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*DEEPSEEK SAYS SUBJECT TO LARGE-SCALE MALICIOUS ATTACK

9:14 AM · Jan 27, 2025

https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1883911358284263880

DeepSeek hit with large-scale cyberattack, says it’s limiting registrations

Published Mon, Jan 27 202511:26 AM EST

DeepSeek on Monday said it would temporarily limit user registrations “due to large-scale malicious attacks” on its services.

The Chinese AI startup recently toppled OpenAI’s ChatGPT from its title of most-downloaded free app in Apple’s App Store.

DeepSeek on Monday said it would temporarily limit user registrations “due to large-scale malicious attacks” on its services, though existing users will be able to log in as usual.

The Chinese artificial intelligence startup has generated a lot of buzz in recent weeks as a fast-growing rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and other leading AI tools.

Earlier on Monday, DeepSeek took over rival OpenAI’s coveted spot as the most-downloaded free app in the U.S. on Apple

’s App Store, dethroning ChatGPT for DeepSeek’s own AI Assistant. It helped inspire a significant sell-off in global tech stocks.

Buzz about the company, which was founded in 2023 and released its R1 model last week, has spread to tech analysts, investors and developers, who say that the hype — and ensuing fear of falling behind in the ever-changing AI hype cycle — may be warranted. Especially in the era of the generative AI arms race, where tech giants and startups alike are racing to ensure they don’t fall behind in a market predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade.

DeepSeek reportedly grew out of a Chinese hedge fund’s AI research unit in April 2023 to focus on large language models and reaching artificial general intelligence, or AGI — a branch of AI that equals or surpasses human intellect on a wide range of tasks, which OpenAI and its rivals say they’re fast pursuing.

The buzz around DeepSeek especially began to spread last week, when the startup released R1, its reasoning model that rivals OpenAI’s o1. It’s open-source, meaning that any AI developer can use it, and has rocketed to the top of app stores and industry leaderboards, with users praising its performance and reasoning capabilities.

The startup’s models were notably built despite the U.S. curbing chip exports to China three times in three years. Estimates differ on exactly how much DeepSeek’s R1 costs, or how many graphics processing units went into it. Jefferies analysts estimated that a recent version had a “training cost of only US$5.6m (assuming US$2/H800 hour rental cost). That is less than 10% of the cost of Meta

’s Llama.”

But regardless of the specific numbers, reports agree that the model was developed at a fraction of the cost of rival models by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google

and others.

As a result, the AI sector is awash with questions, including whether the industry’s increasing number of astronomical funding rounds and billion-dollar valuations is necessary — and whether a bubble is about to burst.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/27/deepseek-hit-with-large-scale-cyberattack-says-its-limiting-registrations.html

>>22446671

Terms of Service for DeepSeek:

…monitoring interactions and usage across your devices

https://chat.deepseek.com/downloads/DeepSeek%20Privacy%20Policy.html

[At least they are being honest.]

>>22446671

DeepSeek Is Breaking The Internet

Jan 27, 2025,10:05am EST

One of the year’s most interesting tech stories is in full swing. A Chinese startup called DeepSeek released R1, an open source artificial intelligence (AI) model that’s sending shockwaves through Silicon Valley and beyond.

It’s so impactful that the stocks of companies in the sector have suffered—meaning it’s no surprise that the internet is having a field day with the story. Whether it’s talking about the financial markets, DeepSeek’s place in the sector, or just joking about the AI industry in general, social media is aflame with jokes, japes, and memes.

Yet it’s not all simple fun and games. The online reaction to DeepSeek shows not only how social media helps people make sense of news, but also highlights some of the inherent issues in marketers pushing brand anthropomorphism.

We’ll get to all this in time, but first, let’s talk a little but about what’s happening with DeepSeek.

What Is DeepSeek? And Why Is It Important?

Until around Jan. 20, DeepSeek was a Chinese AI company that few outside of the industry knew about. Since releasing DeepSeek R1—a large language model (LLM)—this has changed and the tech industry has gone haywire.

The main reason for this reaction is because R1 is reportedly able to match OpenAI’s o1’s abilities in math, coding and reasoning, but at between 90-95% less of the cost.

