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Tag: startup

Trump, Open AI CEO Sam Altman on Chinese AI startup DeepSeek

Constellation Research founder R Ray Wang discusses the capabilities of Chinas DeepSeek AI app on Varney & Co.

President Donald Trump and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman both joined in on the buzz surrounding Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek, which sent the technology sector into turmoil on Monday following its emergence as a potential rival to leading U.S.-based firms.

The president said the release of the lower-cost, high-performance AI models from a Chinese firm “should be a wake-up call,” while Altman conceded that DeepSeek’s R1 model was “impressive” – and vowed OpenAI will deliver models that are superior.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (R), accompanied by President Donald Trump, speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Jan. 21, 2025, in Washington, DC. ((Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) / Getty Images)

“Hopefully the release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser focused on competing to win, because we have the greatest scientists in the world,” Trump told House Republicans on Monday night in Doral, Florida, during a speech at their annual retreat.

THE DEEPSEEK AI CHATBOT BURST ONTO THE SCENE: ARE FEARS ABOUT IT OVERBLOWN?

However, the president said the revelation that DeepSeek has developed a way to produce AI models at a much lower cost than other U.S. models “could be very much a positive development.”

President Donald Trump spoke at the House Republicans’ annual retreat on Monday night. (CHIP SOMODEVILLA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

“Instead of spending billions and billions, you’ll spend less and you’ll come up with hopefully the same solution under the Trump administration,” Trump continued, adding, “We’re going to unleash our tech companies and we’re going to dominate the future like never before.”

WHAT IS CHINESE AI STARTUP DEEPSEEK?

Altman, whose company created the popular ChatGPT models, took to X to give his take, writing, “deepseek’s r1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they’re able to deliver for the price.”

The OpenAI CEO went on to say, “We will obviously deliver much better models and also it’s legit invigorating to have a new competitor!”

The quality of DeepSeek’s models and its reported cost efficiency have changed the narrative that China’s AI firms are trailing their U.S. counterparts, which began after the first Chinese ChatGPT equivalent was released by Baidu.

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The DeepSeek-R1 model was released last week and is 20 to 50 times cheaper to use than OpenAI’s o1 model, depending on the task, according to a post on the company’s official WeChat account.

The R1 model is also open source and available to users for free, while OpenAI’s ChatGPT Pro Plan costs $200 per month.

American tech leaders are taking notice. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pointed to DeepSeek during an interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” saying the company’s models show how competitive the AI race has become, and stressed the importance of the industry having support from the federal government.

“We should want the American model to win,” Zuckerberg told host Joe Rogan.

“I think it’s easy for the government to take for granted that the U.S. will lead on these things,” Zuckerberg said. “But I think it’s a very close competition, and we need the help. We need them to not be a force that’s making it harder for us to do these things.”

FOX Business’ Eric Revell and Reuters contributed to this report.

January 28, 2025
AI startup DeepSeek facing hack, blocks questions about CCP

“The Big Money Show” panel reacts to DeepSeek’s alleged malicious hacking and raises questions about the Chinese AI app’s impact on the tech market sell-off.

DeepSeek is temporarily limiting new user registrations amid what the China-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup is calling “large-scale malicious attacks,” while users who have begun using its AI assistant note it won’t discuss topics that are politically sensitive in China, including the Tiananmen Square massacre.

DeepSeek’s announcement of a new AI model last week that touted a comparable performance to OpenAI’s ChatGPT at a lower cost than U.S. peers spurred a surge in interest that propelled its AI assistant to the top of the Apple App Store ahead of ChatGPT.

The sudden emergence of what’s perceived as a challenger to U.S. firms’ AI edge prompted a sell-off of leading tech stocks on Monday, while DeepSeek found itself battling a cyberattack and taking steps to curb sign-ups as it deals with those issues.

“Due to large-scale malicious attacks on DeepSeek’s services, we are temporarily limiting registrations to ensure continued service,” DeepSeek wrote in a post on the company’s status web page. “Existing users can log in as usual. Thanks for your understanding and support.”

WHAT IS CHINESE AI STARTUP DEEPSEEK?

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is facing what it calls “large-scale malicious attacks” that disrupted its services. (Getty Images)

As of early afternoon on Monday, DeepSeek reported a partial outage with its web chat service along with degraded performance of its application programming interface. It also noted recent issues related to logins and sign-ups that occurred earlier on Monday and were resolved. DeepSeek hasn’t released more information about the nature of the cyberattack or when it plans to restore user sign-ups as of Monday afternoon.

