China's tech firm Alibaba release AI model
BEIJING:
Chinese tech company Alibaba on Wednesday released a new version of its Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence (AI) model that it claimed surpassed the highly acclaimed DeepSeek-V3.
The unusual timing of the Qwen 2.5-Max's release, on the first day of the Lunar New Year when most Chinese people are off work and with their families, points to the pressure Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's meteoric rise in the past three weeks has placed on not just overseas rivals, but also its domestic competition.
"Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms almost across the board GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3 and Llama-3.1-405B," Alibaba's cloud unit said in an announcement posted on its official WeChat account, referring to OpenAI and Meta's most advanced open-source AI models.
The January 10 release of DeepSeek's AI assistant, powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, as well as the Jan 20 release of its R1 model, has shocked Silicon Valley and caused tech shares to plunge, with the Chinese startup's purportedly low development and usage costs prompting investors to question huge spending plans by leading AI firms in the United States.
But DeepSeek's success has also led to a scramble among its domestic competitors to upgrade their own AI models.
Two days after the release of DeepSeek-R1, TikTok owner ByteDance released an update to its flagship AI model, which it claimed outperformed Microsoft-backed OpenAI's o1 in AIME, a benchmark test that measures how well AI models understand and respond to complex instructions.
This echoed DeepSeek's claim that its R1 model rivalled OpenAI's o1 on several performance benchmarks.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Recorder
8 hours ago
- Business Recorder
US Treasury's Bessent calls on China to be ‘reliable partner' in trade negotiations
WASHINGTON: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday called on China to uphold its commitments under an initial US trade agreement reached in Geneva last month, hours after he and other US and Chinese officials agreed on a new framework to implement the deal. Bessent said in testimony before the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee that China has a 'singular opportunity' to stabilize its economy by shifting away from excess manufacturing production for export to greater domestic consumption. Trump touts 'done' deal with Beijing on rare earths, Chinese students 'But the country needs to be a reliable partner in trade negotiations,' Bessent said in prepared remarks. 'If China will course-correct by upholding its end of the initial trade agreement we outlined in Geneva last month, then a big, beautiful rebalancing of the world's two largest economies is possible.' Bessent's testimony did not provide details of the framework agreed with China late on Tuesday after two days of negotiations in London. Bessent departed the talks early to return to Washington for the House hearing.
Business Recorder
8 hours ago
- Business Recorder
US stocks edge higher on trade progress, inflation data
NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks edged higher early Wednesday after US and Chinese officials touted progress on trade talks and US consumer inflation rose modestly. US President Donald Trump said 'our deal with China is done' after two days of talks in London, while noting in a social media post that provisions on rare earths and allowing Chinese students at US universities were subject to presidential approval. Meanwhile, the US consumer price index came in at 2.4 percent from a year ago after a 2.3 percent reading in April, a modest uptick that analysts said still did not fully reflect the impact from Trump's tariffs. About five minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was flat at 42,861.97. Wall St muted as investors track progress of US-China trade talks The broad-based S&P 500 rose less than 0.1 percent to 6,041.15, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.1 percent to 19,743.54. Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital Securities described the developments as good news for stocks, but added that the inflation figures will probably not alter the Federal Reserve's wait-and-see posture on monetary policy. 'I still don't think that today's inflation data will change the minds of the Fed to remain cautious,' Cardillo said.
Business Recorder
8 hours ago
- Business Recorder
Oil rises to 7-week high on US-China trade deal
LONDON: Oil prices rose to their highest in seven weeks on Wednesday as U.S. President Donald Trump said a deal had been done with China, heightening expectations of a de-escalation in trade tensions between the world's two largest economies. Brent crude futures were up $1.15, or 1.7%, to $68.02 a barrel at 1249 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was up $1.31, or 2%, to $66.29. At that level, WTI reached its highest in more than two months. Trump said Beijing would supply magnets and rare earth minerals and the U.S. will allow Chinese students in its colleges and universities. Trump added the deal is subject to final approval by him and President Xi Jinping. Oil up on hopes of positive US-China trade talks The trade-related downside risk in oil has been temporarily removed, although the market reaction has been tepid as it is not clear how economic growth and global oil demand will be affected, PVM analyst Tamas Varga said. Meanwhile, Trump said he was less confident that Iran would agree to stop uranium enrichment in a nuclear deal with Washington, according to an interview released on Wednesday. For its part, Iran threatened to strike U.S. bases in the Middle East if nuclear negotiations fail and conflict arises with the United States. Ongoing tension with Iran means its oil supplies are likely to remain curtailed by sanctions. Supplies will increase though as OPEC+ plans to increase oil production by 411,000 barrels per day in July as it looks to unwind production cuts for a fourth straight month. 'Greater oil demand within OPEC+ economies – most notably Saudi Arabia – could offset additional supply from the group over the coming months and support oil prices,' said Capital Economics' analyst Hamad Hussain in a note. In the U.S., consumer prices increased less than expected in May, deepening the conviction in financial markets that the Federal Reserve will start cutting interest-rate cuts by September. Lower interest rates can spur economic growth and demand for oil. Later on Wednesday, markets will focus on the weekly U.S. oil inventories report from the Energy Information Administration. U.S. crude oil stocks fell by 370,000 barrels last week, according to market sources who cited American Petroleum Institute figures on Tuesday.
