- Deepseek has long been on the radar of the American government.
- A former AI advisor to the Biden administration said the United States has been watching Deepseek since the end of 2023.
- He said the United States should “tighten the screws and continue to force them”.
Deepseek’s abilities have shocked the markets, but a former special artificial intelligence advisor in the Biden administration said that the Chinese IA company has been on the US government radar – and that for more than a year.
“We watched Deepseek at the White House since November 2023 or roughly when they published their first coding system,” said Ben Buchanan in the last episode of “The Ezra Klein Show”, which was broadcast on Tuesday.
“There is no doubt that Deepseek engineers are extremely talented, and they have improved more and more in their systems throughout 2024,” added Buchanan.
Buchanan, now a deputy professor at Johns Hopkins University, served in the Biden administration from June 2021 to January. He held posts in the Board of White House and Policy Office and the National Security Council before becoming special advisor to President Joe Biden for AI in June 2023.
Buchanan told Klein that even if Deepseek’s achievements had been impressive, he did not think that the “media threshing around him was justified”.
Deepseek launched a sale in AI actions in January after the highly efficient and inexpensive models of the Startup aroused concerns that the request for IA equipment could fall.
However, Buchanan said that Deepseek “makes exactly the same type of algorithmic efficiency” as other AI companies, such as Openai and Anthropic.
“They are still forced by computing power,” said Buchanan about Deepseek. “We have to tighten the screws and continue to force them.”
“And this should be a reminder that flea commands are important, China is a worthy competitor here, and we should not take anything for granted,” added Buchanan. “But I don’t think it’s time to say that heaven falls or that the laws on a fundamental scale have broken.”
In January, President Donald Trump told GOP legislators during the party’s annual policy retirement, which he considered the cheaper models of Deepseek as “a positive asset, as an asset”.
“The release of Deepseek, the AI of a Chinese company, should be alarm clock to our industries that we must focus on the laser in competition to win,” said Trump.
The representatives of Deepseek and the White House did not respond to requests for comments from Business Insider.
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