How China’s DeepSeek Could Disrupt Financial Markets and Global Stability
International Man: China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence (AI) platform has stunned the world, outperforming US AI models while using just a fraction of their resources. Some are even calling it the “OpenAI killer.”
What’s your take on this development?
Doug Casey: Technology—all technologies—inevitably become better and cheaper over time. That trend has been in motion, at an accelerating rate, since at least the end of the last Ice Age about 12,000 years ago. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution about 200 years ago the hyperbolic curve has gone vertical.
Why, therefore, has DeepSeek surprised everybody? Its arrival is part of a very established and obvious trend. I’m just amused by the ironic fact that no existing AIs seem to have predicted it.
That being the case, somebody, or AI itself for all we know, has already come up with something even better than DeepSeek. That’s inevitable. “They” say that very soon AI will be vastly smarter, and arguably wiser, than humans. If so, maybe it will be kinder and gentler too. Unless its programmers have bad intentions—which is quite likely.
International Man: President Trump recently announced a $500 billion investment in AI development to secure US dominance in the industry.
However, with DeepSeek’s arrival, OpenAI and other US models may already be obsolete.
Is Trump’s $500 billion plan a necessary investment—or a boondoggle in light of DeepSeek’s advancements?
Doug Casey: I’m not a computer nerd—far from it—but I am a technophile.
Looking at the history of technology, starting with Heraclitus, Leonardo, Edison, the Wright Brothers, Steve Jobs, and thousands of others, almost all of the great breakthroughs in history have been made by individual geniuses working on their own or with small groups. Getting the government involved would almost certainly be a gigantic mistake.
Sure, they can throw a lot of other people’s money at things. But it’s always a grossly inefficient and wasteful allocation of capital when they do. Their cubicle dwellers, drones, and bureaucrats do things that are personally or politically productive but not necessarily economically productive. At a minimum, the money is taken from productive use by society at large.
You should recognize that since the nature of government is coercion and force, its AI spending—likely shepherded by outfits like the NSA, CIA, and FBI—will probably result in SkyNet and an army of Terminators. Life increasingly mimics art as technology advances.
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