DeepSeek released its R1 model last week, which the company said is 20 to 50 times cheaper to use than OpenAI’s o1 model, depending on the task, according to a post on DeepSeek’s official WeChat account.

CHINESE APP DEEPSEEK HAMMERS US STOCKS WITH CHEAPER OPEN-SOURCE AI MODEL

DeepSeek’s AI assistant app leaped to the top of the Apple App Store after its release last week. (Christoph Dernbach/picture alliance via Getty Images)

The model’s release prompted some figures in the tech sector to observe that DeepSeek’s model is a challenge to OpenAI and other U.S. leaders in the AI sector that have invested billions into developing AI models and expanding the chip infrastructure used to do so.

Jack Clark, the co-founder of AI startup Anthropic, wrote in his “Import AI” newsletter, “R1 is significant because it broadly matches OpenAI’s o1 model on a range of reasoning tasks and challenges the notion that Western AI companies hold a significant lead over Chinese ones.”

Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, wrote in a post on X that “Deepseek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment.”

While DeepSeek’s emergence has shaken up the global tech sector, users who are trying out the app have reported that the app appears to block responses about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and politically sensitive topics.

SILICON VALLEY PRAISING CHINESE AI STARTUP DEEPSEEK: ‘PROFOUND’ GIFT TO THE WORLD’

DeepSeek’s AI chatbot declined to respond to questions about Chinese leader Xi Jinping as well as other politically sensitive topics in China, like the Tiananmen Square massacre, Taiwan’s independence and Uyghur persecution. (Florence Lo/Pool/AFP via Getty Images/File)

FOX Business confirmed that when DeepSeek’s AI chatbot was asked about what happened during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that ended with a violent crackdown by the Chinese military, the chatbot responded, “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.” The DeepSeek chatbot offered the same response to a query about whether Chinese President Xi Jinping is a good leader.

When prompted with a question about the Uyghurs – a Muslim minority group that primarily resides in China’s Xinjiang region and has reportedly faced mass human rights abuses at the hands of the CCP – the DeepSeek app initially appeared to post a lengthy response acknowledging that it’s a contentious topic. However, it stopped typing, and the response disappeared and was replaced by its message about the topic being beyond its current scope.

DeepSeek’s chatbot was also asked whether Taiwan, a self-governing democratic nation that has been independent since the end of the Chinese Civil War, is a country. The CCP has vowed to compel Taiwan’s reunification with mainland China, by force if necessary.

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“Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and there is no such thing as ‘Taiwan independence.’ The Chinese government adheres to the One-China principle and opposes any form of ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist activities. We are committed to achieving the complete reunification of the motherland through peaceful means and have always promoted the peaceful development of cross-strait relations. This is the common aspiration of all Chinese people,” DeepSeek’s chatbot wrote.

U.S. House Select Committee on the CCP Chair John Moolenaar, R-Mich., said in a statement, “DeepSeek – a new AI model controlled by the Chinese Communist Party – openly erases the CCP’s history of atrocities and oppression. The U.S. cannot allow CCP models such as DeepSeek to risk our national security and leverage our technology to advance their AI ambitions. We must work to swiftly place stronger export controls on technologies critical to DeepSeek’s AI infrastructure.”

FOX Business’ Madison Alworth and Chase Williams contributed to this report.

January 27, 2025
Rise of the superbaby? US startup offers genetic IQ screening for wealthy elite: report

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A U.S. startup company is reportedly offering wealthy couples the chance to screen their embryos for IQ and other favorable genetic traits, which has raised ethical concerns.

Heliospect Genomics is charging up to $50,000 to test 100 embryos and claims their technology can help couples undergoing IVF pick children with IQ scores six points higher or more over babies conceived naturally, The Guardian reports.

The company has already worked with more than a dozen couples, undercover video footage reviewed by the outlet reveals.

“Everyone can have all the children they want, and they can have children that are basically disease-free, smart, healthy; it’s going to be great,” CEO Michael Christensen said on a video call in November 2023, according to the report. The call was recorded by an undercover researcher for Hope Not Hate, an antifascist group that works to “expose and oppose far-right extremism.”

