What does Deepseek mean for Open Source Models and American innovation?

My technically curious dad just asked if Deepseek is a game changer. It's a fair question that gets at the heart of what's happening in AI right now.

What's Really Going On

Deepseek is good. They've built the best open-source model out there. But it's not a game changer. It's another step forward in an ongoing race.

What Deepseek really does is force everyone else to move faster. Facebook hasn't released a new version of Llama in a while (in AI timelines), and they're probably working on one now. It does prove China can & will compete in this space. America needs to win the race, but that's what we do best.

The Compute Reality

There's another angle here: compute power. I pay for OpenAI's $200/month model, and it's definitely better than the rest (today). They might be able to ignore open source competition by running models so expensive that only economies of scale make them possible.

You're not running anything close to that locally. Even with access to the model, the computational requirements make it impractical. You can try to reduce costs, but the economics create a natural barrier to entry.

Looking Forward

The race is heating up. Open source models are the future. But there's a world where the real differentiator is compute power. The high-end capabilities might stay with big players simply because of the infrastructure required.

Deepseek isn't changing the game, but it's making it more competitive. We need more players pushing each other to build better models. The winners will be the ones who can balance innovation with computational power. That competition drives progress, bringing us closer to more capable, accessible AI systems.