China's DeepSeek has unveiled a groundbreaking open-source model, underscoring how innovation can outstrip raw computing power in the realm of advanced technology, said a professor from Tsinghua University.
In an interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), Tsinghua University Professor Xue Lan, director of the Institute for AI International Governance, predicted that the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence is poised to gain even more momentum with the emergence of industry leaders like Elon Musk's xAI, which is pioneering innovations like Grok 3.
He pointed to DeepSeek's groundbreaking achievement, which was made possible by leveraging open-source efficiency rather than relying on excessive computing power, a development that holds great promise for future global collaboration.
"I think people indeed see the potential of a breakthrough and everybody's joining, and I think that would help to accelerate the development of AI. But at the same time, I think the one thing that we do have to worry about is the safety issue. The prevailing view is that the existing law is still in fact. So, you have more compute and we have more data and large models and then you will get sort of better results. The emergence of the DeepSeek really shows another way. That is, you know you don't have to use that so much of computing power to be able to get a model that's performing more or less the same. So that really showed an alternative way of AI development process," Xue said.
Despite U.S. chip restrictions, Xue said these challenges have driven Chinese companies to innovate, revealing the counterproductive nature of such tech restrictions.
"I think we do have to recognize that actually open source has played a very huge role in this accelerated AI development. I think that really allowed people to learn from each other and to push for the development of new models and new ideas, new algorithm and so on. But I think that ecosystem is critically important for this wave of AI development," he said.
"DeepSeek is one example, right? Without U.S. restrictions on the chip exports, probably the Chinese company won't pay much attention on the efficiency. You know, the use of compute, will not pay much attention on how to use this new algorithm to try to improve the computing method. So, I think the restrictions actually forces China to innovate. So, indeed, all these embargoes, restrictions are counterproductive," he continued.
DeepSeek shows how innovation can outpace raw computing power: expert
