MIT Technology Review Narrated How a top Chinese AI model overcame US sanctions
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Sep 3, 2025 A Chinese startup has launched an open-source reasoning model, DeepSeq R1, that rivals ChatGPT-01 at a lower cost. The impact of U.S. sanctions seems to be spurring innovation, providing new opportunities for resource-limited researchers. The podcast delves into the collaborative culture driving DeepSeq and how Chinese AI firms are overcoming challenges. It also discusses China's significant share of the global AI language model market and highlights strategic partnerships that are crucial for maintaining competitiveness in the face of restrictions.
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Efficient Model Rivals ChatGPT
- DeepSeq R1 matches or surpasses ChatGPT-01 on key benchmarks while costing far less to run.
- The model's efficiency could democratize research access, especially in the global south.
Simplicity Over Verbose Reasoning
- DeepSeq redesigned training to reduce GPU strain and prioritized accurate answers over verbose chain-of-thought.
- That engineering simplicity sped computation while retaining strong reasoning on math and coding tasks.
Founder Stockpiled GPUs Before Sanctions
- Liang stockpiled NVIDIA A100 chips before sanctions and used them with lower-power GPUs to train models.
- That hardware stash directly motivated founding DeepSeq and enabled its experiments.