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Is China getting AI right?

With the world's two AI superpowers adopting radically different approaches to development, Aleks and Kevin ask whose ideology will win: China or the US?

When Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released their R1 model on the world it sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley. Out of nowhere was an AI that performed as well as any of big tech's products but had been built at a fraction of the cost and with a fraction of the resources.

Now the dust has settled they’re asking themselves whether the driving idea of bigger models, trained on ever bigger datasets still holds up. They're also asking if their business model of fiercely protecting the secrets behind how their technology works is the best way to innovate. DeepSeek is what’s called Open Source meaning that its creators have made the software available for others to study, use and modify. The race is on to see which of these approaches will dominate and see AI embedded into more and more of our lives.

Presenters: Aleks Krotoski & Kevin Fong
Producer: Peter McManus
Researcher: Juliet Conway
Sound: Neva Missirian & Fraser Jackson

Release date:

28 minutes

On radio

Wednesday 15:30

Broadcast

  • Wednesday 15:30

Podcast