Welcome to the Quanta Audio Edition.

In each of these bi-weekly episodes, we bring you a story direct from the Quanta website about developments in basic science and mathematics.

I'm Susan Vallett.

The Chinese AI company DeepSeek released a chatbot last year called R1, which drew

a huge amount of attention.

Much of the news coverage implied that the company discovered a new, more efficient way to

build AI.

But instead, it used a fundamental technique.

That's next.

Quantum Magazine is an editorially independent online publication supported by the Simons Foundation to enhance public understanding of science.

DeepSeek's R1 chatbot sent a ripple through the industry. Most of the attention focused on the fact that a relatively small and unknown company said

it had built a chatbot that rivaled the performance of those from the world's most famous

AI companies, but using a fraction of the computer power and cost. As a result, the stocks of

many Western tech companies plummeted. Invidia, which sells the chips that run leading

AI models, lost more stock value in a single day than any company in history.

Some of that attention involved an element of accusation.

Sources alleged that DeepSeek had obtained, without permission, knowledge from OpenAI's

proprietary O1 model by using a technique known as distillation.

Much of the news coverage framed this possibility as a shock to the AI industry,

implying that Deepseek had discovered a new, more efficient way to build AI.

But distillation, also called knowledge distillation, is a widely used tool in AI.

It's a subject of computer science research going back a decade and a tool that big tech companies use on their own models.

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