Earlier this week, DeepSeek, a well-funded Chinese AI lab, launched an “open” AI mannequin that beats many rivals on well-liked benchmarks. The mannequin, DeepSeek V3, is massive however environment friendly, dealing with text-based duties like coding and writing essays with ease.
It additionally appears to suppose it’s ChatGPT.
Posts on X — and TechCrunch’s personal assessments — present that DeepSeek V3 identifies itself as ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot platform. Asked to elaborate, DeepSeek V3 insists it’s a model of OpenAI’s GPT-4 mannequin launched in 2023.
This truly reproduces as of right now. In 5 out of 8 generations, DeepSeekV3 claims to be ChatGPT (v4), whereas claiming to be DeepSeekV3 solely 3 occasions.
Gives you a tough concept of a few of their coaching information distribution. pic.twitter.com/ptIByn0lcv
— Lucas Beyer (bl16) (@giffmana) December 27, 2024
The delusions run deep. If you ask DeepSeek V3 a query about DeepSeek’s API, it’ll offer you directions on how you can use OpenAI’s API. DeepSeek V3 even tells among the similar jokes as GPT-4 — all the way down to the punchlines.
So what’s occurring?
Models like ChatGPT and DeepSeek V3 are statistical techniques. Trained on billions of examples, they be taught patterns in these examples to make predictions — like how “to whom” in an e mail sometimes precedes “it could concern.”
DeepSeek hasn’t revealed a lot concerning the supply of DeepSeek V3’s coaching information. But there’s no scarcity of public datasets containing textual content generated by GPT-4 through ChatGPT. If DeepSeek V3 was skilled on these, the mannequin may’ve memorized a few of GPT-4’s outputs and is now regurgitating them verbatim.
“Obviously, the mannequin is seeing uncooked responses from ChatGPT sooner or later, but it surely’s not clear the place that’s,” Mike Cook, a analysis fellow at King’s College London specializing in AI, instructed TechCrunch. “It may very well be ‘unintentional’ … however sadly, we’ve got seen situations of individuals straight coaching their fashions on the outputs of different fashions to attempt to piggyback off their data.”
Cook famous that the observe of coaching fashions on outputs from rival AI techniques will be “very unhealthy” for mannequin high quality, as a result of it may well result in hallucinations and deceptive solutions just like the above. “Like taking a photocopy of a photocopy, we lose an increasing number of info and connection to actuality,” Cook mentioned.
It may additionally be in opposition to these techniques’ phrases of service.
OpenAI’s phrases prohibit customers of its merchandise, together with ChatGPT prospects, from utilizing outputs to develop fashions that compete with OpenAI’s personal.
OpenAI and DeepSeek didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted what seemed to be a dig at DeepSeek and different opponents on X Friday.
“It is (comparatively) simple to repeat one thing that you already know works,” Altman wrote. “It is extraordinarily arduous to do one thing new, dangerous, and tough whenever you don’t know if it is going to work.”
Granted, DeepSeek V3 is way from the primary mannequin to misidentify itself. Google’s Gemini and others generally declare to be competing fashions. For instance, prompted in Mandarin, Gemini says that it’s Chinese firm Baidu’s Wenxinyiyan chatbot.
And that’s as a result of the net, which is the place AI firms supply the majority of their coaching information, is turning into suffering from AI slop. Content farms are utilizing AI to create clickbait. Bots are flooding Reddit and X. By one estimate, 90% of the net may very well be AI-generated by 2026.
This “contamination,” if you’ll, has made it fairly tough to completely filter AI outputs from coaching datasets.
It’s definitely attainable that DeepSeek skilled DeepSeek V3 straight on ChatGPT-generated textual content. Google was as soon as accused of doing the identical, in any case.
Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist on the nonprofit AI Now Institute, mentioned the fee financial savings from “distilling” an present mannequin’s data will be enticing to builders, whatever the dangers.
“Even with web information now brimming with AI outputs, different fashions that might by chance practice on ChatGPT or GPT-4 outputs wouldn’t essentially reveal outputs harking back to OpenAI custom-made messages,” Khlaaf mentioned. “If it’s the case that DeepSeek carried out distillation partially utilizing OpenAI fashions, it will not be shocking.”
More doubtless, nevertheless, is that a number of ChatGPT/GPT-4 information made its approach into the DeepSeek V3 coaching set. That means the mannequin can’t be trusted to self-identify, for one. But what’s extra regarding is the chance that DeepSeek V3, by uncritically absorbing and iterating on GPT-4’s outputs, might exacerbate among the mannequin’s biases and flaws.
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