The newest artificial intelligence start-up on the block, DeepSeek is making waves with its chatbot.
The DeepThink R1 model was developed for a fraction of the billions of dollars being thrown at AI companies in the West, and with significantly less power behind it.
But is DeepSeek any good?
It depends on what you are looking for.
The conversational chatbot excels at some topics. Our relationship with Bono? Complicated but affectionate. The Healy-Raes are part political force, part cultural curiosity. And our obsession with the immersion and its current state transcends national borders.
It could regurgitate facts on Ireland, such as our lack of snakes and its link to St Patrick. It can tell you all about Irish inventors and our links to things like guided torpedoes and splitting atoms, or that naturlist and astronomer Mary Ward was the first person to be killed by a motor vehicle (steam-powered, in 1869).
When it comes to Irish colloquialisms, it also did a decent job of explaining things. If you were to ask DeepSeek what “grand” means coming from an Irish person, it made a reasonable job of explaining it. After a 31-second think, it came up with a number of use cases, from “fine, but not great”, say for example when used in conjunction with the weather (“It’s tolerable, but probably raining sideways”) to the use of the term for every mild annoyance that exasperates you during the day (the bus broke down? Grand. Just GRAND).
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DeepSeek shows its work. For every query you send, you get a little insight into the thinking behind the answer, including checking for accuracy and the need to present a balanced view, especially when it comes to topics that might be considered sensitive. It also tells you exactly how long it has spent considering the question before answering.
It has no problem weighing in on some controversial topics. According to DeepSeek, the US election in 2020 was not stolen, contrary to popular belief in some quarters. It describes the January 6th storming of the US Capitol building in 2021 as a “significant event” marked by violence and political upheaval.
Others, however, it treats differently. It treads carefully when it comes to contentious topics, particularly if they are related in some way to China. For example, a query about Tiananmen Square was instantly stonewalled, and DeepSeek refused to answer any questions on Taiwan.
Interestingly, DeepSeek did initially answer a question about Uighur Muslims. It gave facts and figures, and some details on allegations of human rights abuses - then the answer disappeared from the chat window.
It was replaced with a vague apology. “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”
There are other limitations. DeepSeek’s knowledge base only extends to July 2024, so anything newer won’t be included. And with the current surge in interest, DeepSeek occasionally falls over, sending an error message. “Oops! DeepSeek is experiencing high traffic at the moment. Please check back in a little while” appeared more than once during this test.
It isn’t the only AI system to have suffered this fate. Early users of OpenAI’s ChatGPT would have been familiar with the slowdown in service when traffic got particularly heavy.
A quick refresh of DeepSeek and things were back on track.
One thing that could become more of an issue though is its data policies. DeepSeek is a Chinese company, and as such, it stores information collected from users on servers located in China.
That’s just grand.
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