China reportedly using DeepSeek AI model to support its military
The Chinese Army has reportedly started using DeepSeek's open-source artificial intelligence (AI) for non-combat support functions in what appears to be an experiment before expanding to high-risk areas.
DeepSeek, which paved the way for China to establish its dominance in the global AI ecosystem, is being used in hospitals run by the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
The AI's open-source large language models are also deployed in the People's Armed Police and national defence mobilisation organs, according to local reports.
The general hospital of the Chinese military's Central Theatre Command said it had authorised 'embedded deployment' of DeepSeek's AI model R1-70B LLM to provide treatment plan suggestions to support doctors, adding that all data was stored and processed on local servers.
Similarly, hospitals across China, including the military general hospital in Beijing, have incorporated DeepSeek within its electronic medical record (EMR) system for inpatients for diagnostic and treatment support, according to state media Global Times.
The use of DeepSeek's models in settings like hospitals and soldier training programmes offers the military a "controlled environment for experimentation", Sam Bresnick, a research fellow at Georgetown University's Centre for Security and Emerging Technology, told Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.
Deploying the AI models in non-combat roles, provides the PLA with an opportunity to address the technical and operational challenges before expanding into more sensitive, high-risk areas, he told the outlet. He said 'the emergence of an advanced model like DeepSeek's R1 might help" the PLA in using AI for military decision-making.
Deepseek's R1 model surpasses its rivals in several key metrics, outperforming OpenAI's ChatGPT – despite being built at a fraction of the cost.
The perceived better performance of DeepSeek's models has led US tech companies to lose $1 trillion in valuation, amid fears that Chinese AI could overtake those in Silicon Valley.
According to Chongqing Landship Information Technology, an autonomous driving solution provider, DeepSeek's AI has a massive potential to be used in the military for actions that range from controlling unmanned vehicles to giving commands.
"In military strategic planning, DeepSeek can conduct in-depth analysis of massive intelligence information and provide military commanders with accurate decision-making support,' it said in a white paper, according to Asia Times.
It added that the AI models can quickly identify key military targets from satellite images and estimate their sizes and numbers. Last month, the group said it deployed DeepSeek in a self-driving military vehicle called Xingji P60, which was displayed at the International Defence Exhibition and Conference in Abu Dhabi.
Besides the military, a growing number of cities in China have reportedly integrated DeepSeek's AI mode into government services to streamline repetitive tasks. Yuan Jiajun, the Communist Party chief of Chongqing in southwestern China, said his administration will deploy 'AI+' citywide.
Lawmakers from Shanghai and Guangdong aim to identify areas in their constituencies that could excel in AI, Bloomberg reported. The local administrations in Beijing and Shenzhen have set funds to nurture AI and robotics development.
DeepSeek was created in 2023, in the wake of excitement over other AI tools from companies such as ChatGPT. At that point, China was widely thought to be trailing behind US research and development of artificial intelligence.
Since its founding, however, DeepSeek has released a range of models that have helped increase confidence in the work coming from China. The startup has said that its more advanced models are on a par with those from OpenAI and Meta, while also being dramatically cheaper to use.
US president Donald Trump has praised the AI breakthrough as a "wake-up call" for American tech firms that ultimately "could be good" for the US.
AI models from ChatGPT to DeepSeek require advanced chips to power their training. The Biden administration has since 2021 widened the scope of bans designed to stop these chips from being exported to China and used to train Chinese firms' AI models.
However, DeepSeek researchers claim that the DeepSeek-V3 used Nvidia's H800 chips for training, spending less than $6m.
Although this detail has since been disputed, the claim that the chips used were less powerful than the most advanced Nvidia products Washington has sought to keep out of China, as well as the relatively cheap training costs, has prompted US tech executives to question the effectiveness of tech export controls.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
10 minutes ago
- The Independent
Bipartisan bill seeks to ban Chinese AI from federal agencies, as U.S. vows to win the AI race
A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Wednesday vowed to keep Chinese artificial intelligence systems out of federal agencies while pledging to ensure the U.S. will prevail against China in the global AI competition. 'We are in a new Cold War, and AI is the strategic technology at the center,' Rep. John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on China, said as he opened a hearing on the matter. 'The future balance of power may very well be determined by who leads in AI.' The hearing on Capitol Hill comes about five months after a Chinese technology start-up called DeekSeek introduced an AI model that rivaled platforms from OpenAI and Google in performance, but cost only a fraction to build. This raised concerns that China was catching up to U.S. despite restrictions on chips and other key technologies used to develop AI. The ever-tighter race is now a central part of the U.S.-China rivalry. And so much is at stake that the U.S. must win, witnesses told the congressional panel. The two countries are 'in a long-term techno-security competition that will determine the shape of the global political order for the coming years,' said Thomas Mahnken, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Jack Clark, co-founder and head of policy at Anthropic, told the committee that AI has built-in values. 'I know that AI systems are a reflection of the societies that are built from. AI built in democracies will lead to better technology for all of humanity. AI built in authoritarian nations will... be inescapably intertwined and imbued with authoritarianism,' Clark said. 