its next blog post before providing a brief summary of the players’ careers.
Numerous names were repeated in ChatGPT’s response to the same query, with “King Kenny” once more at the top of the list.
Its thorough blog entry accurately and succinctly covered each player’s career.
It stated that “While the game has changed over the decades, the impact of these Scottish greats remains timeless.” Yes.
DeepSeek was undoubtedly on par with its most well-known US rival for this entertaining test.
Coding
The development of sophisticated AI models has changed the lives of programmers.
X received several humorous posts from developers stating that they couldn’t complete their tasks without the dependable tool at their side during ChatGPT’s outage last week.
How does this compare to DeepSeek?
Javier Aguirre is a medical and artificial intelligence researcher at Samsung Medical Center in Seoul, South Korea.
He said in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday: “Deepseek has really impressed me. In order to assess how well AI chatbots can help with coding, we typically try to push them to the limit while coding.I had a very difficult and complicated problem today. Not even chatGPT o1 could solve it with sufficient reasoning. I tried Deepseek, and it immediately and concisely resolved the issue.”
Additionally, he noted that the combination of models can result in success for coders. Addy Osmani, the Head of Chrome Developer Experience at Google, echoed this.
He discussed integrating DeepSeek with Claude Sonnet, a tool from the US AI company Anthropic, in a message to his 208k LinkedIn followers. Amazon made a $4 billion investment in Anthropic in 2023.
“Code with AI?” replied Mr. Osmani. Perhaps the greatest new hybrid coding model is DeepSeek R1 + Claude Sonnet. Indeed, engineers are utilizing them in tandem.
According to Mr. Osmani, DeepSeek was “significantly cheaper” to use than OpenAI’s o1 model and Claude Sonnet.
generating concepts
How about brainstorming? I requested “ideas for a story for children about a boy who lives on the moon” from ChatGPT and DeepSeek.
ChatGPT provided six concisely summarized concepts in a matter of seconds. One was about a boy named Max who was sent on an adventure while working as a postman on the moon. Another concerned Oliver, who was captivated by the sounds of an enigmatic orchestra composed of extraterrestrials.
Although none of these tales will soon compete with Roald Dahl or Harry Potter, they may serve as a springboard for more sophisticated concepts to emerge.
“Luna and the Boy Who Chased the Stars” was the only concept that DeepSeek offered in response. The 387-word response (which made no reference to the person or object known as “Luna”) told the tale of an inquisitive youngster named Milo who lived on the moon.
I realized that DeepSeek created a whole plot, whereas ChatGPT provided me with ideas. It was a start, and it was amazing how fast it was provided, even though it wasn’t very excellent and only focused on a character moving from point A to point B.
Studying and investigating
In high school, I recall my history teacher telling us how the First World War broke out after a complicated situation involving numerous European powers, with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 serving as the conflict’s ultimate catalyst.
How would the chatbots handle describing a historical event that is so intricate and subtle? Quite well.
Related Post-Chinese competitors are allegedly utilizing OpenAI’s work for their AI applications.
ChatGPT provided a thorough explanation and listed the important details. Although DeepSeek’s account was not as thorough, it did capture all the important details and events in a concise manner.
In addition to providing a summary akin to that of ChatGPT and DeepSeek, Google’s Gemini assistant allowed users to click on links from reliable sources, such the Imperial War Museum in the United Kingdom.
Based on my observations of other activities and prompts, DeepSeek was unquestionably on par with its US rivals.
Moving forward with steam
Although the objectives I gave the chatbots were straightforward, they hint to something considerably more important: the outcome of the so-called AI race is still up in the air.
Despite the enormous amount of money that US companies have invested in the technology, their Chinese adversary has demonstrated that their successes may be imitated.
This is only the beginning, according to Prof. Neil Lawrence, DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology.
“I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the type of innovation we can expect in these models,” he stated.
He cited a historical example: despite having enhanced rather than created the steam engine, James Watt is widely recognized as its creator.
“There’s plenty of space for budding James Watts to emerge, and that they are less likely to come from established players,” he stated.