DeepSeek breakthrough to benefit whole world, make AI available for everybody: US economist

Renowned American economist Jeffrey Sachs has hailed China's startling advancements in the artificial intelligence sector as a "tremendous breakthrough for the whole world," highlighting the vast potential of the innovative and cost-effective open-source large language model developed by Chinese start-up DeepSeek.

Sachs, who is also a professor at Columbia University, shared his views on China's AI development on the sidelines of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) 2025 Annual Conference, which opened in south China's island province of Hainan on Tuesday.

Often referred to as the "Asian Davos," the four-day event has this year attracted nearly 2,000 attendees from more than 60 countries and regions to participate in a series of events under the theme "Asia in the Changing World: Towards a Shared Future."

China's tech sector has been given a major boost since the start of this year with the emergence of DeepSeek, with the company attracting significant global attention after releasing its new model in January. Many insiders have commented on how the DeepSeek model's advanced reasoning capabilities are on par with other leading AI systems such as OpenAI's ChatGPT while being created at only a fraction of the development cost.

Speaking in Boao Town on Wednesday, Sachs said the sudden rise of DeepSeek caught the U.S. by surprise, and believes its open source program now makes AI available for everybody, rather than having several larger tech firms dominate the market.

"When it came to AI and large language models, the United States thought 'well, we are many, many years in advance'. And then DeepSeek came along out of nowhere, I would say, with a young, very clever design and entrepreneurship and showed 'we can do what you're doing at much, much less cost'. So this was a tremendous breakthrough for the whole world, because suddenly it put AI, not in the hands of Microsoft or Meta or OpenAI, a few giants, but now available for everybody, and did it in an extremely clever way as open source. So now, China is becoming the basis of worldwide open source AI," he said.

Amid calls for responsible global governance of AI and concerns over how to handle the development of this fast-evolving tool, Sachs stressed that technologies like DeepSeek ultimately have the potential to bring substantial benefits to society and the world.

"Technology and ideas spread around the world. They are public goods, we say, or in economics: ideas and know-how are non-rival goods, meaning that if you develop a technology like DeepSeek, it can benefit the whole world. If I use it, it doesn't mean you can't use it. In fact, if I use it, it's more likely you will use it. It's a wonderful kind of good, not a normal commodity, but something that can benefit everybody," Sachs said.

DeepSeek breakthrough to benefit whole world, make AI available for everybody: US economist

Axis powers during World War II should offer sincere reflection and apology, a Greek mayor said after Greece successfully repatriated a rare collection of 262 World War II-era photographs.

Greek officials traveled to Belgium to negotiate with the seller and brought the photographs back to Greece, after they were put up for sale online by a Belgian collector, said the Greek Culture Ministry.

The images were taken by Wehrmacht lieutenant Hermann Heuer, who served in Greece from 1943 to 1944, during World War II, and part of the collection documents the mass execution of Greek communists by Nazi troops in Kaisariani, east of Athens.

During World War II, German occupation in Greece met with fierce resistance. On May 1, 1944, German forces executed 200 Greeks at the Kaisariani firing range in retaliation for the killing of a German general by resistance fighters.

A memorial and a museum were set up after the war in Kaisariani to commemorate those who died in the mass execution.

"The photos really shocked us all because they were real documents from the day of the execution. We are shocked for many reasons. An important reason is that the 200 communists were singing with their heads held high before the execution in the photos, and they were not mourning because they were fighters," said Ilias Stamelos, mayor of Kaisariani.

The newly recovered photographs have drawn renewed attention to the historical trauma still felt in the community, as the images provide a direct visual record of the final moments of those executed.

In 1987, then German President Richard von Weizsaecker visited Greece and made a special stop in Kaisariani, reflecting on the profound suffering inflicted on the Greek people by Germany during World War II.

Ilias said that, like Germany, Japan, another Axis power during the war, should also be held accountable for the massive harm it caused to multiple countries and should offer sincere reflection and apology for its wartime aggression.

"And I think it's a common demand, because those responsible for the deaths in the World War II need to pay for what happened. It's known to all that back then it was Germany, Japan and Italy, the allies in this war, that each played different roles in the war, yet they do have common responsibilities," said the mayor.

Historic photos of Nazi mass execution of Greeks returned to Greece, mayor calls for historical accountability