The Chinese mainland has firmly rejected the politicization of technology, following several nations' recent restrictions on DeepSeek, a prominent Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) service. During a regular press briefing on Thursday, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Guo Jiakun emphasized that China does not support the illegal collection or storage of user data by businesses or individuals.
Guo addressed reports highlighting that DeepSeek had topped the U.S. iPhone app store charts, attributing its success to the app's advanced performance and low training costs. He asserted that the Chinese government prioritizes data privacy and security, operating within strict legal frameworks. Guo criticized the overextension of national security concerns and the politicization of trade, economics, and technology issues, while reaffirming China's commitment to protecting the legitimate rights and interests of its companies globally.
DeepSeek Brings Real-World Benefits
DeepSeek has adopted an open approach in developing large AI models. Its latest offerings, including the V3 language model, R1 reasoning model, and Janus Pro vision model, are available for free download. The company has also published research papers detailing the training processes of these models, allowing other developers to replicate the methods with their own datasets.
When run locally, DeepSeek's models do not require an internet connection and are incapable of transmitting users' private data to third parties— a feature not available in closed models from companies like OpenAI and Google. Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist and co-founder of Netscape, described DeepSeek-R1 as \"a profound gift to the world.\" Additionally, DeepSeek offers a free online chat service that provides users worldwide with tools to understand and create internet memes, solve problems using logic, and generate innovative ideas.
Competitors Embrace More Open Strategies
The success of DeepSeek has inspired other AI developers to adopt more open strategies. Shortly after DeepSeek gained attention, U.S.-based OpenAI announced that the search functions for its ChatGPT service, introduced in October, would now be available for free without requiring user sign-up.
Alibaba, a leading Chinese internet company behind the Qwen series of open models, unveiled its latest Qwen2.5-Max model, trained using similar methods to DeepSeek-V3. Furthermore, Alibaba launched a web service allowing users to experience its models at no cost.
Reference(s):
China slams politicization of tech as nations restrict DeepSeek
cgtn.com
