Deepseek Unmasked [pdf]

55 points by ironyman 1 month ago | 46 comments
  • Igrom 1 month ago
    What a pointed title. That aside, I am rather surprised that a committee's investigation report is this light on what in my opinion are fundamental details, including the make-up of the committee, the members' respective duties and the course of the investigative process. Notwithstanding the potentially political raison d'etre of the report, is that customary for Congressional committees?
    • pmags 1 month ago
      Here's the full membership of the committee:

      https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/members

      • Igrom 1 month ago
        The gripe I have with this is that it is 1) an impermanent external resource that shows 2) the current, not the contemporary make-up of the commitee that's 3) subject to change at any time, and thus not a lasting appendix to the report. I guess I had expected more academic rigour from a congressional committee.
      • wormlord 1 month ago
        You have too much faith in US leadership.
      • Centigonal 1 month ago
        Dang, you really can make anything sound scary if you use the right language!

        1. ChatGPT funnels your data to American Intelligence Agencies through backend infrastructure subject to U.S. Government National Security Letters (NSLs) that allow for secret collection of customer data by the US Department of Defense.

        2. ChatGPT covertly manipulates the results it presents to align with US propaganda, as a result of the widely disseminated Propaganda Model and close ties between OpenAI's leadership and the US Government.

        3. It is highly likely that OpenAI used unlawful model training techniques to create its model, stealing from leading international news sources, academic institutions, and publishing houses.

        4. OpenAI’s AI model appears to be powered by advanced chips manufactured by Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC and reportedly utilizes tens of thousands of chips that are manufactured by a Trade War adversary of America and subject to a 32% import duty.

        • banku_brougham 1 month ago
          Yeah the Chinese govt has far less incentive to mess with me personally than the US govt does. Its hard to convince people of this point of view I have found.
        • qwertytyyuu 1 month ago
          As a non American, all of these don’t seem to be any worse than US based models?
        • hdjjhhvvhga 1 month ago
          It's shocking how much American soft power diminished in such a short period. White House documents used to mean something, had a certain weigh, whereas now some of them are simply ridiculous. This one in particular is not particularly bad even. Although we know who inspired it and that, given the fact that DeepSeek made their models available and OpenAI didn't, whatever is written should be taken with more than one grain of salt.
          • ein0p 1 month ago
            What's interesting is that most of this is applicable to proprietary US models when used by non-US users, too. "Stores data in the US"? Yes. "Complies with approved narratives"? Check. "Cooperates with intelligence services and the military"? Check. The only real solution here are open weights, and Deepseek is the strongest open-weights model to this day. Don't like it? Compete.
          • chvid 1 month ago
            The Sinophobia going through America is a form of insanity causing America to do enormous harm to itself.

            From banning open source software to destroying the business of its largest and most profitable companies.

            • anonym29 1 month ago
              It's amusing to see the hypocrisy on display, though. The authors of the report seem to be seriously accusing DeepSeek of IP theft from OpenAI, which was built on... IP theft. LOL.
            • orbital-decay 1 month ago
              In journalism it's called a hit piece, and this one is particularly low-quality. Embarrassing.
              • latentcall 1 month ago
                Sinophobic junk. You got shown up by a free and open model and wasted a gazillion dollars, good job. So yes let’s ban the competition and force Americans to use the junky ad riddled cheap clones.
                • isusmelj 1 month ago
                  As someone in Europe, I sometimes wonder what’s worse: letting US companies use my data to target ads, or handing it to Chinese companies where I have no clue what’s being done with it. With one I at least get an open source model. The other is a big black box.
                  • credit_guy 1 month ago
                    Both are bad. If Europe does not develop local alternatives to ChatGpt or DeepSeek, it will (slowly) lose its sovereingty.
                    • ryoshoe 1 month ago
                      Europe is developing local alternative models such as Mistral
                    • fragmede 1 month ago
                      They're not open source. It's nice of Meta and Deepseek to offer up their models for download, but that doesn't make them open source.
                      • chvid 1 month ago
                        Hard to be fully open source if you train on copyrighted material.

