Newsletter Archives

• What do we know about DeepSeek?

  Posted on February 17, 2025 at 02:44 CST by Michael Covington • Comment in the Forums

  AI

  

  By Michael A. Covington

  On January 27, the Chinese AI company DeepSeek caused so much panic in American industry that NVIDIA stock dropped 17% in one day, and the whole Nasdaq had a 3.4% momentary dip.

  What scared everybody? The impressive performance of the DeepSeek large language model (LLM), which competes with ChatGPT, reportedly cost less than a tenth as much to create and costs less than a tenth as much to run.

  The bottom fell out of the market for powerful GPUs, at least temporarily, because they don’t seem to be needed in anywhere near the quantities expected.

  But what is this DeepSeek, and what do we make of it?

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.07.0, 2025-02-17).

  AI AI, Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, Llama, LLMs, Microsoft, Newsletters, OpenAI

• Where did the rest of AI go?

  Posted on January 20, 2025 at 02:42 CST by Michael Covington • Comment in the Forums

  AI

  

  By Michael A. Covington

  The term “artificial intelligence” goes back to the 1950s and defines a broad field.

  The leading academic AI textbook, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig — reportedly used at 1,500 colleges — mentions generative neural networks in only two of its 29 chapters.

  Admittedly, that book dates from 2021; although it hasn’t been replaced, maybe it predates the revolution. Newer AI books are mostly about how to get results using off-the-shelf generative systems. Is it time for the rest of AI to die out? I don’t think so.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.03.0, 2025-01-20).

  AI AI, Alan Turing, Artificial Intelligence, ELIZA, Generative AI, LLMs, Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Newsletters, Turing Test