Kenan Malik, The Observer via The Guardian ; DeepSeek has ripped away AI’s veil of mystique. That’s the real reason the tech bros fear it
"DeepSeek, sponsored by a Chinese hedge fund, is a notable achievement. Technically, though, it is no advance on large language models (LLMs) that already exist. It is neither faster nor “cleverer” than OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude and just as prone to “hallucinations” – the tendency, exhibited by all LLMs, to give false answers or to make up “facts” to fill gaps in its data. According to NewsGuard, a rating system for news and information websites, DeepSeek’s chatbot made false claims 30% of the time and gave no answers to 53% of questions, compared with 40% and 22% respectively for the 10 leading chatbots in NewsGuard’s most recent audit.
The figures expose the profound unreliability of all LLMs. DeepSeek’s particularly high non-response rate is likely to be the product of its censoriousness; it refuses to provide answers on any issue that China finds sensitive or about which it wants facts restricted, whether Tiananmen Square or Taiwan...
Nevertheless, for all the pushback, each time one fantasy prediction fails to materialise, another takes its place. Such claims derive less from technological possibilities than from political and economic needs. While AI technology has provided hugely important tools, capable of surpassing humans in specific fields, from the solving of mathematical problems to the recognition of disease patterns, the business model depends on hype. It is the hype that drives the billion-dollar investment and buys political influence, including a seat at the presidential inauguration."
