DeepSeek’s AI model is ‘the best work’ out of China but the hype is 'exaggerated,' Google DeepMind CEO says
DeepSeek's AI model "is probably the best work" out of China, Demis Hassabis said on Sunday, but added it was not a scientific advancement.
Last month, China's DeepSeek released a research paper that rattled global markets after claiming its AI model was trained at a fraction of the cost of leading AI players and on less-advanced Nvidia chips.
DeepSeek's announcement sparked an aggressive stock sell-off and sparked considerable debate over whether large tech firms are spending too much on AI infrastructure.
Hassabis praised DeepSeek's model as "an impressive piece of work."
"I think its probably the best work I've seen come out of China," Hassabis said at a Google-hosted event in Paris ahead of the AI Action Summit that is being hosted by the city.
The DeepMind CEO said the AI model shows that DeepSeek can do "extremely good engineering" and that it "changes things on a geopolitical scale."
However, from a technology point of view, Hassabis said it was not a big change.
"Despite the hype, there's no actual new scientific advance … it's using known techniques [in AI]," he said, adding that the hype around DeepSeek has been "exaggerated a little bit."
The real question to ask is what AI out there is reliable and will tell you the whole truth?