OpenAI, DeepSeek & Goosfraba

Altman is one of many wondering how to respond after his OpenAI arguably gave a Chinese hack’s DeepSeek the goose needed to outmaneuver it. Yet, is there a better way than the A-bomb option?

WSJ’s Holman Jenkins suggested a time out from overreaction as he tried to get his own head around the news: “Put aside the [DeepSeek] claims that can’t be confirmed … if analysts at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies are correct, DeepSeek trained itself on information illicitly gleaned as an enterprise client of America’s pioneering OpenAI.” In short, the DeepSeek story being told does ring true. If so, “Outside China’s government-run industrial policy, a young hedge-fund guy using his own money reproduced a highly competitive AI chatbot with genuine innovations to reduce costs & improve performance.”

The rest is history as America’s AI stocks nose-dived temporarily and the nation’s techies scrambled to scramble together some kind of face-saving response for being so easily blind-sided. Secrecy and/or government regulation is one way, of course. But, some pundits like Jenkins waxed at how the DeepSeek coup de gras was a blessing in disguise, a wakeup call, showing everyone that AI development no longer needs to be mind-bogglingly complex or expensive: “When technology diffuses so widely & quickly, and major innovations can still emerge from unexpected quarters, the US and China probably should give up any notion of capturing a lasting advantage. One or both are more likely to sabotage themselves by imposing too much and the wrong kind of government control, including using state funding to dominate the research agenda, in this case more likely to impeded progress than speed it up.” Can OpenAI say, “Goosfraba”?

Davd Soul