DeepSeek’s new open-source AI model can outperform o1 for a fraction of the cost

Open-source  synthetic intelligence (AI) has reached one other milestone — and the price variations it represents might shake up the trade.

On par with o1

On Monday, Chinese language AI lab DeepSeek introduced the discharge of R1, the complete model of its latest open-source reasoning mannequin, which the corporate launched in preview in November. The corporate famous that R1 beats or is on par with OpenAI’s o1 in a number of math, coding, and reasoning benchmarks.

Much like o1, R1’s reasoning takes extra time to reply than different fashions, however its queries are supposed to be extra refined and correct. Alongside the 671-billion-parameter mannequin, DeepSeek additionally launched six smaller “distilled” variations with as few as 1.5 billion parameters, which will be run on an area system.

“Pushing the boundaries of **open AI**!” DeepSeek teased within the thread.

DeepSeek’s launch marks a promising development in open-source reasoning fashions. Simply over per week in the past, UC Berkeley researchers succeeded in creating an open-source mannequin on par with o1-preview. It solely took them 19 hours and about $450 in compute prices.

Pricing

R1’s pricing construction is equally poised to provide OpenAI a run for its cash. API entry begins at simply $0.14 for 1,000,000 tokens (about 750,000 phrases analyzed) — a fraction of the $7.50 OpenAI prices for the equal tier. OpenAI is presently providing limitless entry to o1 for $2,400 a yr by way of ChatGPT Professional.

That a number of labs are more and more in a position to construct fashions with capabilities akin to OpenAI’s proves aggressive AI does not need to be prohibitively costly. Each DeepSeek and UC Berkeley making strides within the open-source AI — and releasing their coaching strategies — attracts consideration to OpenAI’s long-forgotten unique mission (although the corporate’s ironic identify persists).

Limitations

R1 does have some limitations, nonetheless. Fashions made by Chinese language corporations are topic to sure censors by the Chinese language authorities, which means whereas their talents are comparable, there are specific queries R1 could merely not reply in comparison with o1. When examined by ZDNET’s Tiernan Ray, R1-preview struggled to obviously present its chain of thought when put next with o1-preview, hanging Ray as “baffling and tedious in methods o1 will not be.”

For the time being, OpenAI is making ready to launch its next-gen mannequin, o3. Customers can entry R1 by way of an MIT license, chat with the mannequin at chat.deepseek.com, and take a look at the API.