                        Anyway. Deepseek is the most open of the sota models.

                        • MoonGhost 1 month ago
                          Did they open their datasets already? Would be nice to have 'thinking' part.
                        • anonym29 1 month ago
                          Isn't this a bit of semantic lawyering? Open model weights are not the same as open source in a literal sense, but I'd go so far as to suggest that open model weights fulfill much of the intent / "soul" of the open source movement. Would you disagree with that notion?
                          • lxgr 1 month ago
                            > open model weights fulfill much of the intent / "soul" of the open source movement

                            Absolutely not. The intent of the open source movement is sharing methods, not just artifacts, and that would require training code and methodology.

                            A binary (and that's arguably what weights are) you can semi-freely download and distribute is just shareware – that's several steps away from actual open source.

                            There's nothing wrong with shareware, but calling it open source, or even just "source available" (i.e. open source with licensing/usage restrictions), when it isn't, is disingenuous.

                            • _aavaa_ 1 month ago
                              Meta models do not, they have use restrictions. At least deepseek does not.
                              • fragmede 1 month ago
                                It does not and I totally disagree with that. Unless we can see the code that goes into the model to stop of from telling me how to make cocaine, it's not the same sort of soul.
                            • MoonGhost 1 month ago
                              > With one I at least get an open source model. The other is a big black box.

                              It doesn't matter much as in both cases provider has access to you ins and outs. The only question is if you trust company operating the model. (yes, you can run local model, but it's not that capable)

                              • mrkramer 1 month ago
                                US is capitalistic liberal democracy and China is one party capitalistic dictatorship. Make your choice.
                                • PartiallyTyped 1 month ago
                                  The US tends towards dictatorship; due process is an afterthought, people disappearing off the streets, citizens getting arrested at the border for nothing, tourists getting deported over minute issues such as an iffy hotel booking, and that's just off the top of my head from the last 2 days.
                                  • mr90210 1 month ago
                                    You make it seem so binary. If you do enough research on the US you might change your mind. YES, I would still choose the US.
                                • comrade1234 1 month ago
                                  As long as I can run it on my own cheap hardware I’ll be using it. Our contracts with some of our customers is that their data never leaves our servers.
                                  • qeternity 1 month ago
                                    A minimum production setup for V3/R1 is 16x H100s…I guess that’s up to you whether that qualifies as cheap.
                                  • anarticle 1 month ago
                                    • skanga 1 month ago
                                      Looks like Deepseek is having it's Tiktok moment!
                                      • mrkramer 1 month ago
                                        Everybody is spying on everybody, it's free for all....if you want to be out of the reach, either stop using software for sensitive information and communication or start using fully encrypted products. Cryptography is the key.
                                        • somerandomness 1 month ago
                                          It's important to distinguish the DeepSeek App from the open-weight models, which are released under very liberal licenses, and you have full control of where data fed to the model goes, e.g. stays in the USA.
                                          • ChrisArchitect 1 month ago
                                            • beams_of_light 1 month ago
                                              It's interesting that they call out NVIDIA specifically as an enabler. MAGA going to war against NVIDIA now?
                                              • Havoc 1 month ago
                                                Wohoo. Better token throughput for europeans...
                                                • sschueller 1 month ago
                                                  ".. siphons data back to the People’s Republic of China (PRC)"

                                                  How does that work when I run the model myself?

                                                  Cry me a river, you tried to build a massive moat to force the rest of the world to suck you off for access and now you got caught with your pants down by a model that has been given out for free.

                                                  I wouldn't want to know how the US would use the discovery of cold fusion or a cure for all to make a profit for its elite instead of giving it out for the greater good.

                                                  • latentcall 1 month ago
                                                    America and Americans by large and “greater good” do not mix well. It’s a very individualist society aka “care about myself” society.
                                                    • adfm 1 month ago
                                                      You can say that about any country. Pull the crank hard enough and you could say the same about Liechtenstein.
                                                      • philwelch 1 month ago
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