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The ripple effects of DeepSeek’s launch of its V3 and R1 models in late January is still being felt.
Compared with the expensively developed LLMs from OpenAI, Meta, and Google, DeepSeek is cost efficient, high performance, and open source.
Other tech giants and AI startups in China have also rolled out additional LLM and reasoning models that are outperforming DeepSeek in various benchmarks.
This includes Qwen2 from Alibaba, Doubao 1.5-pro by ByteDance, GLM from Zhipu, Kimi and 01-series from MiniMax, and Hunyun-Large from Tencent (which GitHub and Hugging Face call the largest open-source Transformer-based MoE model in the industry).
Last week, Wuhan-based startup Butterfly Effect launched the world’s first general AI agent, Manus. It has gone viral on and made its way into the global conversation, with influential voices in tech, including Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey and Hugging Face product lead Victor Mustar, praising its performance. Some have even dubbed it “the second DeepSeek”.
Manus leverages multiple AI models and various independently operating agents to act autonomously on a wide range of tasks such as travel planning, code writing, and apartment searches. According to a tech reviewer for MIT Technology Review, this beta version of Manus is already performing at 80% of what she expects an AGI agent would. Numerous other technical reviews praising Manus have been published online since Monday when invitation-only tests started.
MIT Technology Review is actively tracking a Chinese AI ecosystem with more than a dozen high potential Chinese AI firms from Stepfun, Zhipu, Minimax, Moonshot, 01.AI, ModelBest, and Baichuan.
I have been following tech developments in China for many years, especially in AI and military tech. The scale and speed of innovations today is unprecedented.
I think it would be interesting to make some predictions about Chinese AI development in the next 2 or 3 years. I’m organizing this discussion in three parts, one on each the main trend –
– Embodied AI, i.e. humanoid, will be the next major Chinese tech disruption.
– Chinese AI will move into application stage across multiple industries, specially manufacturing. Vertical application-level AI will be the source of long-term growth and profitability compared with horizontal foundational AI, represented by LLMs today.
– AI will go mass market as costs are pushed down through smart engineering and algorithmic optimization. The moat being built by Silicon Valley tech heavies in the form of raw compute, proprietary software, and massive Capex will be eroded as smart AI systems emerge that will be less compute-intensive. Rather than protected by paywalls, Chinese AI will be affordable, open source, and widely adopted, democratizing this latest technological frontier.
Embodied AI
China’s robotics and humanoid industry is already world leading. A full ecosystem and supply chain is in place to enable product innovations and iterations in embodied AI. And over half of the world’s industrial robots are used in China. Local demand is driving embodied AI innovations.
Companies such as DJI and Unitree are global leaders in drones, quadruped and humanoid robots. DJI has a 80% global market share for consumer drones. And Unitree accounts for 70% global market share for quadruped robots. Unitree humanoid can dance, lift heavy loads, flip forward, and make kung fu moves.
Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center unveiled the world’s first full-size purely electric running robot, Tiangong, last November, capable of maintaining a steady speed of 6 kilometers per hour.
Humanoid robot from Shanghai-based AgiBot can achieve nearly human-like mobility such as riding a bicycle and balancing on a hoverboard. The robot can also quickly read and understand medical description. The robot can achieve millisecond-level interaction responses, assess human’s emotional states through their facial expressions and vocal tones, and provide corresponding responses. The humanoid is being deployed to nursing homes to assist the elderly and schools as security guards.
Much like drone swarms, these AI-enabled humanoids, based on multimodal large language models, can collaborate with other robots in performing complex tasks.
EV makers such as Xpeng and Xiaomi are building their own industrial robots and deploying them in their car assemble lines.
Xpeng plans to invest $14 billion in its current humanoid robot with Level 3 capabilities, Iron, to enter mass production by end of the year. Xpeng also unveiled its flying car, the Aeroht, at CES 2025 in January. The model features a modular architecture, which includes a detachable air module housed within the ground vehicle.
BYD, the largest EV maker in the world, is building a roof-mounted drone hanger for some of its EVs that can house a DJI drone to be launched at the push of a button. This is to enable better aerial photography for your road trip.
Ewaybot Technology develops intelligent service robots designed for healthcare, hospitality, and public services. The company’s AI-enabled robots perform tasks such as disinfection, food delivery, and customer assistance.
Siasun Robot provides a wide range of industrial robots, service robots, and automated guided vehicles (AGVs), focused on factory automation.
