#459 – DeepSeek, China, OpenAI, NVIDIA, xAI, TSMC, Stargate, and AI Megaclusters
Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman
4.7 • 13K Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2025
⏱️ 316 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Transcript:
https://lexfridman.com/deepseek-dylan-patel-nathan-lambert-transcript
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EPISODE LINKS:
Dylan's X: https://x.com/dylan522p
SemiAnalysis: https://semianalysis.com/
Nathan's X: https://x.com/natolambert
Nathan's Blog: https://www.interconnects.ai/
Nathan's Podcast: https://www.interconnects.ai/podcast
Nathan's Website: https://www.natolambert.com/
Nathan's YouTube: https://youtube.com/@natolambert
Nathan's Book: https://rlhfbook.com/
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OUTLINE:
(00:00) - Introduction
(13:28) - DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-V3
(35:02) - Low cost of training
(1:01:19) - DeepSeek compute cluster
(1:08:52) - Export controls on GPUs to China
(1:19:10) - AGI timeline
(1:28:35) - China's manufacturing capacity
(1:36:30) - Cold war with China
(1:41:00) - TSMC and Taiwan
(2:04:38) - Best GPUs for AI
(2:19:30) - Why DeepSeek is so cheap
(2:32:49) - Espionage
(2:41:52) - Censorship
(2:54:46) - Andrej Karpathy and magic of RL
(3:05:17) - OpenAI o3-mini vs DeepSeek r1
(3:24:25) - NVIDIA
(3:28:53) - GPU smuggling
(3:35:30) - DeepSeek training on OpenAI data
(3:45:59) - AI megaclusters
(4:21:21) - Who wins the race to AGI?
(4:31:34) - AI agents
(4:40:16) - Programming and AI
(4:47:43) - Open source
(4:56:55) - Stargate
(5:04:24) - Future of AI
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following is a conversation with Dylan Patel and Nathan Lampert. |
| 0:04.7 | Dylan runs semi-analysis, a well-respected research and analysis company that specializes in semiconductors, |
| 0:12.9 | GPUs, and AI hardware in general. |
| 0:16.9 | Nathan is a research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI and is the author of the |
| 0:23.2 | amazing blog on AI called Interconnects. |
| 0:27.3 | They are both highly respected, read, and listened to by the experts, researchers, and |
| 0:32.6 | engineers in the field of AI. |
| 0:34.9 | And personally, I'm just a fan of the two of them. So I use the deep seek moment |
| 0:40.8 | that shook the AI world a bit as an opportunity to sit down with them and lay it all out. |
| 0:47.4 | From DeepSeek, Open AI, Google XAI, Metaanthropic to Invidia and TSMC and to US, China, Taiwan relations and everything else that is |
| 0:58.9 | happening at the cutting edge of AI. This conversation is a deep dive into many critical aspects |
| 1:06.0 | of the AI industry. While it does get super technical, we try to make sure that it's still accessible |
| 1:13.1 | to folks outside of the AI field by defining terms, stating important concepts explicitly, |
| 1:19.5 | spelling out acronyms, and in general, always moving across the several layers of abstraction |
| 1:24.2 | and levels of detail. There is a lot of hype in the media about what AI is |
| 1:30.9 | and isn't. The purpose of this podcast, in part, is to cut through the hype, through the bullshit, |
| 1:38.5 | and the low-resolution analysis, and to discuss in detail how stuff works and what the implications are. |
| 1:46.5 | Let me also, if I may, comment on the new OpenA.I. 03 mini reasoning model, the release of which |
| 1:52.6 | we were anticipating during the conversation, and it did indeed come out right after. |
| 1:58.2 | Its capabilities and costs are on par with our expectations, as we stated. |
| 2:04.7 | OpenAI O3 Mini is indeed a great model, but it should be stated that DeepSeekR1 has similar |
| 2:11.7 | performance on benchmarks, is still cheaper, and it reveals its chain of thought reasoning, |
... |
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