Senator Hawley Proposes Jail Time For People Who Download DeepSeek 94
Senator Josh Hawley has introduced a bill that would criminalize the import, export, and collaboration on AI technology with China. What this means is that "someone who knowingly downloads a Chinese developed AI model like the now immensely popular DeepSeek could face up to 20 years in jail, a million dollar fine, or both, should such a law pass," reports 404 Media. From the report: Hawley introduced the legislation, titled the Decoupling America's Artificial Intelligence Capabilities from China Act, on Wednesday of last year. "Every dollar and gig of data that flows into Chinese AI are dollars and data that will ultimately be used against the United States," Senator Hawley said in a statement. "America cannot afford to empower our greatest adversary at the expense of our own strength. Ensuring American economic superiority means cutting China off from American ingenuity and halting the subsidization of CCP innovation."
Hawley's statement explicitly says that he introduced the legislation because of the release of DeepSeek, an advanced AI model that's competitive with its American counterparts, and which its developers claimed was made for a fraction of the cost and without access to as many and as advanced of chips, though these claims are unverified. Hawley's statement called DeepSeek "a data-harvesting, low-cost AI model that sparked international concern and sent American technology stocks plummeting." Hawley's statement says the goal of the bill is to "prohibit the import from or export to China of artificial intelligence technology, "prohibit American companies from conducting AI research in China or in cooperation with Chinese companies," and "Prohibit U.S. companies from investing money in Chinese AI development."
Hawley's statement explicitly says that he introduced the legislation because of the release of DeepSeek, an advanced AI model that's competitive with its American counterparts, and which its developers claimed was made for a fraction of the cost and without access to as many and as advanced of chips, though these claims are unverified. Hawley's statement called DeepSeek "a data-harvesting, low-cost AI model that sparked international concern and sent American technology stocks plummeting." Hawley's statement says the goal of the bill is to "prohibit the import from or export to China of artificial intelligence technology, "prohibit American companies from conducting AI research in China or in cooperation with Chinese companies," and "Prohibit U.S. companies from investing money in Chinese AI development."
sounds good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Great, if our oligarchs can't compete fairly, let's criminalize the competition!
Yay for US innovation!
Re:sounds good! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you think the US slapped a 100% tariff on Chinese EV imports?
Neither Ford nor GM nor Stellantis could compete on price, quality, or features... so TARIFFS!
Someone will probably comment on China having cheaper labor... and they do, since the production lines on new EVs are almost fully automated and practically don't need any workers at all.
Someone else might mention China subsidizing their vehicles... which we did too with the EV tax credits.
Someone else might mention China subsidizing their battery manufacturers... which we could have done too, but didn't, since America refuses to invest in technology and since the American automaker's idea of innovation is building ever larger, ever fatter vehicles for its ever larger, ever fatter populace.
On which they could charge more money, of course. They *could* have taken those proceeds and invested in the same technology... but choose instead to spend billions on useless stock buybacks.
We deserve what happens to us..
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Why do you think the US slapped a 100% tariff on Chinese EV imports?
Neither Ford nor GM nor Stellantis could compete on price, quality, or features... so TARIFFS!
Stellantis is even trying with EVs, but Ford and GM are both growing the number of cars sold, and GM in the last 12 month has doubled their market share to over 12%. Meanwhile Tesla's market share has been dropping steadily for the last three years.
Why the tarrifs on Chinese EVs? Two reasons. First, the Chinese companies are guilty of dumping, selling cars below cost to gain market share. The Chinese companies are able to do this because they are heavily subsidized by the Chinese government, which reali
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"First, the Chinese companies are guilty of dumping, selling cars below cost to gain market share. The Chinese companies are able to do this because they are heavily subsidized by the Chinese government..."
Ah, no. Rather than direct subsidies, the Chinese government has primarily supported its EV industry through low-interest loans, tax incentives, infrastructure development (such as charging stations), and consumer subsidies for buyers. Many EV companies, including BYD and Nio, received state-backed loans
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When you start right off by being dishonest and pretending the person said "direct subsidies," that's super-weak sauce. You're trying to construct a straw man by misrepresenting a person, in a reply to them. So the dishonesty extends even to the form; you're not actually trying to reply, you're just hanging your propaganda onto a person's comment.
