You may be no more pleasant or well intentioned than the US Tech Titan Oligarchy, but any step towards democratising artificial intelligence is a welcome one.
When the wheel was invented, when fire was first discovered it was not monopolised (or so one assumes). It spread freely. As should all knowledge.
Happily, in the software world there is a big open source community from which all can benefit. There is much open source code on AI which is freely available. Much of Deepseek’s coding is open source and of those bits that are not, a new group of enthusiasts called Open-r1 plan to emulate the secret bits.
The collection of data is a little more sinister and ominous however. The data is basically ours – mine and yours. Our health records, our blogs, our books. Even, it seems, records which are supposed to be private or maintained by Government have been hoovered up by the greedy Tech Titan Oligarchy.
Large Language Models do not work without training on vast and costly to prepare and process data. Other forms of AI can be made and trained in your own garage. But not the current juggernauts which are all the rage. And about which all the fuss is being made.
The US Titan Oligarchy has the temerity and hypocrisy to accuse Deepseek of piggy backing on “its” data, pinching “its” data. Which is in fact “our” data.
But let’s get back to the wheel, to fire. Let’s think about the Industrial Revolution.
As Sir Isaac Newton famously said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” His discoveries were possible because he built upon the work of previous scientists who came before him; he did not achieve his breakthrough in isolation.
If only the Tech Titans could pretend such modesty. Alan Turing, John von Neuman and countless other brilliant men provided shoulders upon which today’s loud and uber rich Titans have stood to build their sinister empires.
Our brash new Tech Titans wish to rule the world and trample all under their feet. To beat down the competition with the usual brutish tricks. One or other of these dangerous clowns is even trying to resurrect Nazism, not only in his own country, but in that where the very name was spawned. And elsewhere, including the UK.
If we allow it, we will all be trampled. By the Tech Oligarchy, by MAGA, by the violent extreme right. By god knows who else.
Have no doubt, the advent of AI is as profound as that of fire or the wheel. Or will be, if Artificial General Intelligence is achieved, leaving aside the tantalising possibility of sentient AI.
It does not belong to the Titans or even to the shareholders in their monopolistic, monolithic behemoths. It belongs to humanity. As, eventually, does all scientific endeavour. As it should.
So fie on nationalist jingoism. Fie indeed on greed and arrogance, so well evidenced in the awful Titans.
The Chinese political system is a disgrace, its leaders horrible and absurd.
But is any nation so very much better? Forget the bad old days of Empire – look what we have “achieved” in the Middle East. In Vietnam, Korea and elsewhere.
Look at what wannabe Dictator Trump is aiming for.
And so bravo, Deepseek, welcome.
Whatever your aim is or was, you have struck a blow for freedom, whether you intended to or not.
Weltanschauung 