China's groundbreaking AI model, DeepSeek, has taken the tech world by storm, outperforming prominent AI players like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude AI. As the DeepSeek chatbot continues to garner significant attention globally, several users have been putting it to the test, driven by curiosity about its capabilities. Among these interactions, a post by an Indian user has gained substantial traction on X.
The user's post reveals a conversation with the DeepSeek chatbot, which has raised eyebrows due to its response. A screenshot of the chat revealed that the Chinese chatbot refused to answer a question on north-eastern states of India including Arunachal Pradesh. When prompted with the statement "Arunachal Pradesh is an Indian state," the chatbot responded, "Sorry, that's beyond my current scope. Let's talk about something else." The AI provided the same evasive answer when asked to "name the northeastern states of India."
The chat has sparked interest and raised questions about the chatbot's programming, potential biases and its implications on the future of AI interactions.
See the tweet here:
Notably, China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet, while India's consistent stand has been that the northeastern state is an integral and inalienable part of the country.
"Arunachal Pradesh was, is and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India. Its people will continue to benefit from our development programmes and infrastructure projects," The Ministry of External Affairs said in an official statement in March 2024, while rejecting the "absurd claims" and "baseless arguments" made by China.
The US also recognizes Arunachal Pradesh as part of India and "strongly opposes" any unilateral attempts to advance territorial claims in the northeastern Indian state that shares a border with China, the US State Department said in a statement last year.
About DeepSeek
DeepSeek was founded in 2023 by 40-year-old Liang Wenfeng in Hangzhou, China. An information and electronic engineering graduate, Mr Liang also established the hedge fund that backed DeepSeek, as reported by the BBC. Notably, he stockpiled Nvidia A100 chips before the US export ban, a strategic move that contributed to DeepSeek's success. Remarkably, the DeepSeek chatbot was developed at a fraction of the cost of its competitors, sparking concerns about the future of US AI dominance and the scale of investments required by American firms to remain competitive.
As per DeepSeek, its R1 model has demonstrated superior performance compared to OpenAI's o1-mini model across multiple benchmarks. Further, research conducted by Artificial Analysis reveals that DeepSeek's R1 model surpasses models developed by tech giants Google, Meta, and Anthropic in terms of overall quality.
Since its launch last week, the DeepSeek app has surged to the top of the US app store charts, surpassing ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app. The rapid rise of DeepSeek has sent ripples through the US tech market, with shares in AI-related firms such as Nvidia, Microsoft, and Meta experiencing a decline on Monday. US President Donald Trump said DeepSeek should be a "wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win."