And yet, your straw-man doesn't even catch fire or get knocked over. You agree they "bet big" with massive industry subsidies, so as not to have to "spend... decad
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When you start right off by being dishonest and pretending the person said "direct subsidies,"
But then you get into all the indirect subsidies that western countries have bumped into the car industry and ICE vehicles in particular. Whole wars have been fought to keep the price of oil low.
Reality check (Score:2)
Not true. So many people in denial... when is it going to hit??
China is out performing the USA in every way which is not impossible given how poorly we have been doing. China progressed from bottom to closing in on the top in less time than any nation in history. The momentum continues despite them slowing.
What is the top cost for GM? Workers: healthcare.
Why do 3rd world dumps fail to progress and compete? Lack of infrastructure. There are places without free police, free firefighters, free roads, right-o
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"Someone else might mention China subsidizing their battery manufacturers"
What if China and the US subsidized battery recycling over strip-mining more mountains?
Not Innovative (Score:2)
Yay for US innovation!
It's not very innovative. Banning software is perhaps new to the US but countries like China have been banning software they do not want people to use for ages. So if you do not want people to use Chinese software how about setting an example by not using Chinese governance techniques?
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It's a worrying sign of a dying economy. When you give up trying to compete and instead just start banning and slapping tariffs on things, the rot has already set in and it's basically an admission of defeat.
Bizarro world (Score:5, Interesting)
Where the non-profit OpenAI is for-profit and closed, and the entire system conspires against actually open FOSS that comes from the fucking CCP
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Well, it's not really open, only the weights are open. But you can use them with another engine. However I don't think any of the engines are open.
Still, it's open in comparison to, e.g., OpenAI.
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Re:Bizarro world (Score:4, Funny)
BAN ALL .CPP FILES
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Huh? It runs on huggingface, vllm, and ollama now.
Huggingface is literally working on reproducing the whole model from scratch based on the papers, but without the CCP "suggestions." vllm is open source [github.com]. ollama is open source [github.com]. torch is open source. your GPU's firmware is proprietary but no one cares.
I agree that "open weights" is a bunch of bullshit (if they could magically encrypt the weights somehow, they would in many cases), but what do you mean by "engine"?
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I agree that "open weights" is a bunch of bullshit (if they could magically encrypt the weights somehow, they would in many cases), but what do you mean by "engine"?
Fuck, don't even say that out loud.
From a technical perspective, it's ridiculously easy to do, given that the GPU firmware is, as you noted, proprietary.
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There is an osi definition for AI: https://opensource.org/ai/open... [opensource.org]. There is some discussion on whether the information they provide on their training data is sufficient. To match the definition they don't have to supply the training data but have enough explanation on it. However, they do provide some description. It may not be entirely realistic to get companies to share what they trained on in too much detail, given the potential for legal consequences.
For the rest, it's pretty damn open in the sense t
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The CCP, at least in theory, is commie.
Open source follows the Marxist principle: "From each according to their ability. To each according to their needs."
So, there's nothing inherently paradoxical about the CCP supporting open source.
It's more surprising they don't do more of it. Thriving open source ecosystems benefit China.
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Communists might like open-source software, but that doesn't mean open-source software is communist.
Developers contribute willingly to open-source projects. They don't have the fruits of their labor taken from them forcefully.
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They don't have the fruits of their labor taken from them forcefully.
That distinction is purely political.
Am I employed to work on open-source?
Then it's as taken forcefully from me as it is from your average commie.
Sure, the conditions of their labor, and the protections from the master they work for are certainly different (to non-existent in extant communist systems), but ultimately, Soviet workers were employed. The state merely controlled the economics of the businesses.
People could quit, and go find new jobs. They were paid money, with which they could buy goods.
Re: Why are our politicians morons? (Score:1)
Re:Why are our politicians morons? (Score:4, Funny)
They've been morons for a long time.
Mark Twain: "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."
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They've been morons for a long time.
Mark Twain: "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."
Mark Twain: "There is no distinctly American criminal class, ... except Congress."
Re:Why are our politicians morons? (Score:4, Funny)
George Carlin said it best.
Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.
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That one's easy: because you elect them.
Build a wall (Score:4, Funny)
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Careful now, sadly I'm not convinced our politicians know the difference between sarcasm and good ideas when it comes to technology.
