Panic in Silicon Valley? China's DeepSeek challenges US supremacy over AI
On his first full day back in power, US President Donald Trump trumpeted a $500 billion plan to build giant data centres for artificial intelligence. The photo op put the rest of the world on notice: the billionaire tech bros of Silicon Valley reign supreme, with the full weight of the White House behind them. Fast forward to Monday and the record $590 billion drop in the market value of US chipmaker Nvidia. Spooking the markets is the announcement that a Chinese startup can operate its latest AI model 18 times cheaper than Sam Altman’s Chat-GPT-4. Is DeepSeek for real? Why the sudden surprise? If it upends America's dominance of artificial intelligence, does that mean a democratisation of global information systems or a showdown between superpowers that ultimately decides who rules the world?
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On his first full day back in power, US President Donald Trump trumpeted a $500 billion plan to build giant data centres for artificial intelligence. The photo op put the rest of the world on notice: the billionaire tech bros of Silicon Valley reign supreme, with the full weight of the White House behind them. Fast forward to Monday and the record $590 billion drop in the market value of US chipmaker Nvidia. Spooking the markets is the announcement that a Chinese startup can operate its latest AI model 18 times cheaper than Sam Altman’s Chat-GPT-4. Is DeepSeek for real? Why the sudden surprise? If it upends America's dominance of artificial intelligence, does that mean a democratisation of global information systems or a showdown between superpowers that ultimately decides who rules the world?