Haq's Musings

Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ

Showing posts with label DeepSeek. Show all posts

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Researchers of Chinese Origin Dominate the World's Top AI Talent

Recent launch of DeepSeek AI model has brought to light the large and growing AI talent in China. The researchers working for the Chinese startup have shown that human creativity and problem-solving skills can overcome limitations such as access to high-performance hardware. It confirms that the most important resource needed for breakthroughs in AI is the human resource.

The people of Chinese PRC origin account for 47% of the top 20% AI talent in the world based on undergraduate degree, according to a survey. Americans make up 18%, Europeans 12% and Indians 5% of the global AI researchers. In terms of the countries they serve, 57% of them work in the United States, 12% in China, 8% in the UK, 4% each in France and Germany and 3% in Canada as of 2022. While the US still has the lion's share of the top talent, its share has declined from 65% in 2019 to 57% in 2022. Marco Polo talent tracker lists Pakistan among a dozen countries for top AI talent in Asia.

Top Global AI Talent. Marco Polo AI Talent Tracker

More than half (15 out 25) of the institutions (companies and universities) where the top AI researchers work are located in the United States, while 6 are in China. The remaining four are in the UK, Switzerland, Singapore and Canada, according to Marco Polo Global AI Talent Tracker.

Top AI Talent in Asia Pacific. Source: Marco Polo

The Chinese from PRC dominate the Asia Pacific region with 81.9% of the top AI talent. Indians account for 8.2%, South Korea 4% and "others" 5.8%. "Others” include Taiwan, Australia, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, Mongolia, and Sri Lanka.

The fact that a number of large language models, including Chinese DeepSeek and Meta's Llama 3, are open source will help develop more global AI talent and spur greater innovation around the world. In the end, it is much more likely that the open source offerings will see greater success than the closed source models like OpenAI's.

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Chinese Lab's AI LLM Performance Shocks Silicon Valley

A Chinese Lab has sparked panic in Silicon Valley with the release of its first AI model that can outperform America's best despite being built more cheaply and with less-powerful chips, according to the US media reports. The lab called DeepSeek has recently unveiled a free, open-source large-language model (LLM) that it says took only two months and $5.5 million million to build, using reduced-capability chips from Nvidia called H800s. By comparison, the US-based OpenAI's closed LLM model cost $100 million to develop and train using the most advanced H100 chips from Nvidia. Open-source and free DeepSeek models can significantly help developing nations like Pakistan by providing affordable access to the latest AI technology, allowing them to develop solutions tailored to their specific needs without high costs.

DeepSeek, a small startup lab in China, has accomplished this feat despite the US technology export controls to slow down China's AI efforts. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is now acknowledging that China has narrowed or closed the AI technology gap with the United States.

In 2022 America banned the export of advanced chips to China, according to Economist magazine. Nvidia, a leading chipmaker, has had to design special downgrades to its products for the Chinese market. America has also sought to prevent China from developing the capacity to manufacture top-of-the-line chips at home, by banning exports of the necessary equipment and threatening penalties for non-American firms that might help, too.

The slower H800 chip was created by Nvidia to comply with export regulations that prevent the chipmaker from selling its high-end GPUs to China. Apparently, the limits imposed by Washington on Chinese engineers' access to the most advanced Nvidia chips forced them to develop a much more efficient model to achieve the same performance as their US counterparts. Other Chinese tech companies ranging from Alibaba and Huawei to TenCents are also working on their own multiple AI models, including LLMs.

DeepSeek has emerged from High-Flyer, a Chinese hedge fund started by 40-year-old Liang Wengfeng in 2015 to use AI to gain an edge in stocks-trading. Conducting fundamental research helped High-Flyer become one of the biggest quant funds in the country, according to The Economist magazine.