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Given that they probably know neither sarcasm nor good ideas, that seems likely.
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Why doesn't he propose a wall that separates the US internet from the rest of the world? To keep the US safe.
Oh, I'm sure that's coming. When you've got a president who is widely believed to envy the ruling power of leaders such as Putin and Xi Jinping, a desire to implement similar policies can't be far behind.
Re: Build a wall (Score:2)
Putin and Xi are amateurs. He who shall not be named looks up to Kim Jong Un.
Re:Build a wall (Score:4, Funny)
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Nah, it will be a "Big, Beautiful Wall".
Definitely not "Great", you cannot build a Wonder of the World twice, as many experienced emperors around here should be able to confirm.
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That's always been true, but we've got another couple days before we find out if it still holds.
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Why doesn't he propose a wall that separates the US internet from the rest of the world? To keep the US safe.
... and I know exactly where you can get such a wall, special price, just for you, ... my friend.
Marching Morons (Score:5, Insightful)
It'd be one thing if they were banning remote access to DeepSeek servers and their API. They control that, and are likely using queries and incoming data for future training. Sure, starve that - that would be consistent with the current stance against TikTok, DJI, etc. phoning home and being threats to US privacy and national security.
Banning access to a released set of open weights that you download and run locally makes zero sense. It's data you're using locally - it has no capability of phoning home.
Not to mention, that the license allows for commercial use. So someone outside of China could modify DeepSeek by fine tuning it, or better yet, ablating the CCP censor expert in the mixture of experts that comprises the 671b training model, thereby freeing it of CCP bias, and then either republishing it, or hosting the "freedom" version of DeepSeek on servers here in the USA.
There's also the research aspect - for our models to improve, we need to test and assess other models. Not being able to download and access models like DeepSeek means we would no longer be able to conduct research to assess and validate those models within the USA. Anyone remember the stem cell research ban?
Knowing how brain dead politicians are, they're probably employing the fruit of the poisoned tree is itself poisoned argument. Even if DeepSeek was freed of bias and republished in a tuned form, we would be forbidden from using it, or even conducting red team research on it.
Now, maybe I'm overreacting because clueless politicians don't understand the difference between an open weight model you run locally and an app you download to your phone that pipes your data straight to China. But if the end result of the law is the same - a ban on local usage, then I'm going to stand up and point out that they're being idiots.
Re:Marching Morons (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, reading over the text of the bill, it is very broad:
"(a) PROHIBITION ON IMPORTATION.â"On and after the date that is 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the importation into the United States of artificial intelligence or generative artificial intelligence technology or intellectual property developed or produced in the Peopleâ(TM)s Republic of China is prohibited."
"(6) INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.â"The term ââintellectual propertyâ(TM)â(TM) meansâ"(A) any work protected by a copyright
under title 17, United States Code;(B) any property protected by a patent granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office under title 35, United States Code;
(C) any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof, that is registered as a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office under the Act entitled ââAn Act to provide for the registration and protection of trademarks used in commerce, to carryout the provisions of certain international con
ventions, and for other purposesâ(TM)â(TM), approved July 5, 1946 (commonly known as the ââLanham Actâ(TM)â(TM) or the ââTrademark Act of 1946â(TM)â(TM)) (15 U.S.C. 1051 et seq.); or (D) a trade secret (as defined in section 1839 of title 18, United States Code)"
So - read as written, it basically bans the import of ANY intellectual property from China. Forget all the window dressing about this being about AI. I would interpret this to include any open source code contributors to ANY project, any designs created in China, which would then apply to any goods sold out of China using said designs, etc. In other words, this could be interpreted as a complete ban of all goods and services originating out of China.
Assuming that a total ban of all goods and services was not the goal, you have to ask the question - what intern using which shitty LLM (gemini, is this you?) wrote this, and who in Josh Hawley's staff didn't even bother to get a half-decent lawyer to review this before putting it out into public?
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Text of the bill I am referring to as of 5:30pm Pacific time, Feb 3rd:
https://www.hawley.senate.gov/... [senate.gov]
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I just realized, if this was meant as a ban on all Chinese developed/produced intellectual property, this would include any Japanese anime that subcontracts to a studio in China. Any software that uses algorithms or data licensed from a Chinese firm. And probably any research papers published out of China.