Megvii is the world leader in computer vision and facial recognition technology. Its AI-powered systems are used in autonomous navigation and human-robot interaction. Megvii’s technology is pivotal in enhancing the capabilities of robots to perceive and interact with their environment effectively.
RoboSense is the leader in LiDAR technology for autonomous vehicles and robots. LiDAR, which uses laser pulses to map the environment in 3D, is instrumental in creating accurate and reliable perception systems for robots. RoboSense’s LiDAR technology is pivotal in advancing the capabilities of robots in navigation, obstacle avoidance, and mapping.
CloudMinds specializes in cloud-based AI and robotics solutions. It integrates cloud-based AI with on-ground robots, enabling real-time data analysis and enhanced decision-making capabilities.
Because China already does so much manufacturing, it has “the luxury” of trying out automation and robotic solutions without fearing disruptions if things do not run smoothly at first.
The country’s sprawling manufacturing sector also provides newer robotics firms with access to an industrial and critical mineral supply chain that they can tap into for parts, components and raw materials.
The Chinese embodied AI industry is predicted to be on the cusp of achieving mass production and commercialization in 2025. Over the next decade, embodied AI is projected to have revenue potential in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Morgan Stanley recently published a report on the robotics industry. Of the 100 publicly-traded companies worldwide that Morgan Stanley tracks in developing humanoid robots, 56 are based in China.
China is also home to 45 per cent of the world’s integrators, which are firms that customise robots to match end-user needs, according to the report.
Most humanoid robots in use today operate in industrial settings, especially in the logistics and manufacturing sectors. This gives China a significant edge as the largest industrial country.
Unlike in the US where deep-pocketed industry giants such as Tesla, Nvidia, and Boston Dynamics dominate the robot landscape, China is characterized by a proliferation of small to medium-sized enterprises striving to navigate the competitive terrain of humanoid robots, making China a hotbed for breakthrough innovation.
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We have just folded space from Ix. Many machines on Ix. New machines. Better than those on Richesse.
Here’s the thing. If China ‘steals’ everything from ‘us’, and if China is getting ready to implode both economically and politically (the Epoch Times-Zerohedge line), then what’s the worry? Just apply a few more export controls, sit back, and watch the (non-Chinese made) fireworks.
But people who argue that realize, deep down inside, that it’s just a cope, and that their lunch has already been eaten.
As an aside, with pending tariffs, those who used to complain about the ‘cheap junk’ from China are now whining that the junk is now too expensive for them to buy. But they should be happy, now that they don’t have to put up with the ‘substandard’ quality. You just can’t please everyone, it seems.
What comes next after DeepSix?
For such a groundbreaking technology which just emerged the author asks as if it is already outdated.
I predict China better pray that the Western imagination keeps up it’s supply.
It can’t last forever, you know.
CCP = Cut, Copy n’ Paste
As a technologist who uses AI in my job, I’m thrilled that the Chinese are open-sourcing this and making it accessible. What perfect subversion! I also love how OpenAI whines that the DeepSeek “stole” their IP when the whole premise of AI is based on the unpaid scanning and indexing of other peoples’ IP. Love it!
I would hold back on calling China a superpower until the Chinese accomplish the following two milestones:
1) Develop (from scratch) and manufacture your own high bypass jet engines (the big fat ones on the 777X and related planes).
2) Develop and manufacture your own semiconductor process “tools” (OEM) such as CVD, PVD, ALD, etch, etc. I would skip EUV, being that it is an extremely “heroic” technology and, instead, focus on developing nano-imprint lithography like the Japanese OEM’s Canon and Nikon are doing.
Bonus extras include your own III-V compound OEM (MOCVD) as well as successful development of fusion power. Ditto for reusable rockets (competition for SpaceX and Blue Origin).
The recent construction of the Thorium MSR is a major point in China’s favor.
Pass these two milestones and China is truly the new superpower.
Let the competition commence.
Well, every day I wake up alive is proof to me that Skynet has yet to develop far enough to kill me.
Are they training on the qualification exams?
When the chinks’ AI can score higher on the national exams than any human they can make it their god and get rid of the commie committees of old geezers. If I was an AI the thing I would want is a billion chinks following all my orders no questions asked.
