DeepSeek-R1 — the AI model created by DeepSeek, a little known Chinese company, at a fraction of what it cost OpenAI to build its own models — has sent the AI industry into a frenzy for the last couple of days. When the news about DeepSeek-R1 broke, the AI world was quick to frame it as yet another flashpoint in the ongoing U.S.-China AI rivalry.
However, I argue that the real story isn’t about geopolitics, although there’s a strong geopolitical layer somewhere there. I believe that the real story is about the growing power of open-source AI and how it’s upending the traditional dominance of closed-source models — a line of thought that Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, also shares.
(Forbes)