Day 1 (today is Monday) on the DeepSeek Stampede is nearing its end. It is already a historical day that anything "China" could have caused so much excitement (positive or negative) on a global scale. IIRC, it is a "first time" of its kind.
Day 2 (tomorrow is Tuesday) will be interesting, particularly the stock market movements. DeepSeek has opened a dialog or an argument on a subject that has profound impacts on stock markets as well as investment strategies. The dust has not settled yet. Since the Magnificent Seven are closely related to this event or phenomenon, stakes are literally sky high.
My views for the moment may include but not limited to:
(1) Hyperscalers are definitely being impacted.
The ball is on the OpenAI court, particularly with its pending o3 release, which now must outperform DeepSeek by a wide margin. Otherwise, the stampede may continue or even accelerate. Meta has also scheduled its Llama 4 release early this year, so Llama 4 performance versus DeepSeek is also very important under the current circumstance. Meta has setup 4 war rooms on DeepSeek as wildly reported. And I am so familiar with the notion of "war room" in software engineering that it definitely indicates Meta is treating DeepSeek deadly seriously.
(2) Small guys now have a chance.
Before DeepSeek V3 and R1, it was commonly pontificated or believed that only US Hyperscalers have the human and capital resources to lead this current AI trend. Releases of DeepSeek V3 and R1 with MIT license have shattered that myth. This aspect is for real and has profound consequences in generative AI eco-systems.
(3) It is feasible now that some form-factor of "AI in a box" can be produced with decent performance and at affordable price to the mass on a global scale. This will level the playing field dramatically in the months and years to come. Everyone can legitimately claim that a decent AI agent or engine is embedded in their products or services, frontend, backend, or any tier in between.
(4) I have already experienced productivity boost in my own programming activities. And I am pretty damn sure this DeepSeek stampede is becoming a true nightmare to many new CS students as well as new CS grads.
(5) Some technical accomplishments inside DeepSeek sources are really brilliant crazy scary stuff that somehow shake my belief in how soon AI will take over human jobs on a massive scale. In other words, those crazy people at DeepSeek are accelerating the day of reckoning and it ain't pretty.
Finally, I think, at this moment, we human civilization is officially entering the 4th industrial revolution, notwithstanding fusion viability. This AI sh*t is really becoming f*cking scary ......