DeepSeek chatbot reaction and the future of AI

The tech world was shaken this past week with the release of the DeepSeek chatbot, sparking intense discussions about its far-reaching implications. In the latest episode of the CUBE Podcast, theCUBE Research industry analysts John Furrier (pictured, left) and Dave Vellante (right) break down what this development means for the industry, cutting through the hype to uncover the real impact.

DeepSeek dominated the internet this week, sparking major discussions on AI, geopolitics and innovation, with its impact reaching from Silicon Valley to global markets. It put everyone on notice around AI efficiency, according to Furrier.

“Is it a psych ops thing from China? Is open source going to change the game? There’s so many storylines. Is it a breakthrough? We’re going to get into this,” Furrier said.

DeepSeek chatbot deep dive

It’s possible that the release of the DeepSeek chatbot will bring with it some positives. It may teach everyone how to do things more efficiently in AI, according to Vellante.

“That’s going to be a rising tide that lifts all ships, finally, because AI hasn’t lifted all ships as we know. It’s been narrow and focused in terms of those that have really gotten benefit from it,” Vellante said. “I think to the extent that we can lower the denominator … the value goes through the roof.”

The real breakthrough here lies in DeepSeek’s use of a smarter, leaner model, according to Furrier. It was no fluke, having achieved the DeepSeek chatbot through smart model design and a mixture of experts.

“They also did the distilling of other models, so they didn’t have to do the brute force crunching,” Furrier said. “They slashed memory, energy, and the time it needs to get the answers and reason with good performance without compromising performance. They get all that stuff … a lot of matrix multiplication involved.”

The DeepSeek chatbot made a significant impact by combining innovative techniques in a way that wasn’t obvious, according to Furrier. It involved very clever engineering.

“I don’t think it’s a breakthrough in a major way, but it was something that they did with the constraints that they had,” Furrier said.

It’s possible that the developments lower costs and drive adoption, according to Furrier. It’s similar to what happened to the internet.

“I was talking to some entrepreneurs this week. The classic AI trajectory, people are like, ‘Oh, it reminds me of the web,’ these critical moments,” Furrier said. “One entrepreneur said it reminds them of the iPhone revolution because the user experience shifted and that drove a lot of change.”

People are saying that it’s a Sputnik moment, which may not be the best analogy, according to Vellante. But it does underscore that the development serves as a wake-up call.

“Do you remember when in the ’80s, Japan’s ascendancy was freaking everybody out? I think this is significantly more competitive because the market is so much bigger and AI is so much more important today,” Vellante said. “But to me, the winners of the market, the market overall just keeps getting bigger and bigger the lower the cost is.”

The future of AI

The DeepSeek chatbot news has driven several conversations over the past week. The conversation shifted from stock price impact to deeper discussions in Silicon Valley and the AI community about the true future of AI and its competitive landscape, according to Furrier.

“What you’re starting to see is some of the things we’ve been saying on theCUBE here all the time, which is, it’s a systems revolution,” he said. “I call it the chip grid emerging, which is clustered systems, where it’s not about throwing gear at problems or GPUs. It’s the combination of the hardware configuration.”

Event calendar filling up

The event calendar for theCUBE is filling up, with theCUBE teaming up again with the New York Stock Exchange for a Super Studio event, welcoming Silicon Valley’s top CMO leaders innovating in artificial intelligence initiative on Feb. 14. This year marks the busiest tech event season for some time, according to Furrier.

“Leading up to around 2018, I think, would be the height of the event season in terms of tech companies. I think we’re back at that level, Dave. I think we’re on the road every week in May,” Furrier said.

April, May and June have tons of activity planned. There will be no shortage of things to discuss at the events on the calendar, according to Furrier.

“There’s multiple threads, efficiency, software innovation, psych ops, global geopolitical Cold War race. I mean, this is all very interesting,” Furrier added. “Very, very interesting. We’ll keep track of it.”

Watch the full podcast below to find out why these industry pros were mentioned:

Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE
Lina Khan, former chair of the Federal Trade Commission
Donald Trump, 47th president of the United States of America
Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO and chairman of Apple Inc.
Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO of IBM
Andy Jassy, president and CEO of Amazon
Stu Miniman, senior director of market insights for hybrid platforms at Red Hat
Ginni Rometty, co-chairman of OneTen, former CEO of IBM
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms
Liang Wenfeng, Chinese entrepreneur and businessman
Dylan Patel, founder of SemiAnalysis
Jeffrey Emanuel, founder and CEO of Pastel Network
Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft
John Rose, United States Representative
Marc Andreessen, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz
David O. Sacks, South African-American entrepreneur and author
Steve Wozniak, American entrepreneur and electrical engineer
Charlie Kawwas, president at Broadcom
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia

Here’s the full theCUBE Pod episode:

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Photo: SiliconANGLE

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