DeepSeek 10 Reason To Not Use it #1794

January 27, 2025PodcastKirk

In today’s episode, we dive into the groundbreaking rise of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup that’s shaking up the industry. With its latest release, the DeepSeek-R1 model, this free AI chatbot rivals ChatGPT in performance yet operates at a fraction of the cost. How did DeepSeek match OpenAI’s cutting-edge models while spending just 3% of the training budget? What makes its innovative reinforcement learning approach so disruptive? And why is Wall Street feeling the shockwaves? Or are they lying do they have Nvidia chips and are just not reporting them, or worse yet, did they steal technology?

We’ll explore the technical advancements behind DeepSeek, its market implications, and how it’s challenging big players like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft. Whether you’re an AI enthusiast, a tech entrepreneur, or just curious about the future of artificial intelligence, this episode is for you. Stay tuned as we unpack how this underdog startup is reshaping the AI landscape—and what it means for you.

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DeepSeek Hit By Cyberattack As Users Flock To Chinese AI Startup

January 27, 2025TechnologyTechnologyJenThorpe

Chinese startup DeepSeek said on Monday it will temporarily limit registrations due to a cyberattack after the company’s AI assistant amassed sudden popularity, Reuters reported.

The startup earlier in the day was also hit by outages on its website after its AI assistant became the top-rated free application available on Apple’s App Store in the United States.

The company resolved issues relating to its application programming interface and users’ inability to log in to the website, according to its status page. The outages on Monday were the company’s longest in around 90 days and coincides with its sky-rocketing popularity.

DeepSeek last week launched a free assistant it says uses less data at a fraction of the cost of incumbent players’ models, possibly marking a turning point in the level of investment needed for AI.

Powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, which its creators say “tops the leaderboard among open-source models and rivals the most advanced closed-source models globally”, the artificial intelligence application has surged in popularity among U.S. users since it was released on Jan. 10, according to the app data research Sensor Tower.

The Guardian reported: DeepSeek said its newly popular app was hit with a cyber-attack on Monday, which forced the Chinese company to temporarily limit registrations. The attack came after DeepSeek AI assistant app skyrocketed to the top of Apple’s App Store, becoming the highest rated free app in the US, and climbed high in Google’s Play Store.

On its status page, DeepSeek said it started to investigate the issue late Monday night in Beijing time. After about two hours of monitoring, the company said it was a victim a “large-scale malicious attack”. While Deep Seek limited registrations, existing users were still able to log on as usual. The app is now allowing registrations again.

DeepSeek’s app is an AI assistant similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The news of the app’s ascendency in the US – and ability to edge out American rivals for a fraction of the cost — sent technology stocks tumbling on Monday. Nvidia, the AI chip maker and most valuable US company, saw its stocks plummet by 13.6% in early trading, wiping out some $500bn in market capitalization.

ABC News reported: The emergence of China-based AI app DeepSeek sent shares plummeting on Monday for many U.S. tech giants, including chipmaker Nvidia and AI-backer Microsoft.

Nvidia, which helped catapult market wide gains in recent years, saw its share price plummet by more than 12% in early trading on Monday. Shares of Microsoft, a major stakeholder in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, fell about 4.5%

The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell more than 3% in early trading on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 also inched downward.

In my opinion, it sounds like deepseek was having a problem functioning properly.

White House In Talks To Have Oracle And U.S. Investors Take Over TikTok

January 26, 2025TikTokJenThorpe

The Trump administration is working on a plan to save TikTok that involves tapping software company Oracle and a group of outside investors to effectively take control of the app’s global operations, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks, NPR reported.

Under the deal now being negotiated by the White House, TikTok’s China-based owner ByteDance would retain a minority stake in the company, but the app’s algorithm, data collection and software updates will be overseen by Oracle, which already provides the foundation of TikTok’s web infrastructure.

That would effectively mean American investors would own a majority stake in TikTok, but the terms of the deal could change and are still being hammered out.

“The goal is for Oracle to effectively monitor and provide oversight with what is going on with TikTok.,” said the person directly involved in the talks, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the deliberations. “ByteDance wouldn’t completely go away, but it would minimize Chinese ownership.”

Forbes reported: The Trump administration and software giant Oracle — led by Larry Ellison — are discussing a deal to take over TikTok, according to NPR, the latest company that is rumored to be interested in buying ByteDance’s popular social media app to navigate around a U.S. ban.

