Beyond the Algorithm

Alesha Paramasivum • May 23, 2025

As the sun rose on Monday, Jan. 27, the world awoke to Artificial Intelligence’s (AI) Sputnik moment. DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, released a groundbreaking AI model on par with OpenAI’s ChatGPT on Jan. 20, and just one week later, the Chinese startup surpassed OpenAI as the most-downloaded free app in the U.S. App Store. This achievement was made more notable when the differences in resources are taken into account, as DeepSeek used roughly $6 million worth of leading technology company Nvidia’s lower capability H800 processor chips. In contrast, OpenAI raised $6.6 billion from investors and had the more advanced H100 Nvidia chips at their disposal (Reuters). With the stopwatch now ticking in the “Space Race” of the 21st century, domestic companies have been scrambling to re-establish their comfortable dominance over the AI industry, while the U.S. must reassess and readjust their relations with China.

The development of AI has become the cornerstone of technological advancement in the past decade. While ChatGPT may have gained a reputation for allowing students to easily cheat, a survey of people aged 14 to 22 demonstrated that the most common use of generative AI was, in reality, obtaining information, brainstorming and asking questions that they felt uncomfortable posing to teachers or parents (Harvard Graduate School of Education). Outside of chatbots, AI has become a regular part of many people’s daily lives: it produces recommendations for streaming service users through viewing patterns, curates social media feeds, sorts through results from an inquiry to search engines and even operates self-driving cars (University of Liverpool). With their lead in the development of AI, domestic companies — and by extension, the U.S. as a whole — benefited from the revenue generated from every new advancement in the industry. Junior Zumi Lee, secretary of Peninsula’s NextGen AI Entrepreneurs Club, gives her assessment on the significance of AI in today’s world and the years to come.

“I believe [AI] will both damage and [improve] our society,” Lee said. “Humans will soon rely too much on AI, ultimately taking away from their creativity and ideas. Yet, I do believe in the fields of research and medicine, AI will have a positive impact.”

However, the rise of Chinese company, DeepSeek and its leading language model, DeepSeek R-1, uprooted American control over AI, although not for any lack of preventive effort on the part of the U.S. On Oct. 17, 2021, the White House blocked foreign access to the advanced chips designed by Nvidia and other domestic companies in an attempt to secure an American lead over the development of AI (Reuters). Against all odds, DeepSeek-R1 reached an intelligence and capability on par with the leading generative AI and demonstrated that billions of dollars in funding and access to the most advanced resources were unnecessary to produce the same result. It has reached an almost human-like approach to problem solving, has a 90% mathematical accuracy and possesses advanced writing skills. However, as a Chinese corporation, DeepSeek faces the same censorship imposed on Chinese citizens: for example, R-1 reportedly refuses to answer questions regarding controversial topics such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the Hong Kong Protests (CNN). Senior Rachel Mar, President of Peninsula’s NextGen AI Entrepreneurs Club, compares her experiences with ChatGPT and DeepSeek.

“I prefer DeepSeek,” Mar said. “[It] has a feature [where it will go on] the web, [make] sure [all of its information] is credible and will tell [the user] which sources [the information is] from. [The user can also] upload an unlimited [amount of] pictures. The only downside is that the DeepSeek server is [sometimes] down at certain times of the day, which usually does not happen with ChatGPT.”

These same results, accomplished through a drastic difference in funds, sent shockwaves through the public. Investors sold their shares in Nvidia, leading to a devastating drop in its market value, while governments rushed to block access to DeepSeek in the US. President Donald Trump called DeepSeek a ‘wake-up’ call to domestic AI companies, while Italy, Taiwan and Australia have outright banned its chatbot (TechCrunch). Several companies, as well as the U.S. Navy, Congress, NASA and the Pentagon have also prohibited the use of DeepSeek within their staff on the basis of potential data-stealing from the Chinese government (TechCrunch). However, data-stealing was likely not the only motive to the widespread banning of DeepSeek. Similar to the initial blocks on Nvidia’s chip exports, these current prohibitions were likely placed in an attempt to retain U.S. monopoly until foreign countries were forced to rely on U.S. technology for modernization (The Diplomat). Senior Dylan Suarez presents his predictions for how the emergence of DeepSeek will alter relations between China and the U.S.

“The increased competition from DeepSeek and [other] companies outside of our domestic sphere may be a concern for [American] industry in AI, robotics and applied sciences, [as] newer firms in other nations have the advantage of rapid prototyping and development because they [can] piggyback off of the work done by U.S. firms over the past decade.”

These restrictions may paint DeepSeek to be a threat — but it also represents a new age in AI. Before the Chinese AI model, funds and resources were an insurmountable obstacle to developing AI — but DeepSeek’s success proves that lacking such access is not an impediment, only a means to new breakthroughs. Now, a U.S. monopoly on AI no longer appears to be on the cards for the upcoming decade — rather, a global market for the technology seems increasingly likely.