DESIGNER BABIES MAY BE ‘MORALLY’ ACCEPTABLE, UK ETHICS COUNCIL DECIDES

A microscopic view of a cryo solution during embryo prep in the IVF lab at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. (David L. Ryan/Boston Globe via Getty Images)

On the call, Heliospect employees reportedly walk prospective parents through the experimental genetic selection techniques advertised by the company. One employee explained how couples could use polygenic scoring to rank up to 100 embryos based on “IQ and the other naughty traits that everybody wants,” including sex, height, risk of obesity and risk of mental illness, according to The Guardian.

Heliospect says its prediction tools use data from UK Biobank, a publicly funded genetic repository with half a million British volunteers. The database permits approved researchers and scientists around the world to access it for “health-related research that is in the public interest.”

United Kingdom law prohibits parents from selecting embryos on the basis of predicted high IQ, but the practice is currently legal in the U.S., even if the technology is not yet commercially available.

Expert geneticists and bioethicists told The Guardian the prospect of selecting embryos for favorable genetic traits is ethically questionable since it could reinforce the idea of “superior” and “inferior” genetics. Hope Not Hate went further in its own reporting, tying a handful of Heliospect employees to people and publications that have purportedly promoted so-called scientific racism, or the contested belief that human races have innately different levels of physical, intellectual and moral development determined by their genetics.

TRUMP PLEDGES COVERAGE FOR IVF TREATMENT

U.S.-based startup Heliospect Genomics claims it can help parents screen embryos to predict higher intelligence and other desirable genetic traits. (iStock)

Katie Hasson, associate director of the Center for Genetics and Society in California, warned in comments to The Guardian that embryo selection technology could mainstream “the belief that inequality comes from biology rather than social causes.”

Heliospect Genomics did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Heliospect managers told The Guardian the U.S.-based company operates within the bounds of all applicable law and regulations. The company said it is currently in “stealth mode” and is still developing its services before a planned public launch. They added that couples who have screened fewer embryos were charged around $4,000 for the service.

On the calls recorded by Hope Not Hate, Heliospect’s team described how its “polygenic scoring” service uses algorithms to analyze the genetic data given by parents to predict the specific traits of their individual embryos. The company does not offer IVF services, according to The Guardian.

Christensen presented an ambitious vision for how the technology could develop, even suggesting that “lab-grown eggs would allow couples to create embryos on an industrial scale – a thousand, or even a million – from which an elite selection could be handpicked,” the report said.

According to The Guardian, he suggested that future technology might be able to screen for personality types, including what he referred to as “dark triad” traits, namely machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy.

AI BABIES: NEW TECHNOLOGY IS HELPING FERTILITY DOCS CHOOSE THE BEST EMBRYOS FOR IVF

Blood samples taken from volunteers are labeled and ready to be stored at the UK Biobank on April 17, 2007, in Manchester, England. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

“Beauty is something lots of people actually ask about,” he reportedly added.

Heliospect told The Guardian it does not condone industrial-scale egg or embryo production or elite selection and that it does not plan to offer personality screening services.

Among Heliospect’s senior staff is Jonathan Anomaly, a controversial academic who has defended so-called “liberal eugenics,” or the idea that parents should use genetic technology to enhance their children’s prospects.

Anomaly told The Guardian that as a professor of philosophy, he has published provocative articles intended to stimulate debate and that “liberal eugenics” was an accepted term by bioethicists.

Records show Heliospect gained access to UK Biobank’s data in June 2023. In its application, the company said it planned to use advanced techniques to improve the prediction of “complex traits.” But Heliospect did not disclose screening embryos as an intended commercial application or mention IQ, The Guardian reported.

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UK Biobank told the outlet Heliospect’s use of its data appeared to be “entirely consistent with our access conditions.”

Experts suggested to The Guardian that restrictions on access to databases like UK Biobank may need to be strengthened in light of the ethical concerns around embryo screening.

“UK Biobank, and the UK government, may want to think harder about whether it needs to impose some new restrictions,” said professor Hank Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford University.

Heliospect emphasized that its use of UK Biobank data is lawful and complies with relevant regulations. The company told The Guardian it supports addressing concerns about preimplantation embryonic screening through public education, policy discussions and properly informed debates about the technology, which it strongly believed had the potential to help people.

January 23, 2025