Whilst the US government and some parts of the tech industry led by OpenAI continue to undermine DeepSeek’s achievements basis claims about how DeepSeek possibly breached OpenAI’s terms of service by training its model based on the latter’s using a technique known as ‘distillation’, there is broader acknowledgement of DeepSeek’s prowess. Chinese tech stocks have rallied since then reflecting investors’ confidence in Chinese ability to drive cutting edge innovation in general. Underpinning this is a realisation of the availability of tech talent in China, somewhat bridging the gap with that in the US, often considered the home of technological innovation.
“The core team of developers and scientists behind DeepSeek, the Chinese start-up that has jolted the A.I. world, all attended university in China, according to the company’s founder. That’s a contrast with many Chinese tech companies, which have often sought talent educated abroad.
As Chinese commenters online basked in Americans’ shocked reactions, some pointed to the high number of science Ph.D.s that China produces annually. “DeepSeek’s success proves that our education is awesome,” read one blog post’s headline.
Acclaim has even poured in from overseas. Pavel Durov, the founder of the messaging platform Telegram, said last month that fierce competition in Chinese schools had fueled the country’s successes in artificial intelligence. “If the U.S. doesn’t reform its education system, it risks ceding tech leadership to China,” he wrote online.”
First in terms of numbers:
“China produced more than four times as many STEM graduates in 2020 as the United States. Specifically in A.I., it has added more than 2,300 undergraduate programs since 2018, according to research by MacroPolo, a Chicago-based research group that studies China.
By 2022, nearly half of the world’s top A.I. researchers came from Chinese undergraduate institutions, as opposed to about 18 percent from American ones, MacroPolo found. And while the majority of those top researchers still work in the United States, a growing number are working in China.”
There is growing evidence that top tier Chinese talent remains in China unlike the brain drain of the past. Geopolitics has helped too:
“Washington has also made it harder for Chinese students in certain fields, including A.I., to obtain visas to the United States, citing national security concerns.
“If they’re not going to go abroad, they’re going to start some company” or work for a Chinese one, Mr. Ma said.
…China’s top schools, such as Tsinghua University and Peking University, are world-class; many of DeepSeek’s employees studied there.”
The Chinese government’s actions on their tech industry in 2022 not withstanding, there has been help:
“The Chinese government has also helped foster more robust ties between academia and enterprises than in the West, said Marina Zhang, a professor at the University of Technology Sydney who studies Chinese innovation. It has poured money into research projects and encouraged academics to contribute to national A.I. initiatives.
…Mr. Liang, DeepSeek’s founder, has lamented as much, noting last year that “top talents in China are underestimated. Because there’s so little hard-core innovation happening at the societal level, they don’t have the opportunity to be recognized.”
DeepSeek’s success may hinge as much on how it differed from other Chinese tech companies as on how it shared their strengths. It was financed by the profits from its parent hedge fund. And Mr. Liang has described hiring humanities graduates in addition to computer scientists, in the spirit of fostering a freewheeling intellectual atmosphere.”
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