OpenAI's Sam Altman breaks silence on DeepSeek, the Chinese startup that shook Silicon Valley

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has broken his silence on the Chinese startup DeepSeek that sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley when it released its AI model R1.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has broken his silence on the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek that sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley last week when it released its open-source AI model, DeepSeek R1. Altman, whose company OpenAI ignited the artificial intelligence revolution with the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, acknowledged that R1 is an “impressive model” in an X post shared this morning.

FILE PHOTO: Sam Altman, CEO of Microsoft-backed OpenAI and ChatGPT creator takes part in a talk at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv, Israel June 5, 2023. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo(REUTERS)

Sam Altman on DeepSeek

“DeepSeek's R1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they're able to deliver for the price,” the CEO of OpenAI wrote, adding that it was invigorating to have a competitor. He also expressed confidence in his AI startup’s ability to deliver better models.

“We will obviously deliver much better models and also it's legit invigorating to have a new competitor!” Altman said. He hinted that OpenAI would reshuffle its planned releases to keep up with market demands, but ultimately keep its focus on its research roadmap to AGI or artificial general intelligence, a type of artificial intelligence that matches or surpasses human cognitive capabilities.

“We will pull up some releases. But mostly we are excited to continue to execute on our research roadmap and believe more compute is more important now than ever before to succeed at our mission,” said the CEO of OpenAI, suggesting that increased compute power would be critical in OpenAI maintaining its edge in the AI race.

Altman concluded his post by saying that the world will need a lot of AI and people are going to be “amazed” by the next generation of AI models.

“Look forward to bringing you all AGI and beyond,” he said, reiterating OpenAI’s founding mission of creating AGI.

It was just a few days ago that Altman had said that his startup had not yet built AGI - AI systems that are generally smarter than humans. AGI is a theoretical concept that is still being researched and developed. However, in a blog post on January 6, Altman had said that OpenAI knows how to build AGI and would deploy it in 2025.