About DeepSeek AI

Todd Mitchell, Mitchell Creative Group, LLC

DeepSeek is a Chinese artificial intelligence (or AI) company that develops open source, large language models (LLMs).

An LLM stands for "Large Language Model," which is a type of artificial intelligence that can generate human-like text, translate languages, answer questions, and perform other natural language processing tasks by being trained on massive amounts of text data; essentially, it's a complex algorithm that learns patterns in language to understand and respond in a way similar to humans.

DeepSeek is comparable to Open AI’s Chat GPT, only mentioned here because ChatGPT has been leading the charge in LLM models. There are many other AI platforms that work much better for different and unique niche reasons.

DeepSeek makes its generative artificial intelligence algorithms, models, and training details open-source, allowing its code to be freely available for use, modification, viewing, and designing documents for building purposes.

ChatGPT is NOT open source; it is a closed-source model developed by OpenAI, meaning the underlying code and training data are not publicly available for modification or access by the general public.

OpenAI has chosen to keep ChatGPT closed source to control its usage and mitigate potential risks associated with sharing the technology widely. Whereas open source AI models allow for greater transparency, customization, and community collaboration.

DeepSeek AI chatbot is developed entirely by Chinese software engineers, whereas AI models established in Silicon Valley in the United States, are created by people of various nationalities.

DeepSeek claims to be far less expensive and requires much fewer resources and power than Chat GPT and others.

Censorship

Some concerns over DeepSeek include censorship, mechanisms for topics that are considered politically sensitive for example that will be refused answer. For example, information regarding Taiwan, or most items pertaining to Chinese governments or history are all screened and censored—but there are many other censorship examples.

Fairly, ChatGPT uses automated content moderation to filter out inappropriate or dangerous content. This includes topics like violence, sexuality, and hate speech. So be aware that most all applications, AI engines and the like employ some kind of filtering. To what extent remains to be seen.

Security and privacy

There are also fears that the DeepSeek AI system could be used for foreign influence operations, spreading disinformation, surveillance and the development of cyberweapons for the government of the People's Republic of China.

DeepSeek's privacy terms and conditions say "We store the information we collect in secure servers located in the People's Republic of China... We may collect your text or audio input, prompt, uploaded files, feedback, chat history, or other content that you provide to our model and Services". Although their data storage and collection policy is consistent with ChatGPT's (and others) privacy policy, who also stores there’s domestically in the US.

For ANY openly available AI model, with a web or app interface, including but not limited to DeepSeek, the prompts, or questions that are asked of the AI, then become available to the makers of that model, as are the answers. No matter where. So, anyone working on confidential or national security areas needs to be aware of those risks.

No matter what, I typically consider any new tool, application, website or otherwise as a “potential.” Until I review it, carefully inspect it, research it, and analyze it which includes trying it out safely—that ultimately allows me to determine what works for me or my businesses or associates. It’s often subjective, and about practicality, meaning it’s not just some cool new toy—rather, something that provides value to my personal or professional life.

I encourage everyone to be skeptical about everything online. Period. Be very mindful, cautious, and non-reactive to all things digital. There’s a lot of good you can get out of it, but a lot of danger out there—to you, and to others. We simply need to be mindful of that and tread carefully. And THEN, use those items confidently and regularly to help you achieve whatever goals you have in using those things.

And remember, regardless of any application, software or tool, you always want to keep it up-to-date, you always want to keep an eye on it and make sure you're being safe and not giving away proprietary information to anyone or anything. We should always be very careful and mindful of this no matter what we use.

Pro tip: Try not to un mindfully jump to every single application out there, especially with AI. Once any of your information is out there, it's out there for good. And just because there's some claim to a new clever application or tool remember that there's a lot of that out there and that the job of a marketer and advertiser is to make it look and sound impressive but that doesn't mean it's something we should do. There was a time when cigarettes were marketed as a healthy lifestyle, and where the classic snake oil salesperson—which still exist sells just about anything to anyone for the almighty dollar. The point is there are millions of things out there and AI will be growing exponentially so think before you jump on that bandwagon be very mindful.

So when it comes to AI, I encourage you to really stop and think about what you're using, why you're using it, and how you're using it. And try to think of the opposite. How they, the owners, are using your information.

Otherwise, a lot of technology is wonderful! It's the carousel of progress and we should all be able to enjoy that incredible ride together. And keeping each other safe, and growing together!

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Todd Mitchell is Creative Director and owner at Mitchell Creative Group, LLC. He is a creative entrepreneur with over 30 years of leading professional experience building brands and growing businesses all over the world; developing marketing plans, authoring content and developing award-winning and compelling print and online media through practical brand consulting and solutions. His proven success ranges from enterprise business to startups. Please visit https://www.mitchellcreativegroup.com