A law passed by Congress and signed by former President Joe Biden last year bans TikTok in the United States unless ByteDance sells the app — a move driven by national security concerns over ByteDance’s ties to China. The ban took effect Jan 19, prompting TikTok to take itself offline for more than 12 hours, but the platform restored the service in the U.S. after Trump pledged to extend the sale deadline.

The ban is now set to take effect in about 75 days under an executive order signed by Trump, who has pushed for the platform to be taken over by a joint venture including ByteDance and new U.S.-based owners.

TikTok has pushed back against the law and argued a sale of the app’s U.S. operations would be infeasible, claiming in a legal filing in may the proposed ban was “simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally.”

TechCrunch reported: The Trump administration is negotiating a deal that would see Oracle take over TikTok alongside new U.S. investors, according to a report in NPR.

Lawmakers passed a bill last year forcing Chinese parent company ByteDance to either sell TikTok or see it banned in the U.S. The app went briefly dark before the law took effect on January 20 — until incoming President Donald Trump said he would issue an executive order delaying the ban.

At the time, Trump also outlined his “initial thought” on a deal to save TikTok — creating “a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners whereby the U.S. gets a 50% ownership”

In my opinion, I think people who really like TikTok might be hoping that the current administration will fix this problem for them.

Trump’s Crypto Venture Divides The Industry He Aims To Support

January 25, 2025crypto currencyJenThorpe

Dressed in ball gowns, tuxedos and “Make Bitcoin Great Again” baseball caps, a crowd of some of the country’s most powerful cryptocurrency executives gathered a few blocks from the White House for a lavish party three days before President Trump’s inauguration, toasting an incoming administration that had vowed to promote the industry’s interests, The New York Times reported.

But crypto millionaires and billionaires were caught off guard by what happened next.

At 9 p.m., on Jan. 17, with the festivities in flushing, Mr. Trump announced on social media that he was launching a new cryptocurrency — a so-called meme coin known simply as $Trump.

The surprise disclosure raised fresh ethics and legal concerns about the ways in which Mr. Trump continues to cash in on his power and frame, in this case by marketing digital asset in an inherently volatile and speculative market to millions of his followers.

And it set off a wave criticism from inside the industry that he says he wants to champion.

CNBC reported: Crypto executives, companies and investors are getting an early return on their investment in Donald Trump.

After pouring tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s 2024 campaign for president, the crypto industry has been paid back handsomely during his first week in the White House.

“I don’t think they could have imagined a better outcome than they just got in the past 48 hours,” Benchmark’s Bill Gurley, known for an early bet on Uber, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Friday. Gurley said that while tech’s newfound influence in Washington may be harmful to some parts of the startup world, “it’s obviously good for crypto.”

The industry’s support for Trump was built on the Republican leader’s promise to stop the government crackdown on crypto and implement regulators favorable to those who wanted to develop new types of payment technologies while easing restrictions on investments in cryptocurrencies.

Trump called on members of the Treasury, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to join forces in a working group to evaluate the potential of stockpiling cryptocurrencies seized by the government.

The order outlined other key priorities, such as protecting bitcoin miners and software developers from what the president called “persecution,” and promoting U.S. dollar-pegged stable coins, while banning a digital dollar from the Federal Reserve.

AlterNet reported: Just before his January 20 inauguration, President Donald Trump launched a cryptocurrency named after himself, which quickly accumulated a market cap of approximately $32 billion. One leading figure in the crypto word is now arguing this could usher in an era of corruption in the future.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that crypto traders were divided about the release of the president’s “meme coin,” dubbed $TRUMP. First Lady Melania Trump also launched her $MELANIA cryptocurrency ahead of the inauguration, which topped $6 billion within hours of its release.

In my opinion, I think people who are interested in cryptocurrency might consider purchasing some of it, especially those who are big fans of Trump.

Meta To Spend Up To $65 Billion This Year To Power Goals, Zuckerberg Says

January 24, 2025MetaJenThorpe

Meta Platforms plans to spend as much as $65 billion this year to expand its AI infrastructure, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday, aiming to bolster the company’s position against rivals OpenAI and Google in the race to dominate the technology., Reuters reported.

As part of the investment, Meta will ramp up hiring for artificial intelligence roles and build a more than 2-gigawatt data center that would be large enough to cover a significant part of Manhattan.

The company — among the top buyers of Nvidia’s sought-after AI chips — aims to end the year with over 1.3 million graphics professors and plans to bring about 1 GW of computing power online in 2025.

“This will be a defining year for AI,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. “This is a massive effort, and over the coming years it will drive our four products and business.”