Anker products would suddenly be persona non grata. As would anything from DJI. TikTok for sure would not survive unless they threw away all of their existing source code. Forget the 100% tariff on Ch
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There are commits in the Linux Kernel from Chinese developers. If the law actually goes as far as is being pointed out, it would potentially make anything that runs Linux illegal.
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Huh. So I've just finished reading "The Three Body Problem" by Liu Cixin. Good thing I live in Canada where (so far...) we're out of Sen. Hawley's clutches... gotta crack down on the Chinese intellectual property!
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Sure, enjoy it for another 30 days, but if you don't hurry up and become a state you might be annexed as a territory.
Hopefully not... I'm rooting for you!
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I wonder if Apple's lawyers have read this.
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Read that? They, along with their ilk from Microsoft and Google, wrote it.
Hawley is a piece of shit and should go to jail. (Score:5, Insightful)
Code is speech. And he's trying to deny free speech as usual violating the Constitution.
Re:Hawley is a piece of shit and should go to jail (Score:4, Insightful)
Code is speech. And he's trying to deny free speech as usual violating the Constitution.
The constitution is only as strong as the judges willing to uphold it. There is no deus ex machina to save the day when the courts get it wrong. We're not far off from where if life in the USA was something that could be bought on eBay, you'd be entitled to return it for failing to match the listing description.
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The constitution is only as strong as the people willing to uphold it.
Fixed that for you.
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What constitution?
In the US it's just a piece of paper that you ignore if it doesn't server your purpose. Sad. It's just so sad how off the path the US is right now...
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"Trump's gaseous lies might have merely dissipated into the atmosphere had it not been for Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who was the first senator to object to ballot results," the piece reads. "That damnable, self-serving stunt is what made it necessary for Congress that day to debate the undebatable legitimacy of Joe Biden's victory — thus providing a time-and-place target for the MAGA madness of Jan. 6."
Priorities (Score:2)
Funny how we can still get over-the-counter medicines [walmart.com] manufactured by "our greatest adversary", though. In case you're not seeing it, the picture with the barcode is where it says "PRODUCT OF CHINA" on the label, and yes, I've been to Walmart recently and a surprisingly large portion of their generic drugs are made in China.
Methinks the stuff that gets ingested is a bigger potential threat than some AI software, but seeing this situation from a more logical perspective is likely one of the many reasons why
One step closer to idiocracy (Score:2)
In related news (Score:3)
Hawley is a clown (Score:4, Insightful)
Did Hawley use AI to write this? Did anyone bother to read it before clicking send? "tenor processing unit" .. " or replicated to function artificial intelligence" ...
"On and after the date that is 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the export, reexport, or in-country transfer of artificial intelligence or generative artificial intelligence technology or intellectual property to or within the People's Republic of China is prohibited."
In case you were wondering what artificial intelligence technology includes:
"Any semiconductor, circuit board, operating system, graphics processing unit, central processing unit, tenor processing unit, field-programmable gate array, random access memory, hard drive, solid-state drive, dataflow architecture, or cloud computing service, that is manufactured, designed, developed, supplied, deployed, completed, assembled, restored, converted, or replicated to function artificial intelligence or generative artificial intelligence;"
This effectively outlaws exporting computers and all computer related components to China.
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Yup - if everyone else in the house wants to watch the Sopranos, the Tenors don't have a chance.
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Can stupid be a defense for treason? Hawley is the one who needs to be jailed.
jail (Score:1)
War (Score:2)
Instead of trying to come up with ways to make each other bigger and bigger enemies -- until an inevitable stabilization event like war, why not figure out how to make us friends?
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Next you'll be telling billionaires to stop making money. That's not how it works. The people in power want total power and control, and wealthy people only want more and more.
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Let me explain my above comment better. There are only two options on China:
1. Declare war on China immediately.
OR
2. Figure out a path to friendship.
If you believe the Chinese are inevitably our enemy .. then the ONLY option is to push for IMMEDIATE war. Waiting will only increase Chinese capacity to cause extreme damage in a war. If you believe China is our enemy. Sanctions are dumb. Tariffs too, are dumb.
