By 1990, the communist countries considered the amount of steel produced as the highest measurement of progress. This obsession has contributed to their demise. It is adequate to remind us how China, wishing to outrun Britain in this field, began to carry out its "great leap forward" in the late 1950s, which ended in a gigantic disaster and led tens of millions of people to starvation.
In fresh years, since ChataGPT debut, the planet of artificial intelligence has been defined by the prism of akin obsession: scale. Companies are surpassing in building always larger models, training them on data collections of unimaginable sizes and spending billions of dollars on infrastructure needed to sustain this rapid development.
It is so no wonder that DeepSeek's fresh Chinese chatbot fell like a cold shower on American technology companies, leading the race for dominance in the area of artificial intelligence. erstwhile DeepSeek and his model chatbot R1, created for a fraction of the amount the competition has spent (OpenAI on ChataGPT or Google on Gemini), the leading American technology index recorded on 27 January a melting point at the level One trillion dollars.. And although the index later made losses, it was hard to recover from the shock. DeepSeek's release of the R1 model was considered specified a breakthrough event that it was named ‘sputnik moment’ for the improvement of the AI – in mention to the minute erstwhile the USSR surpassed the US, introducing the first satellite into orbit of Earth.
American reactions are, of course, hypocritical. On January 27, 2025, Trump, referring to the fact that the chatbot DeepSeek has the same performance as the American AI models at a much lower cost as it threatens America’s dominance in the boom itself, stated: “Greatly enough, it will not be essential to spend that much money. It is simply a affirmative thing for me, it is an asset.”
In the same spirit He said president of OpenAI Sam Altman: “The R1 DeepSeek model impresses you, especially erstwhile you see what they have made for that money. Of course, we will make much better models, but the fresh competitor is simply a real impulse for us." Why “of course”? If it's so obvious, why did the U.S. freak out that they would end up second in the race after AI? [February 4th Republican Josh Hawley filed a bill in Congressthat would ban American companies and individuals from utilizing AI technology produced in China. For breaking the ban would endanger up to 20 years in prison and up to $100 million in punishment – ed.]
Few people talk about clou the full situation: DeepSeek's assistant and his origin code are publically available and can be downloaded free of charge, which is completely contrary to Trump's views. Trump understands the importance of AI, but approaches artificial intelligence in the spirit of the old-fashioned communist mantra: “the bigger, the better”. He announced that the United States would invest $500 billion in AI infrastructure, which will be built by the 3 largest technology companies, united under the flag of a fresh company called Stargate.
In this context, it is worth recalling that in 2023 president Biden issued a regulation to set standards for safe, reliable and supervised improvement of AI in various sectors. The US Department of wellness and Social Services (HHS) to make a safety programme which would "take care of the safe, liable implementation and usage of AI in medical care, public wellness and social services" and require reporting to the Agency "cases in which, due to the usage of AI, individual has suffered or utilized in medical care, are not safe so that the Agency can take appropriate corrective action".
First day of his second word Trump repealed that Regulation, as demonstrated in full , what his regulation is to be in practice: the transfer of full power to neofeudal corporations outside any public control. The repeal of this act means that a large part of society will simply not know how many AI machines will be able to control us and influence our behavior.
Critics note that DeepSeek uses auto-censorship in real time: any versions of the application work well until asked questions about Tienanmen Square or Taiwan. If so, the question should be asked immediately: in precisely what sense is the "free West" actually more free from China? Even if there are little openly prohibited topics, the way in which we manipulate our attention in digital media is much more effective in this respect for 1 simple reason: we feel that in our surfing we have full freedom, but the most dangerous form of non-freedom is the non-freedom experienced as freedom.
The empty answers of the Chinese chatbot to the questions about Tienanmen are at least a reminder, make us aware of the limits of freedom, while in the western "free" exploration of networks these borders are invisible and that is why they are more effective.
Zorana Baković summing up This ambiguity related to DeepSeek and model R1, “which warns us that we should fundamentally change our way of reasoning about China. What is more, that we change our reasoning about ourselves. What do we Europeans spend quite a few time and money on without getting the right results? [...] As supporters of democracy, we must face the fundamental issue: China has already shown that there can be a free marketplace without free consumers; that capitalism can flourish among communism. And are they not informing us now that even a technological breakthrough can happen in a society where there is no freedom of thought?"
The conclusions of this ambiguity are drawn by Janis Warufakis, referring to the collapse of the Assad government in Syria“There is nothing ambivalent about condemning the government of Assad and the jihadists who have overthrown it with the support of the United States. These are attitudes that not only do not exclude themselves, but should be considered the only right and effective way to keep an anti-imperialist position. Not only are we not trying to stay neutral, but we are besides in the only right and effective way to stand on the side of many, not on the side of a few."
The same applies to China. Yes, much of what is known about China (though about tightening censorship in the intellectual and artistic sphere) should rise considerable distrust of this country as the main anti-imperialist force in the world. Since we are observing the fight between the factions of global capital, we must not stand up for either side of this conflict. It is our work to exploit this conflict and turn its sides against each other.
Therefore, being full aware of the critical phenomena in China, unconditionally support this country's fight against the collusion of artificial intelligence that the US is counting on. The paradox is that in the case of AI (meaning the hottest commodity in the economy today) China stands on the side of small, dynamic capitalist enterprises standing in the face of corporate neo-feudism. In short, China is in this case a more authentic capitalist and socialist than the US, due to the fact that DeepSeek offers its product free of charge, so outside the marketplace domain.
On a deeper level, however, you should not put besides much weight on the DeepSeek effect: how notes Warufakis himself, DeepSeek will only shake attempts to make digital programs, sale them and break coconuts, but in no way will it disturb the carefree existence of digital neofeuds like Jeff Bezos. Amazon offers us a program that allows you to surf the Amazon and buy things for free, and the trick is that this program not only collects data about us and what we want, but besides sells these data, while at the same time unnoticeably regulating our “free” choice of what to buy or watch.
So the paradox is that making the AI model available with its origin code for free, although it breaks out of the strategy of capitalism, in the end it is just a strategy for strengthening the regulation of our fresh feudal masters.
In search of a solution, a Marxist obsession with making absolutely everything, including all spheres of life in the marketplace from politics to sexuality should be abandoned. We should not be afraid to give the marketplace what is due to it, due to the fact that the product means that I meet others on the marketplace as a formally free unit and buy what I think I need.
The solution is alternatively social control over digital clouds, their full transparency. In short, the solution is to have control of what we get for free.