Meta’s announcement comes just days after U.S. President Trump announced that OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle will form a venture called Stargate and invest $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the U.S.

TechCrunch reported: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company plans to significantly up it’s capital expenditures this year as it aims to keep pace with rivals in the cutthroat AI space.

In a Facebook post on Friday, Zuckerberg said that Meta expects to spend $60 billion – $80 billion on CapEx in 2025, primarily on data centers and growing the company’s AI development teams. That projected range is around double the $35 billion – $40 billion Meta spent on CapEx last year.

Zuckerberg also wrote that Meta plans to bring around one gigawatt of compute online this year, roughly the amount of power consumed by 750,000 average homes, and expects the company’s data centers to pack over 1.3 million GPUs by year-end.

NBC News reported: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Friday that the company plans to build a massive data center in Louisiana to power its newest AI model, Llama 4, which is set to launch this year.

In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg said the company would invest more than $60 billion into AI including the data center, which he noted would be “so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan.”

“This will be the defining year for AI. In 2025, I expect Meta AI will be the leading assistant serving more than 1 billion people, Llama 4 will become the leading state of the art model, and we’ll build an AI engineer that will start contributing increasing amounts of code to our R&D efforts,” Zuckerberg wrote.

In my opinion, I have concerns about how much water Meta is going to take away from people who aren’t billionaires.

OpenAI’s Operator: AI Agent Automates Web Tasks #1793

January 23, 2025PodcastKirk

OpenAI unveils “Operator,” an AI agent in research preview for ChatGPT Pro users in the U.S. This browser-based tool automates tasks like filling forms, ordering groceries, and planning trips by interacting with web interfaces. It combines GPT-4 vision and reasoning, can self-correct, and seeks user approval for sensitive actions.

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OpenAI Releases A “Research Review” Of Its Operator AI Agent

January 23, 2025OpenAIJenThorpe

The Verge reported: OpenAI is releasing a “research preview” of an AI agent called Operator the can “go into the web to perform tasks for you,” according to a blog post. “Using its own browser, it can look at a webpage and interact with it by typing, clicking, and scrolling,” OpenAI says. It’s launching first in the US for subscribers of OpenAI’s says. It’s launching first in the US for subscribers of OpenAI’s $200 per month ChatGPT Pro Tier.

Operator relies a “Computer-Using Agent” model that combine GPT-4o’s vision capabilities with “advanced reasoning through reinforcement learning” to be able to interact with GUI’s, OpenAI says. “Operator can ‘see’ (through screenshots) and ‘interact’ (using all the actions a mouse and keyboard allow) with a browser, enabling it to take action on the web without requiring custom API integrations,” according to OpenAI.

Operator can use reasoning to “self-correct,” and if it gets stuck, it will give the user control. It will also ask the user to take over when a website asks for sensitive information like login credentials and “should” ask for a user to approve actions like sending an email. OpenAI also says that the Operator has ben designed to “refuse harmful requests and block disallowed content.”

OpenAI posted:Today, we’re releasing Operator, an agent that can go to the web to preform tasks for you. Using it’s own browser, it can look at a webpage and interact with it by typing, clicking and scrolling. It is currently a research preview, meaning it has limitations and will evolve based on user feedback. Operator is one of our first agents, which hare AIs capable of doing the work for you independently — you give it a task and it will execute it.

Operator can be asked handle a wide variety of repetitive browser tasks such a filling out forms, ordering groceries, and even creating memes. The ability to use the same interfaces and tools that humans interact with on a daily basis broadens the utility of AI, helping people save time on everyday tasks while opening up new engagement opportunities for business.

To ensure a safe and iterative rollout, we are starting small. Starting today, Operator is available to Pro users in the U.S. at operator.chatgpt.com. This research preview allows users to learn from our users and the broader ecosystem, refining and improving as we go. Our plan is to expand to Plus, Team, and Enterprise users and integrate these capabilities into ChatGPT in the future.

CNBC reported: OpenAI is taking its ChatGPT chatbot to the next level, adding a feature to automate tasks such as planning family vacations, filling out forms, making restaurant reservations and ordering groceries.

The tool, announced on Thursday, is called Operator. OpenAI describes it as “an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you,” and added that it is trained to interact with “the buttons, menus, and text fields that people use daily” on the web.

It can also ask follow-up questions to further personalize the tasks it completes, such as login information for other websites. Users can take control of the screen at any time.

In my opinion, it sounds like OpenAI has the potential to help those who have difficulty with computers, and to make it easier for people to find what they want online.