Opinion Mint Quick Edit | An AI race shake-up spells an opportunity for India
Summary
- The Chinese launch of DeepSeek-V3, an artificial intelligence model, could spark a ‘reasoning’ race and alter the ratio of fixed and variable costs that will shape success. India must join this race.
DeepSeek-V3, a large language model (LLM) for artificial intelligence (AI) launched by a Chinese startup, has startled the world.
Its owner claims it cost under $6 million, a fraction of what American LLMs took to create.
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Since it’s a “reasoning" model, which involves an internal dialogue to spout answers, it could upturn the economics of the AI race. So far, success has required bearing high fixed costs on hardware and training, with relatively low variable costs on output generation.
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Such a ratio makes for a winner-takes-all market, since an early mover can maximize usage cheaply once its LLM is built. But if LLMs can be made at low cost and rivalry becomes a game of sharpening an edge on “reasoning", which consumes far more energy, then AI costs that vary by output would shape pricing trends and usage growth, making the lead taken by OpenAI and others easier to chase down.
The implication is clear.
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India should dive headlong into the LLM field and seek to minimize both its creation and usage costs. This will also offer the country a cushion for any tech-denial regime adopted by the US, which already has chip-export bars in place. Let’s treat this with due urgency.