Now, this piece isn’t focused on DeepSeek’s technical achievements or its history, but it’s useful to know for the scope of this article why this is such big news. Effectively, R1’s comparatively low costs and open access is something organizations of all sizes can take advantage of, but could be particularly alluring to enterprise clients.

In turn, this means American companies like OpenAI could lose a lot of very lucrative business—something the stock market appeared to take notice of.

How Have AI-Related Company Stocks Reacted to DeepSeek?

As this post shows, the market has taken a swift downturn:

Of course, this is likely to change over time, but it shows the impact DeepSeek has had on the stock market so far, as well as how it’s hit the confidence of AI investors.

Despite this, some of the most interesting reaction to DeepSeek R1 has happened on social media.

How Has The Internet Reacted To DeepSeek?

There are an array of different responses to the explosion of DeepSeek R1 across the tech industry.

Some people, for example, used clips from popular culture to lightly mock the stock market. In this instance, a scene from The Big Short:

Others used different online properties, such as references to the TV series Silicon Valley to help contextualize the news from their perspective:

There are also a range of more politically inclined posts about DeepSeek. One common thread revolves around the safety of the AI model, and whether companies should upload sensitive data to the LLM:

Some posters also reference the hubris of the American technology sphere and how much investment they needed to make a similar product to DeepSeek R1:

Or, indeed, mocking the announcement of the $500 billion Stargate AI project happening just before DeepSeek dropped R1:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/callumbooth/2025/01/27/deepseek-is-breaking-the-internet/

>>22446900

What Role Is Social Media Playing In The DeepSeek Story?

There are a couple of threads at play regarding the online reaction to DeepSeek R1 hitting the market.

One of the most noticeable revolves around a sense of schadenfreude, a term which means taking pleasure in someone’s suffering. In a broad sense, that’s what’s happening with the response to the sharp downturn in AI-related stocks and the potential problems businesses like OpenAI may bump into.

Why this is happening is a deeper question.

A potential avenue for answering this comes from a paper entitled “Celebrity and Schadenfreude: The cultural economy of fame in freefall.” The researchers behind the study state that schadenfreude towards public figures “overwhelmingly works to express irritation at inequalities.”

In other words, people experience joy at the downfall of celebrities because they feel as though any perceived unfairness at their position is being rectified through this negative action.

Of course, companies aren’t famous people, but there are parallels between them—one often driven by the businesses themselves.

There’s a term known as “brand anthropomorphism” in which organisations are seen as having human qualities. The intriguing part is research shows companies have pushed this happening themselves.

While brand anthropomorphism has positive aspects—such as increased trust and commitment towards a business—it also appears that it can lead to things like social media’s gleeful reaction at DeepSeek upsetting the whole AI industry.

People see modern companies like celebrities, so act in a similar way when they suffer.

Beyond this desire to make jokes at the expense of companies like OpenAI, social media is also playing a key role in how people view these stories.

What DeepSeek and other businesses in the space are doing is incredibly complex and, as we’re living in the information overload era where there’s too much happening for us to stay fully versed, staying on top of what’s happening is tough.

This is where social media can be helpful.

Through a combination of images and text, accounts can share information that helps people grasp the implications of a story. This take may not be accurate (that’s another issue entirely), but it gives people what they want: a bitesize chunk of information about a complex story that helps contextualize it.

In other words, social media can make people feel as though they have a grasp on why something like DeepSeek is important.

Ultimately, the online reaction to DeepSeek is one that combines schadenfreude with the desire to spread information. In this, social media is unique, being able to act as conduit both for the expression of emotion and the ability to intellectually understand a topic.

When news about something like DeepSeek breaks—and it does on a regular basis—this form of entertainment-focused learning is a key role of the internet for many people. It’s a blend of fun and fact.

DeepSeek is breaking the internet, but that wouldn’t be possible without social media.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/callumbooth/2025/01/27/deepseek-is-breaking-the-internet/

>>22446910

that's certainly possible

>>22446917

If you have been following Q from the start, you would know the CCP has been taken out.

>>22446925

notable