DeepSeek ‘clever’ but 6 months behind US: Anthropic co-founder

Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, expressed skepticism about the recent enthusiasm surrounding Chinese AI company DeepSeek.

Clark, a former policy director at OpenAI, described DeepSeek’s technology as “clever.”

However, he said it is “six to eight months behind” leading AI firms in the United States.

Clark acknowledged that DeepSeek’s algorithms show promise.

He suggested that the firm would need access to more computational resources to become a stronger competitor.

He added that Anthropic’s internal tests do not view DeepSeek’s models as a national security risk.

🔗 Source: South China Morning Post

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ The vast US-China AI funding gap contextualizes DeepSeek’s achievements

Despite Clark’s downplaying of DeepSeek, the company’s progress is notable when viewed against the massive funding disparity between US and Chinese AI sectors.

The US has attracted over $470 billion in AI investments over the past decade, nearly four times China’s $119.3 billion, giving American companies like Anthropic significant advantages in computational resources and talent acquisition 1.

In 2024 alone, global AI investments reached $110 billion, with the US securing $80.7 billion compared to China’s $7.6 billion, further widening this competitive gap 2.

This context makes DeepSeek’s ability to create models that generated industry buzz more remarkable, explaining both why US companies might downplay their achievements and why Chinese tech observers view them as significant despite resource constraints.

Anthropic’s own $61.5 billion valuation and recent $3.5 billion funding round (mentioned in the original article) illustrates the resource advantages US frontier companies maintain in this competition.

2️⃣ Computational constraints remain a key competitive differentiator in AI development

Clark’s assessment that DeepSeek would be more competitive with “arbitrarily large amounts of compute” highlights a fundamental constraint in AI advancement that involves both technical and environmental considerations.