Key Points
- A senior researcher from the globally recognized Chinese AI firm DeepSeek expressed pessimism about AI’s long-term impact on society.
- He warned of significant job losses within 5-10 years and a “massive challenge” to society in 10-20 years.
- This was a rare public appearance for DeepSeek, which has kept a low profile since its breakout success in January.
- The Chinese government has championed DeepSeek as a symbol of its technological prowess amid U.S. sanctions.
The Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) developer DeepSeek made a rare public appearance this week, nearly a year after it became a global sensation. A senior researcher from the company told a government-organized internet conference that he is pessimistic about AI’s future impact on humanity.
Chen Deli spoke at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, alongside the CEOs of five other companies known collectively in China as the “six little dragons” of AI. When asked about DeepSeek’s global success, Chen said that while AI could be a great help to humans in the short term, it could threaten major job losses in 5-10 years as it becomes capable of taking over some human work.
“In the next 10-20 years, AI could take over the rest of the work (humans perform) and society could face a massive challenge, so at the time, tech companies need to take the role of ‘defender’,” he said. “I’m extremely positive about the technology, but I view the impact it could have on society negatively.”
DeepSeek made international headlines in January after releasing a low-cost AI model that outperformed leading U.S. models. Since then, the company has kept a very low profile. Its only other public appearance was when its founder and CEO, Liang Wenfeng, met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in February.
The Chinese government has since promoted DeepSeek as a symbol of the country’s technological strength and its ability to withstand U.S. sanctions. DeepSeek has also become a key player in China’s efforts to build its own AI ecosystem and boost its domestic chip industry. Chinese chip companies such as Cambricon and Huawei have developed hardware compatible with DeepSeek’s models.
While DeepSeek has not released a major model upgrade since January, it did unveil an “experimental” version of its V3 model in September, which is more efficient to train and better at processing long texts.
