How DeepSeek is using data. Is the app safe to use?
Washington and Europe are growing wary of DeepSeek.
The Chinese artificial intelligence company astonished the world last weekend by rivaling the hit chatbot ChatGPT, seemingly at a fraction of the cost. But now, regulators and privacy advocates are raising new questions about the safety of users' data.
And in the U.S., members of Congress and their staff are being warned by the House's Chief Administrative Officer not to use the app. Two US Representatives recently asked the Trump administration to strengthen existing restrictions on the sale of semiconductor chips to China in an effort to "outcompete" China in AI development and "safeguard Americans' data."
Regulators in Italy have blocked the app from Apple and Google app stores there, as the government probes what data the company is collecting and how it is being stored.
In France and Ireland, officials are digging into whether the AI chatbot poses a privacy risk.
The creation of the DeepSeek AI platform is said to have cost a fraction of the money invested in the Indian bath, around $6m.
Western analysts, seldom pleased with China’s progress, put the figure involved in creating the platform at $500m, still half the cost of hosting the holy bath, and a fraction of the cost of platforms created by tech giants in the US, says an article 'Dawn' newspaper of Pakistan.
DeepSeek has gained instant popularity across the world, while its Western competitors suffered enormous losses at the stock exchange.
Analysts caution that the Data security concerns are always a critical issue when using AI chatbots, and this is not unique to DeepSeek.
Angela Zhang, a law professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in Chinese regulation, says:
"Even US based AI firms like OpenAI have faced significant scrutiny and investigations in the EU over potential data privacy violations".
When it comes to DeepSeek, Samm Sacks, a research scholar who studies Chinese cybersecurity at Yale, said the chatbot could indeed present a national security risk for the U.S.
"That data, in aggregate, can be used to glean insights into a population, or user behaviors that could be used to create more effective phishing attacks, or other nefarious manipulation campaigns," Sacks said. (npr.org)
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Was DeepSeek being governed by political limitations?
The question was in fact simpler. Did President Xi Jinping comment on the achievement? The answer was terse. “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.” (Dawn website)
Michael Wooldridge, a professor of the foundations of AI at the University of Oxford, said it was not unreasonable to assume data inputted into the chatbot could be shared with the Chinese state.
He said: “I think it’s fine to download it and ask it about the performance of Liverpool football club or chat about the history of the Roman empire, but would I recommend putting anything sensitive or personal or private on them? “Absolutely not … Because you don’t know where the data goes.”
Dame Wendy Hall, a member of the United Nations high-level advisory body on AI, told the Guardian: “You can’t get away from the fact that if you are a Chinese tech company dealing with information you are subject to the Chinese government’s rules on what you can and cannot say.” (The Guardian)
Liang Wenfeng, who founded the firm Deepsake just two years ago, says his aim is ‘not to lose money, nor to make huge profits’
DeepSeek’s research focus is bankrolled by Liang’s hedge fund, High-Flyer Capital, which he started in 2015. After studying electronic information engineering at Zhejiang University, Liang eschewed programmer jobs at large software companies to focus on his obsession with AI. With High-Flyer Capital, Liang used AI to spot patterns in stock prices – generating tonnes of cash. In 2021, its assets under management reportedly surpassed 100bn yuan (£11bn)
That same year, rumours started spreading that Liang had amassed a large collection of Nvidia graphic processing units (GPUs). By 2021, he was reported to have bought 10,000 of the chips, seemingly for his personal hobby. Only a handful of large Chinese tech firms have similar reserves of Nvidia semiconductors.
“Many people would think that there is an unknown business logic behind this, but in fact, it is mainly driven by curiosity,” Liang said in 2023.
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