The blocking of sensitive queries is likely due to pressure from the Chinese government, which requires AI models to embody core socialist values. The focus on reasoning models comes as the effectiveness of "scaling laws" is being questioned, with models from major AI labs not improving as dramatically as before. This has led to a search for new AI approaches, architectures, and development techniques. DeepSeek, backed by High-Flyer Capital Management, plans to open source DeepSeek-R1 and release an API.
Key takeaways:
- A Chinese lab, DeepSeek, has released a preview of DeepSeek-R1, a reasoning AI model that rivals OpenAI's o1. Reasoning models spend more time considering a question or query, helping them avoid common pitfalls.
- DeepSeek-R1 performs on par with OpenAI’s o1-preview model on two popular AI benchmarks, AIME and MATH, but struggles with logic problems and blocks politically sensitive queries.
- The blocking of sensitive queries is likely due to pressure from the Chinese government, which requires AI models to embody core socialist values and proposes a blacklist of sources for training models.
- The emergence of reasoning models and the use of test-time compute is challenging the long-held theory of scaling laws, leading to a scramble for new AI approaches, architectures, and development techniques.