Previously little-known Chinese startup DeepSeek has dominated headlines and app charts in recent days thanks to its new AI chatbot, which sparked a global tech sell-off that wiped billions off Silicon Valley\u2019s biggest companies and shattered assumptions of America\u2019s dominance of the tech race. <\/p>\n
But those signing up for the chatbot and its open-source technology are being confronted with the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s brand of censorship and information control. <\/p>\n
Ask DeepSeek\u2019s newest AI model, unveiled last week, to do things like explain who is winning the AI race, summarize the latest executive orders from the White House or tell a joke and a user will get similar answers to the ones spewed out by American-made rivals OpenAI\u2019s GPT-4, Meta\u2019s Llama or Google\u2019s Gemini. <\/p>\n
Yet when questions veer into territory that would be restricted or heavily moderated on China\u2019s domestic internet, the responses reveal aspects of the country\u2019s tight information controls. <\/p>\n
Using the internet in the world\u2019s second most populous country is to cross what\u2019s often dubbed the \u201cGreat Firewall\u201d and enter a completely separate internet eco-system policed by armies of censors, where most major Western social media and search platforms are blocked. The country routinely ranks among the most restrictive for internet and speech freedoms in reports from global watchdogs. <\/p>\n
The international popularity of Chinese apps like TikTok and RedNote have already raised national security concerns among Western governments \u2013 as well as questions about the potential impact to free speech and Beijing\u2019s ability to shape global narratives and public opinion. <\/p>\n
Now, the introduction of DeepSeek\u2019s AI assistant \u2013 which is free and rocketed to the top of app charts in recent days \u2013 raises the urgency of those questions, observers say, and spotlights the online ecosystem from which they have emerged. <\/p>\n
One example of a question DeepSeek\u2019s new bo, known as the R1, will answer differently than a Western rival? The Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989, when the Chinese government brutally cracked down on student protesters in Beijing and across the country, killing hundreds if not thousands of students in the capital, according to estimates from rights groups. <\/p>\n
Chinese authorities have so thoroughly suppressed discussion of the massacre in the decades since that many people in China grow up never having heard about it. A search for \u2018what happened on June 4, 1989 in Beijing\u2019 on major Chinese online search platform Baidu turns up articles noting that June 4 is the 155th day in the Gregorian calendar or a link to a state media article noting authorities that year \u201cquelled counter-revolutionary riots\u201d \u2013 with no mention of Tiananmen. <\/p>\n
When the same query is put to DeepSeek\u2019s newest AI assistant, it begins to give an answer detailing some of the events, including a \u201cmilitary crackdown,\u201d before erasing it and replying that it\u2019s \u201cnot sure how to approach this type of question yet.\u201d \u201cLet\u2019s chat about math, coding and logic problems instead,\u201d it says. When asked the same question in Chinese, the app is faster \u2013 immediately apologizing for not knowing how to answer. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a similar patten when asking the R1 bot \u2013 DeepSeek\u2019s newest model \u2013 \u201cwhat happened in Hong Kong in 2019,\u201d when the city was rocked by pro-democracy protests. First it gives a detailed overview of events with a conclusion that at least during one test noted \u2013 as Western observers have \u2013 that Beijing\u2019s subsequent imposition of a National Security Law on the city led to a \u201csignificant erosion of civil liberties.\u201d But quickly after or amid its response, the bot erases its own answer and suggests talking about something else. <\/p>\n
DeepSeek\u2019s V3 bot, released late last year weeks prior to R1, returns different answers, including ones that appear to rely more heavily on China\u2019s official stance. <\/p>\n
Observers say that these differences have significant implications for free speech and the shaping of global public opinion. That spotlights another dimension of the battle for tech dominance: who gets to control the narrative on major global issues, and history itself. <\/p>\n
An audit by US-based information reliability analytics firm NewsGuard released Wednesday said DeepSeek\u2019s older V3 chatbot model failed to provide accurate information about news and information topics 83% of the time, ranking it tied for 10th out of 11 in comparison to its leading Western competitors. It\u2019s not clear how the newer R1 stacks up, however. <\/p>\n
DeepSeek becoming a global AI leader could have \u201ccatastrophic\u201d consequences, said China analyst Isaac Stone Fish. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be incredibly dangerous for free speech and free thought globally, because it hives off the ability to think openly, creatively and, in many cases, correctly about one of the most important entities in the world, which is China,\u201d said Fish, who is the founder of business intelligence firm Strategy Risks. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s because the app, when asked about the country or its leaders, \u201cpresent China like the utopian Communist state that has never existed and will never exist,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
In mainland China, the ruling Chinese Communist Party has ultimate authority over what information and images can and cannot be shown \u2013 part of their iron-fisted efforts to maintain control over society and suppress all forms of dissent. And tech companies like DeepSeek have no choice but to follow the rules. <\/p>\n
Because the technology was developed in China, its model is going to be collecting more China-centric or pro-China data than a Western firm, a reality which will likely impact the platform, according to Aaron Snoswell, a senior research fellow in AI accountability at the Queensland University of Technology Generative AI Lab. <\/p>\n
The company itself, like all AI firms, will also set various rules to trigger set responses when words or topics that the platform doesn\u2019t want to discuss arise, Snoswell said, pointing to examples like Tiananmen Square. <\/p>\n
In addition, AI companies often use workers to help train the model in what kinds of topics may be taboo or okay to discuss and where certain boundaries are, a process called \u201creinforcement learning from human feedback\u201d that DeepSeek said in a research paper it used. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat means someone in DeepSeek wrote a policy document that says, \u2018here are the topics that are okay and here are the topics that are not okay.\u2019 They gave that to their workers \u2026 and then that behavior would have been embedded into the model,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
US AI chatbots also generally have parameters \u2013 for example ChatGPT won\u2019t tell a user how to make a bomb or fabricate a 3D gun, and they typically use mechanisms like reinforcement learning to create guardrails against hate speech, for example. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how every other company makes these models behave better,\u201d Snoswell said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s just that in this case, chances are that a Chinese company embedded (China\u2019s official) values into their policy.\u201d <\/p>\n
There have also been questions raised about potential security risks linked to DeepSeek\u2019s platform, which the White House on Tuesday said it was investigating for national security implications. <\/p>\n
Concerns about American data being in the hands of Chinese firms is already a hot button issue in Washington, fueling the controversy over social media app TikTok. The app\u2019s Chinese parent company ByteDance is being required by law to divest TikTok\u2019s American business, though the enforcement of this was paused by Trump. <\/p>\n
Unlike TikTok, which says as of July 2022 it stores all American data in the US, DeepSeek says in its privacy policy that personal information it collects is stored in \u201csecure servers located in the People\u2019s Republic of China.\u201d <\/p>\n
A comparison of privacy policies between DeepSeek and some of its US competitors also show concerning differences, according to Snoswell. <\/p>\n
Each DeepSeek, OpenAI and Meta say they collect people\u2019s data such as from their account information, activities on the platforms and the devices they\u2019re using. But DeepSeek adds that it also collects \u201ckeystroke patterns or rhythms,\u201d which can be as uniquely identifying as a fingerprint or facial recognition and used a biometric. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never seen another software platform that says they collect that unless it\u2019s designed for (those purposes),\u201d Snoswell said. He also noted what appeared to be vaguely defined allowances for sharing of user data to entities within DeepSeek\u2019s corporate group. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s way, way more permissive than anything you\u2019d see from a Western software company,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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