AI Blog: DeepSeek Tour Part 1

Welcome back to our AI blog.  Today, we start taking about a new and powerful AI tool, DeepSeek.

Quick Review

As a quick reminder of the background before we take a look at DeepSeek, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a technology whereby humans build artificial neurons and neural networks to mimic how the human brain works and thinks.

Since ChatGPT was released in late 2022, it has remained the top AI tool globally.  Competitors like Microsoft Copilot, Google’s Gemini and Claude emerged weeks or months later, but OpenAI’s ChatGPT has never lost its leading position.

The three [3] pillars of AI models are:

1. Algorithms
2. training data
3. computational power.

Companies develop their AI models using publicly available research, widely accepted theories and shared logic.  This means that most models have similar foundational algorithms.  Additionally, they often train and test their AI using data scraped from the internet.  This is why computational power ultimately determines an AI’s performance.

The secret to ChatGPT’s dominance?  OpenAI invested heavily in NVIDIA’s advanced chips, giving it unparalleled computational muscle.

The Blackwell B200 GPU. Image: Nvidia

Chips are a scarce resource; production capacity is limited and prices are expensive.  For example, take NVIDIA’s Blackwell B200 GPU, reported as the “world’s most powerful AI chip”, which costs up to $40,000 per unit.  OpenAI purchased these chips from NVIDIA for two key reasons:

1. to prepare for future demand: their current model has already consumed over 50,000 chips and is projected to require up to one million for further development
2. To stifle competitors by monopolising access to these critical resources, leaving rivals with fewer chips to power their own AI models.

To summarise, ChatGPT’s edge largely comes from owning cutting-edge chips.  However, this status quo has been disrupted by an unexpected contender, DeepSeek, a little-known dark horse from China.

DeepSeek Shock: The Sputnik Moment in AI Industry

DeepSeek was released to the App store on 15^th Jan 2025 and rocketed to the top within two weeks without ads or marketing campaigns.  It cost only $6 million to build the model (ChatGPT was reportedly built for $100 million) and took about two [2] months for training.  However, it became as capable as ChatGPT’s most advanced paid-only GPT-o1 model, with an almost identical user interface (UI) – yet it’s completely free!

Core Competitive Advantage: Low Price but High Quality

Excellent Performance

DeepSeek’s free model matches ChatGPT’s paid version.  Take this classic mathematical problem as an example and compare the answers:

9.11 and 9.9, which number is bigger?

ChatGPT 4o (Free): 

ChatGPT o1 (Paid):

DeepSeek V3:

DeepSeek R1:

ChatGPT-4o answered incorrectly, whilst ChatGPT-o1 gave the correct answer.  DeepSeek not only solved it correctly but revealed its reasoning, explaining why 9.9 is larger, detailing its thought process and even timing how long it took to solve.  This transparency builds trust and squashes rumours that DeepSeek copied ChatGPT’s code.

But the real bombshell?  DeepSeek went open-source – a first for any major LLM developer.  Now, anyone can download its code and tailor the AI for their needs.  Want to start your own “OpenAI” at home?  Well, good luck: you’d need massive computational power.  However, for daily tasks  it would be totally achievable.  Whilst competitors guard their code like trade secrets, DeepSeek flipped the script.  Imagine AI services as diamond mines: before, you had to buy rings from giants like ChatGPT.  Now, DeepSeek handed everyone the blueprint to turn ordinary carbon into diamonds.  

The kicker?  The API service price.  Sticking with the analogy: if your DIY diamond ring isn’t perfect, DeepSeek sells Graff-level quality at 1/10th of ChatGPT’s Harry Winston prices.  Same brilliance, a fraction of the cost: why wouldn’t you choose this deal?    

API Access & Pricing. Image: DeepSeek 

DeepSeek is accessible at https://www.deepseek.com/, and can also be downloaded directly from the App Store.  Start your journey with one of the smartest AI tools out there.

Join us next time for a look at the tips and trick to master DeepSeek!