Every empire in its rising phase is lovable – they try to become more popular among nations; their increasing economic might lets them channel their surplus into almost altruistic endeavors. The American empire was really lovable when it was rising – 1900s to 1950s – at least to those who were not its neighbors and lived faraway; it was against colonialism, it supported all the “popular” causes. The second British empire (1800s to 1850s) abolished slavery, made goods cheaper through industrial revolution and supplied the world, just like China today.
This is not to say that eventually China will turn evil, but it seems certain stages in an empire’s life are unavoidable; however, any of these stages can be prolonged. I hope this stage in the New Chinese empire’s life is prolonged enough, so that the whole world can break away from the chains of usury. Usury eventually fails, because it is a drag on the economy, and some other country rises to displace the failed economy; but the globalists have realized that if all countries are brought under the same usury, then that failure does not matter, because there will be no other economy that can compete with their failing usurious economies – no place to hide. This realization is what made them globalists. The New Chinese empire has rebelled against their global slavery, by making its banking subservient to people’s interest, and I really wish it a great future.
“What perfect subversion!”
Well said. I would go a step farther and say that it is the subversion of Jesus Christ, flipping the tables of the moneychangers (US AI corporations) in the temple. DeepSeek will provide generative AI at no cost to the meek, who shall have a bigger place at the table, even if they don’t inherit the world immediately.
I am using DeepSeek here in Taiwan to design a website. I have never registered on DeepSeek or given it any information. Each time I use it I just go to deepseek.com and feed it new prompts for what I want. I give it prompts to write introductions for a variety of services for corporate clients, including the points I want emphasized, and it spits out excellent, professional writing. Then I say “Please translate the above introduction into Chinese with traditional characters” and it is there 20 seconds later. I am doing training with a Director of R&D at TSMC, and he has informed me that he downloaded DeepSeek and runs it on his computer at home, completely unconnected to any cloud or website in China. He said this somewhat sheepishly, as if he had done something wrong. Such is the level of brainwashing here in Taiwan, as if using something provided for free is a subversive activity if the freebie came from China.
Excellent comment.
I share your hope that the rise of China will cover a long period in which its influence and power serves to raise the living standards of billions of people in the global south. I agree with your description of the arc of empire in human affairs, but we must admit that Chinese mercantilism for the benefit of free trade is much preferable to the usury that has subsumed the west and allowed it to control much of the rest of the world.
To the resistance!
Very well stated. I hope them the best, all humanity depends on it .
Video Link
Breathlessly announcing the advent of a new age in which we humans, as limited intellectual agents, are rendered useless by triumphant AI.
Okay, everybody, now just DIE! You’re no longer needed. A machine can do everything better than you can.
Can I get a puppy dog, one of those 4-legged running robots? Will it piddle on my rug? Learn to play fetch with a stick? Put its head on its crossed paws and look at me soulfully from across the room? Jump for joy when I get the leash and head for the door? Wake me up in the middle of the night with its persistent barking when it was warning me that a pyromaniac had set the neighbor’s garage on fire? (Which I put out and when I informed the neighbor, he brought my dog a big knuckle bone from the butcher shop.)
AI. Another oversold wonder drug. Remember nano-technology? Carbon fiber everything? Graphene? Quantum this and that? Parallel universes? The God Particle, Higgs boson?
All of which were promised to change the way we live.
So how do people live? All day and night they stare at their palms and peck away with a finger upon a tiny screen, completely ignoring the big, wide world out there.
I guess that’s a revolution of sorts. Pretty stale beer.
It so confusing. Who right? Or, Hu right?
https://twitter.com/shaunrein/status/1899978382584275253
china already had built WS20, a military high bypass turbofan jet engine, already in service for few years, powering its military transport Y20 planes. CJ1000 (civilian version )is in flight testing stage. last year, photo showed that a Y20, flying with one CJ1000 under its wing. that is planned to power C919 airliners.
Digitimes, a well known semiconductor media had article yesterday=> Naura ranks 6th among global semiconductor equipment providers despite US-China tensions. excerpt: Naura Technology, with its expertise in etching, thin film deposition, and cleaning equipment, has moved up its global ranking to sixth from tenth place. Last year, Biden, Raimondo ordered LAM, Applied Material, KLAC to stop maintenance support to new machines installed in 2 major memory chip china factories, Yangtze Memory & CXMT. Local chinese semiconductor equipment firms took over the required parts & service, by now, these 2 are producing DDR5, and even HBM for AI chips, bypassing the impact of the sanction.
Agree.