In the future, the roaring 20's will not be mentioned in regards to the 1920's, but the 2020's.

With the COVID 19 pandemic, the presidencies of Donald Trump, the sudden dropout of Joe Biden 107 days before the 2024 election, the expansion of artificial intelligence (A.I.), it has been a decade for the books already!

At this point, we have all heard of ChatGPT—the A.I. powered chat bot that quickly rose to prominence in November 2022. According to OpenAI (the company who created ChatGPT) the application reached over one million downloads in a mere five days. By January 2023, the chat bot exceeded over one hundred million users, leading it to set the record for the fastest growing application in history.

Other similar chat bots have emerged since, but none have seemed to acquire as big a fan-base. But, with the release of DeepSeek, ChatGPT may have finally met its match.

Image Credit: Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

What is DeepSeek?

DeepSeek is a Chinese A.I. powered chat bot similar to ChatGPT. Its first version was released in November 2023, but its latest version which came out on January 20th (DeepSeek-R1), caused the application to skyrocket from obscurity to number one in the Apple Store.

To the surprise of many, DeepSeek was able to accomplish such a feat despite its lowered production costs compared to ChatGPT, and other large A.I. focused companies.

According to its founders, the budget to develop DeepSeek's latest model was a modest $5.576 million, though some debate the authenticity of this claim, which when compared to the estimated $100 million dollars OpenAI used to develop theirs, it is a significant difference.

This success has led some to question the amount of funds American based big tech has spent on A.I. projects when China was able to develop an equally efficient A.I. model on such a small budget. When compared to companies such as Microsoft and Meta who has pledged $80 billion and $65 billion on A.I. respectively in the current fiscal year, it is a stark contrast.

Despite its evident success, the publicity surrounding DeepSeek has not been purely positive.

Image Credit: Unseen Studio on Unsplash

Some folks have expressed concern with the rapid growth of A.I. and technologies of its liking. Is A.I. a net positive, or a net negative? Do we really need another chat bot to set the world ablaze? Those on both sides have been outspoken with their viewpoints, and both certainly have persuasive arguments.

But, a group of individuals who have long been speaking over their concern with A.I. are teachers.

Teachers all over social media have been lamenting over students using A.I., primarily ChatGPT, to write their essays, provide them answers to their homework, etc. It has gotten to the point where many school rubrics have to tackle the topic head on. Teachers have had to worry about ChatGPT in the classrooms for years at this point, will they now have to worry about DeepSeek too?

These aren't the only concerns surrounding the chat bot, though.

Take the Quiz: What Kind of Political Personality Are You?

Ever wondered what role you’d play in the political world? Take this fun quiz to find out!

DeepSeek and Censorship

Image Credit: Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

Many users of DeepSeek have reported the chat bot seems to censor itself in regards to topics of China or its government.

If you ask the A.I. assistant information about the United Kingdom's 2021 partygate scandals or America's infamous 2020 presidential debate, it will generate responses of great detail not dissimilar to ChatGPT or Gemini.

Yet, if you ask DeepSeek about the seemingly sudden removal of Hu Jianto from the closing ceremony of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the Umbrella Revolution, or even a question as generic as who the current president is in China for some examples (of which there are plenty more), it will respond with this:

"Sorry, that's beyond my current scope. Let's talk about something else."

Image Credit: Kristina Flour on Unsplash

Various news outlets and researchers have attributed this to the Chinese Communist Party's strict guidelines over media and information that is allowed to be spread among the citizens of China. This being, information that doesn't go against the country's "core socialist values" according to a technical document released by China's national cyber security standards committee.

When questioned on this manner, spokesman Liu Pengyu for the Chinese Embassy stated:

"Artificial intelligence is not outside the law, and all governments are managing it according to law, and China is no exception. China administers, operates and accessing the Internet in accordance with the law, so as to ensure the healthy operation of the Internet on the track of rule of law".

Finding Workarounds

Image Credit: Abdul Ahad Sheikh on Unsplash

DeepSeek's blatant censorship of information has bought back into the spotlight how truly tight the iron grip is that the Chinese government has on its people and their access to non biased media.

Some have compared it to the novel 1984 by George Orwell, wherein is centered around a man named named Winston Smith who revolts against a totalitarian government known as The Party.

Before his revolt, Smith worked as a records editor where his job was, quite literally, to rewrite historical works such as newspapers to fit the agenda The Party wanted to spread.

Image Credit: Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Like Smith in 1984, some users of DeepSeek have found ways to work around China's censorship, which allow the chat bot to respond without restraint.

Some users have ask the A.I. model to use special characters such as swapping A for 4 or E for 3 for instance in its responses. Others have asked it to use emojis to summarize a topic.

For users whose skills are technologically advanced, they have taken it so far as to jailbreak the application!

All in all, DeepSeek has been the talk of the internet. The chat bot has been highly praised for its efficiency and lower production costs, yet for some, its lack of free speech overshadows all that may make the application deeply revered.

The rest of us? We want to see what DeepSeek will do next.