An announcement by one-year-old Chinese startup DeepSeek about its new artificial intelligence assistant has sent shockwaves in stock markets around the world, making investors poorer by several trillions of dollars in just a couple of days.
The issue at stake is not the introduction of a new AI assistant, but the money that went into designing it. When ChatGPT, the world's first AI assistant, was rolled out, it was believed to cost several billions of dollars. However, DeepSeek declared that it achieved the feat in just a few millions, which debunked the idea of American superiority in advanced technologies.
DeepSeek also ended the long-lasting myth of American exclusivity on advanced technologies, which boosted the market capitalisation of the American technology focussed stock exchange Nasdaq 100 by $14 trillion — four times the size of Indian economy — in just two years.
When the whole premise of betting on US technology stocks was found hyped and without basis, the shock and bewilderment among investors is but natural. It also raises questions over the Western world's ability to compete with developing countries like China or India.
Though India's work on its own AI model BharatGPT, which is based on large language model, is still in progress, its space missions like Chandrayaan has successfully shown the world that Indians could do what Americans did at the fraction of their cost.
Some American technology commentators and Tesla founder Elon Musk have expressed doubts about the reliability of the cost numbers declared by the Chinese startup and the cost of data learning by AI is pittance compared to the overall cost involved in building the infrastructure.
However, when seven of the top 10 research universities in the world are from China, as per Nature Research Leaders Index, any country can ignore it at its own peril. India must focus on technology, instead of mere optics.
