From CBS News headquarters in New York, this is the CBS Evening News.

It was an earthquake today in the world of artificial intelligence.

Good evening. I'm John Dickerson.

I'm Maurice Dubois. And the aftershocks were felt from Washington to Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

Signs that China may be catching up to the United States in the AI race sent tech stocks plunging.

A Chinese startup called DeepSeek has created an AI model at a much lower cost than the U.S. competition.

Its AI assistant was today Apple's most downloaded app, surpassing the AI app ChadGBT and Threads, a social media app.

California-based Nvidia, which makes the chips that power AI, lost nearly $600 billion in market value, the biggest one-day lost by a company ever.

AI will be a growing part of our lives

in medicine, transportation, education, and beyond.

It's being called a Sputnik moment

for America's AI industry.

That's a reference to the panic in the US

when the Soviets leaped ahead in the space race

in the 1950s.

So Margaret Brandon joins us from Washington.

Margaret Sputnik moment, or is that a little overhyped? ahead in the space race in the 1950s. So Margaret Brandon joins us from Washington. Margaret's

butnik moment or is that a little overhyped? Well, it could be a sputnik moment or a shot across

the bow. All of it matters John and Maurice because the U.S. and China are in an arms race

when it comes to AI. Former President Biden said it's the most consequential

technology of all time possibly, and it poses profound risks. So this technological leap

made by China's deep seek using inferior computer chips at a cost 20 to 30 times less than

...