DeepSeek's Diss Track

Endless Thread

WBUR

Reddit, Technology

4.2 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2022, people around the world freaked out at the advent of ChatGPT, OpenAI's chatbot. In under three years, artificial intelligence has been incorporated almost everywhere in our online lives. But training the large language models, or LLMs, that power these AI assistants is hugely expensive. Or is it? Last month, a Chinese startup called DeepSeek released their own AI app for much less money, potentially with huge economic and geopolitical implications. Endless Thread hosts a rap battle to help you understand why these AI companies are beefing.

Show notes:

"Trying to get Deepseek to talk about 'Tank Man'" (Reddit)

"DeepSeek Doesn’t Want to Talk About Tiananmen Square. Here’s What to Know" (Bloomberg)

"DeepSeek is giving the world a window into Chinese censorship and information control" (CNN)

Credits: This episode was produced by Ben Brock Johnson. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus. It was hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson.

Transcript

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0:41.1	WBUR Podcasts, Boston.
0:51.9	Emery, if you and I were going to have a rap battle against each other, all in good fun.
1:03.8	If, you mean when okay all right all right a money in the house are you a money i am now oh i like this okay I think I'd be B sauce.
1:12.8	B sauce.
1:13.6	Yeah, if you're A money on B sauce.
1:15.9	Fine. A money can take B sauce any day of the week.
1:20.0	I was not prepared for you to be so game to battle me.
1:25.9	I was like, I'm very surprised right now.
1:30.0	You underestimate me at your own peril.
1:35.6	I better protect my neck, as they say.
1:38.7	Yeah.
1:40.7	All right.
1:41.8	So what do you know about DeepSeek?
1:45.2	I know that Deepseek is an AI app. It's a Chinese app.
1:53.9	And it is thought to be more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
2:00.9	It's scaring people in how freakishly advanced it is, even over things like OpenAI,
2:07.9	which was the last thing to freak us out.
2:10.6	Yeah, that's pretty good.
2:11.9	Let's say you've not necessarily hoovered up a bunch of data from around the internet to train your brain on
	...

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