For many Chinese, Deepseek's success is a victory for the Chinese education system, proving that it equals or exceeds American education.
According to the company's founder, the core team of developers and scientists behind Deepseek, a Chinese startup that shook the world of AI, all attended universities in China. This contrasts with many Chinese tech companies, and has often sought for educated talent overseas.
Just as Chinese commenters were shocking Americans online responses, some pointed to the number of doctorates of science degrees China produces each year. “The success of Deepseek proves that our education is amazing,” read the headline of one blog post.
The praise has also been poured from overseas. Pavel Durov, founder of messaging platform Telegram, said last month that fierce competition in Chinese schools has driven the country's success in artificial intelligence. “If the US does not reform its education system, there is a risk that it will pass technology leadership to China,” he wrote online.
The reality is more complicated. Yes, China has invested heavily in education, particularly science and technology. This helped to develop a key pool of talent that will be key to our ambitions to become a global leader in AI by 2025.
But outside the classroom, those alumni must also counter the obstacles that crush the corporate culture and the political whims of the ruling Communist Party. Under current top leader Xi Jinping, the party is stressing control rather than economic growth, and is trying to crack down on high-tech companies that appear to be too influential.
Deepseek was able to avoid many of these pressures. This is part of how it was inconspicuous and its founder declared a commitment to intellectual exploration rather than a quick profit. However, we still don't know how long we can continue doing that.
“In China, there are many young, energetic and talented researchers and engineers. “Yiran Chen, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University, said: “But the constraints are It's really from the other parts.”
For many in China, the strength of its education system is closely tied to the country's global status. The government has invested heavily in higher education, and the number of university graduates who have once been tiny and have grown more than 14 times over the past 20 years is invested annually. Currently, several Chinese universities are ranked among the best in the world. Still, for decades, China's best and brightest students have gone abroad, with many remaining there.
With some metrics, it's starting to change.
China produced more than four times the US STEM alumni in 2020. AI in particular has added more than 2,300 undergraduate programs since 2018, according to a study by Macropolo, a Chicago-based research group studying China.
By 2022, almost half of the world's top AI researchers came from undergraduate institutions in China, in contrast to about 18% of American researchers, Macropolo discovered. And while most of these top researchers still work in the US, the number is increasing in China.
“You've been kicking out all of this talent over the last few years. Damien MA, founder of Macropolo, said:
Washington also cites national security concerns, making it difficult for Chinese students in certain fields, including AI, to obtain a visa to the US.
“If they're going abroad, they're going to start a few companies,” or they'll work for the Chinese,” Ma said.
Some people criticize China's education system for being overly exam-oriented and holding its breath to creativity and innovation. The expansion of AI education in China is uneven, and not all programs produce top-notch talent, Ma acknowledged. However, top Chinese schools such as Tingryu University and Peking University are world class. Many of Deepseek's employees studied there.
The Chinese government has also helped to promote more robust relations between academia and businesses than in the West, said Marina Chang, a professor at Sydney Institute of Technology, who studies China's innovation. It poured money into research projects and encouraged scholars to contribute to national AI initiatives.
However, government involvement is also one of the biggest potential threats to China's innovation.
Beijing congratulated the AI sector. But in 2020, it launched a bullet into the Chinese technology industry for years and years after deeming too little control over a major company like Alibaba. (Deepseek founder Liang Wenfeng has been pivoted to AI from his previous focus on speculative trading.
The resulting layoffs in high-tech companies, coupled with the uncertainty of the future of the sector, helped to reduce the appeal of the sector, which once attracted many of China's top students. Instead, a record number of young people chose to compete for low-paid but stable civil servant jobs.
Yang Bo Wang, a professor at the University of Hong Kong who studies technological entrepreneurship in China, says AI has so far been somewhat blocked from brain drainage. He added that he expects a more successful Chinese AI startup to appear soon, with young people driving. However, if Beijing has been more tolerant of major tech companies in recent years, it is impossible to say what the Chinese AI landscape will look like, he added.
“China's long-term AI competitiveness depends not only on the STEM education system, but also on the handling of private investors, entrepreneurs and for-profit companies,” he added.
Even within private companies, employees often have to compete with a focus on rapid outcomes. It leads to widely accepted stereotypes, including within China, where Chinese engineers are better at improving innovations in others than coming up with their own.
Liang, founder of Deepseek, said last year that “the talent of China's top talent is underestimated.” At the social level, hardcore innovations are rare and therefore have no opportunity to be recognized. ”
Deepseek's success may depend on how it shared their strengths, as well as how it differs from other Chinese tech companies. Funded by profits from a parent hedge fund. And Leann explains the hiring of humanities in addition to computer scientists, with the spirit of fostering the intellectual atmosphere of the free circle.
Since the successful Deepseek breakout, some voices have urged more Chinese companies to emulate their models. Online commentary from the Z Jiang Province Communist Party Committee, where Deepseek is headquartered, declared the need to “trust young talent” and declared that large companies would “have stronger control over innovation resources.”
But the best way for China to leverage its highly educated, ambitious AI workforce is to let the government get out of the way.
“Innovation requires no intervention and management as much as possible,” Lean said in a separate interview. “Innovation often arises in itself, not as intentionally planned.
Siyi Zhao contributed to the research.