The other option is forging a path to peace via friendship and fair trade, and increasing mad sanction
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Cripple them in peacetime? Umm, how is that going to work via sanctions? Plus the possibility of being able to do that is remote. You think that's the viable play here?
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Cripple them in peacetime? Umm, how is that going to work via sanctions?
The math isn't complicated.
It's a gamble to see if they can achieve as much without integration with our economic factors as they can with.
Plus the possibility of being able to do that is remote.
Might be. Might not be.
You think that's the viable play here?
Probably.
Unless you reject the basic premise of globalism, it follows that an isolated China's growth will be less than it would have otherwise been.
I'm not arguing for this political position- but the logic is sound enough.
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There is no "path for friendship" with China. The population of China, if let on their own, may or may not want to be friends with you, but what they want is not an issue. What their power elites want is.
The power elites in China after the thawing brought by Deng began to become rather diverse, many of them not ideologically pure, so that brought a backlash starting with pooh jinping winning his first "appointment" as the party/country top in 2012.
He managed to successfully clean up the party, the military
Re: War (Score:2)
China doesn't so much have elites as much as it has Xi. He's gutted the party of anyone competent enough to replace him. Get rid of Xi (through time or poison) and there's a path to friendship.
Constitutional? (Score:3)
I know this is an incredibly stupid question considering the conservative court cares nothing for the Constitution beyond what it can do for them. But let's say we're back in normal times. This would never fly past first amendment right?
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Well the TikTok ban was on TikTok specifically. There wasn't a ban on people using it. It would have just been removed from the app stores. You could very legally side load it or use a VPN. This proposed ban directly targets and punishes US citizens. This would absolutely be a free speech concern.
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It would have just been removed from the app stores.
There's no would. It has been.
The political messaging about Trump saving TikTok has been amusing, but the fact is- that law went into effect, and the entities targeted by it have been, and are, abiding by it.
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I honestly have no clue to its actual status. I don't care enough to pay attention. But what does any of this have to do with the constitutionality Hawley's idiotic law?
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I honestly have no clue to its actual status.
You must be spared having multiple nieces between the ages of 16 and 20, lol.
I don't care enough to pay attention.
Nor, I, particularly. I do have one niece in college who has been grilling me for clarification, so I've kept relatively up to date on the matter.
But what does any of this have to do with the constitutionality Hawley's idiotic law?
Only the fact that the law as passed is already arguable unconstitutional, by the Court's own admission.
It's worth reminding that the court did not find the law without first amendment issue- it said the Government's concern for national security overrode the concern for the first amendm
Re: Constitutional? (Score:2)
Technology import and export controls has a long tradition in the U.S.
Welcome to Fascicm (Score:3)
Feindsender are not allowed anymore and get you sent to a KZ for downloading from them.
The US is not very far away to have really bad people like that in power long-term. If the voters get a minimal clue, it can still be avoided, but that is probably not going to happen.
Oh really senator (Score:4, Interesting)
Downloading Now (Score:1)
Come get me mutherfuckers!
Fuzzy and not thought out (Score:2)
Politicians should not write these types of laws without lots of input from tech people, lawyers, and economists. The law as written is fuzzy, prohibiting "the importation into the United States of artificial intelligence or generative artificial intelligence technology or intellectual property developed or produced in the People’s Republic of China" and export of the same. If "intellectual property" is a phrase that is grammatically not dependent on “artificial intelligence or generative arti
How about a bigger dose of freedom?? (Score:3)
Ahh yes... (Score:2)
Sure, ok. (Score:1)
Joke's on Hawley (Score:2)
DeepSeek seems to be a clone of ChatGPT:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatG... [reddit.com]
Maybe We Have AI As Good As DeepSeek, But Not Free (Score:1)
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DeepSeek-R1 is also a Chain of Thought model, and it exposes that thought to the end user (unlike o3). When it makes a mistake, it's much easier to identify where and why, and get it back on the path. When it does get everything right, it's much easier to trust the answer, and you learn a little about attacking that sort of problem yourself when you don't have an AI handy.
The 70b distill runs on my own personal potato of an i5-8500 with 48 GB of RAM and an RTX 3060. It makes the machine almost useless while
Yay! ... (Score:2)
Senator Hawley Proposes Jail Time For People Who Download DeepSeek
... and so the land of the free gets even more freedumb.
Jail time, really? (Score:2)