When the news about DeepSeek-R1 broke, the AI world was quick to frame it as yet another flashpoint ... [ ] in the ongoing U.S.-China AI rivalry. But the real story, according to experts like Yann LeCun, is about the value of open source AI. (Photo by NICOLAS TUCAT/AFP via Getty Images)

DeepSeek-R1 — the AI model created by DeepSeek, a little known Chinese company, at a fraction of what it cost OpenAI to build its own models — has sent the AI industry into a frenzy for the last couple of days. When the news about DeepSeek-R1 broke, the AI world was quick to frame it as yet another flashpoint in the ongoing U.S.-China AI rivalry.

However, I argue that the real story isn’t about geopolitics, although there’s a strong geopolitical layer somewhere there. I believe that the real story is about the growing power of open-source AI and how it’s upending the traditional dominance of closed-source models — a line of thought that Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, also shares.

LeCun, a vocal proponent of open-source AI, recently wrote in a LinkedIn post: “To people who see the performance of DeepSeek and think: ‘China is surpassing the U.S. in AI.’ You are reading this wrong. The correct reading is: ‘Open-source models are surpassing proprietary ones.’”

While LeCun’s argument may seem simple, its message is far weightier than it appears on the surface: DeepSeek-R1 didn’t emerge from a vacuum. It built on the foundations of open-source research, leveraging previous advancements like Meta’s Llama models and the PyTorch ecosystem. DeepSeek’s remarkable success with its new AI model reinforces the notion that open-source AI is becoming more competitive with, and perhaps even surpassing, the closed, proprietary models of major technology firms.

Open-source AI, according to the Open Source Initiative, is “an AI system made available under terms and in a way that grants the freedom to use the system for any purpose and without having to ask for permission, study how the system works and inspect its components, modify the system for any purpose, including to change its........

© Forbes