Sam Altman said startups with only $10 million were 'totally hopeless' competing with OpenAI, DeepSeek's disruption says otherwise

[reygle@lemmy.world]

I hope that normal people will now realize how full of sh*t he is. They won't, but DON'T TAKE THIS FROM ME

[svcross@lemmy.world]

I don't mind

[drthunder@midwest.social]

I wonder what the mildest thing a true AI could tell the oligarchs to do that would make them shut it down. Giving 10% of their wealth away and not in a tax dodge way? Stop funding fascists?

[dadifer@lemmy.world]

https://stratechery.com/2025/deepseek-faq/

[presidentcamacho@lemm.ee]

He's not wrong. He was speaking in the implied scope of capitalism. Where u can't do something that cheap because without the ability to hit a huge payout for investors noone will fund you.

We're just seeing that capitalism can't compete with an economy that can produce stuff without making investors rich.

[kandoh@reddthat.com]

Red lobster went under and these guys still exist

[mojave@lemmy.world]

DeepSeek claimed the model training took 2,788 thousand H800 GPU hours, which, at a cost of $2/GPU hour, comes out to a mere $5.576 million.

That seems impossibly low.

DeepSeek is clear that these costs are only for the final training run, and exclude all other expenses

[flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz]

This claims only training costs come out to $5M. It doesn't include previous versions (there had to have been multiple attempts before the final one), or salary of the people working on it.

[shirro@aussie.zone]

Probably should point out that DeepSeek is owned by a Chinese hedge fund. They specialize in algorithmic trading. Can't get much more capitalist than that. Very happy to see Chinese capitalists release an open source model. No doubt Altman and cronies will seek protection under the guise of national security. I guess free market competition is only good when you are not getting your arse kicked.

[knock_knock_lemmy_in@lemmy.world]

There would have been many other runs before the release version.

[knock_knock_lemmy_in@lemmy.world]

Not just deepseek, but everyone else who is now forking R1 and training for their specific use case.

[rottingleaf@lemmy.world]

Chinese economy is even more capitalist if that's possible.

[spookex@lemmy.world]

I mean, a lot of it is just people who started using chatgpt to do some simple and boring task (writing an email, CV, or summarizing and article) and started thinking that it's the best thing since sliced bread.

I would know that since I'm an university student. I know the limitations of current AI stuff so I can cautiously use it for certain tasks and don't trust the output to be correct. Meanwhile, my friend thought that he was making chatgpt better at answering his multiple choice economics quiz by telling it which of the answers it gave was wrong...

[shepherdpie@midwest.social]

Or you're a government with endless funds at your disposal.

[presidentcamacho@lemm.ee]

Good detail added, I did not know that. But they're still doing so with a much smaller payout than if they tried to compete the way a US capitalist would through a closed source full ownership model.

[grumpyduckling@sh.itjust.works]

It's called the 80/20 rule. The first 80% is the easy part.

[downhomechunk@midwest.social]

I wish I had that ability too.

[pulptastic@midwest.social]

Hey I saw a red lobster today, they’re still here. 3 kinds of shrimp for $22!

[shirro@aussie.zone]

Granted there are some important differences both culturally and in the way the countries operate but keep in mind that Chinese enterprises have been so successful that they have become aspirational for some western entrepreneurs.

Musk desperately wants X to become another WeChat and to have a similar cosy relationship with government that TenCent enjoys. In a one party state that sort of arrangement is kind of inevitable. A huge proportion of TenCent staff are CCP members and they co-operate to protect the Chinese state. In a multi-party democracy that sort of arrangement is extremely dangerous. We need to maintain a diversity of thought which requires limiting the influence of wealthy individuals and the platforms they control.

Altman appears to have sold the idea that ClosedAI can establish a monopoly in the space and charge rent to regurgitate the sum of human knowledge and experience without receiving permission or paying just compensation. I am relieved to see that being shaken though I will be more relieved if they collapsed.

[fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de]

Yeah. I really dislike this "rule" because it's commonly espoused by motivational speakers and efficiency "experts" saying you make 80% of your money from 20% of your time.

It sounds great if you've never heard it before but in practice it just means "be more efficient" and is not really actionable.