'We must take decisive action to ensure America prevails.' Earlier this year, Chris Lehane, OpenAI's head of global affairs, told reporters in Paris that the U.S. and China were the only two countries in the world that could build AI at scale. The competition, which he described as one between democratic AI and autocratic AI, is 'very real and very serious,' and the stakes are 'enormous,' he said, for 'the global rails of AI will be built by one of those two countries.' The 2025 AI Index Report by Stanford University's Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence center has the U.S. in the lead in producing top AI models. But the report notes China is rapidly closing the performance gap, reaching near parity in 2024 on several major benchmarks. It also shows that China leads in AI publications and patents. At the hearing, Clark urged the lawmakers to maintain and strengthen export controls of advanced chips to China. 'This competition fundamentally runs on compute,' he said. The U.S. must control the flow of powerful chips to China, Clark said, 'or else you're giving them the tools they will need to build powerful AI to harm American interests.' Mark Beall, Jr., president of government affairs at The AI Policy Network, said there are 'a number of very glaring gaps' in the U.S. export controls that have allowed China to obtain controlled chips. Lawmakers earlier this year introduced a bill to track such chips to ensure they would not be diverted to the wrong hands. In another legislative step, Republican and Democratic lawmakers in both the House and the Senate on Wednesday introduced a bill to ban Chinese AI systems in the federal government. 'The U.S. must draw a hard line: hostile AI systems have no business operating inside our government,' Moolenaar said. The No Adversarial AI Act, as proposed, seeks to identify AI systems developed by foreign adversaries and ban their use in the U.S. government, with exceptions for use in research and counter terrorism.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Microsoft sued by authors over use of books in AI training
June 25 (Reuters) - Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab has been hit with a lawsuit by a group of authors who claim the company used their books without permission to train its Megatron artificial intelligence model. Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, Daniel Okrent and several others alleged that Microsoft used pirated digital versions of their books to teach its AI to respond to human prompts. Their lawsuit, opens new tab, filed in New York federal court on Tuesday, is one of several high-stakes cases brought by authors, news outlets and other copyright holders against tech companies including Meta Platforms, Anthropic and Microsoft-backed OpenAI over alleged misuse of their material in AI training. The complaint against Microsoft came a day after a California federal judge ruled that Anthropic made fair use under U.S. copyright law of authors' material to train its AI systems but may still be liable for pirating their books. It was the first U.S. decision on the legality of using copyrighted materials without permission for generative AI training. Spokespeople for Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. An attorney for the authors declined to comment. The writers alleged in the complaint that Microsoft used a collection of nearly 200,000 pirated books to train Megatron, an algorithm that gives text responses to user prompts. The complaint said Microsoft used the pirated dataset to create a "computer model that is not only built on the work of thousands of creators and authors, but also built to generate a wide range of expression that mimics the syntax, voice, and themes of the copyrighted works on which it was trained." Tech companies have argued that they make fair use of copyrighted material to create new, transformative content, and that being forced to pay copyright holders for their work could hamstring the burgeoning AI industry. The authors requested a court order blocking Microsoft's infringement and statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work that Microsoft allegedly misused.
Times
an hour ago
- Times
The joke is on Tesla as Skoda eclipses its electric car sales
Once the inspiration for an entire genre of jokes, Skoda has overtaken Tesla in European electric vehicle sales. The Czech-based company, now part of the Volkswagen group, sold 14,920 cars in May against Elon Musk's tally of 14,055, according to the market research firm DataForce. Skoda's haul was given a lift by the popularity of its £31,000 all-electric Elroq SUV range, which shifted 9,250 units in the month. Tesla's sales on the Continent, meanwhile, were down 28 per cent amid protests over Musk's tumultuous relationship with President Trump. Tesla Model Y review: 'An excellent car made even better' Separate figures from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association showed sales of Tesla fell for the fifth successive month in May, and are down 40 per cent year-on-year. That was despite a 25 per cent rise in the number of battery-electric vehicle registrations in the EU to 142,776. Plug-in hybrid sales leapt 46.9 per cent to 87,301 units. Sales across Volkswagen group rose 3.4 per cent, while BMW's registrations increased 5.6 per cent. Germany remained the largest adopter of battery-electric vehicles in the bloc, with 43,060 registered, up 44.9 per cent on the previous year. In France there was a decline: registrations fell to 19,414 from 23,892. • Business live: the latest news on companies, markets and the economy As buyers turned increasingly to cheaper alternatives, China's SAIC Motor enjoyed 18,716 sales in May — up from 13,562 last year — lifting its market share to 2 per cent. Its Chinese rival, BYD, outperformed it for the second month in a row, selling 3,025 units, according to separate figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. There are signs of strain at BYD, however. The world's largest EV manufacturer has scaled back production as it works through rising inventory levels in its home market, Reuters reported. Night shifts have been cancelled and output cut by at least a third of the capacity at some of its factories. The figures showed that in the five months to May, hybrid-electric cars remained the most popular choice of buyers in the European Union, taking 35.1 per cent of the market share, while petrol dropped to 28.6 per cent from 35.6 per cent last year.
