Lex Fridman Podcast
#459 – DeepSeek, China, OpenAI, NVIDIA, xAI, TSMC, Stargate, and AI Megaclusters
Mon, 03 Feb 2025
Dylan Patel is the founder of SemiAnalysis, a research & analysis company specializing in semiconductors, GPUs, CPUs, and AI hardware. Nathan Lambert is a research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) and the author of a blog on AI called Interconnects. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep459-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/deepseek-dylan-patel-nathan-lambert-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Dylan's X: https://x.com/dylan522p SemiAnalysis: https://semianalysis.com/ Nathan's X: https://x.com/natolambert Nathan's Blog: https://www.interconnects.ai/ Nathan's Podcast: https://www.interconnects.ai/podcast Nathan's Website: https://www.natolambert.com/ Nathan's YouTube: https://youtube.com/@natolambert Nathan's Book: https://rlhfbook.com/ SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: Invideo AI: AI video generator. Go to https://invideo.io/i/lexpod GitHub: Developer platform and AI code editor. Go to https://gh.io/copilot Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex NetSuite: Business management software. Go to http://netsuite.com/lex AG1: All-in-one daily nutrition drinks. Go to https://drinkag1.com/lex OUTLINE: (00:00) - Introduction (13:28) - DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-V3 (35:02) - Low cost of training (1:01:19) - DeepSeek compute cluster (1:08:52) - Export controls on GPUs to China (1:19:10) - AGI timeline (1:28:35) - China's manufacturing capacity (1:36:30) - Cold war with China (1:41:00) - TSMC and Taiwan (2:04:38) - Best GPUs for AI (2:19:30) - Why DeepSeek is so cheap (2:32:49) - Espionage (2:41:52) - Censorship (2:54:46) - Andrej Karpathy and magic of RL (3:05:17) - OpenAI o3-mini vs DeepSeek r1 (3:24:25) - NVIDIA (3:28:53) - GPU smuggling (3:35:30) - DeepSeek training on OpenAI data (3:45:59) - AI megaclusters (4:21:21) - Who wins the race to AGI? (4:31:34) - AI agents (4:40:16) - Programming and AI (4:47:43) - Open source (4:56:55) - Stargate (5:04:24) - Future of AI
Full Episode
The following is a conversation with Dylan Patel and Nathan Lampert. Dylan runs SemiAnalysis, a well-respected research and analysis company that specializes in semiconductors, GPUs, CPUs, and AI hardware in general. Nathan is a research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI and is the author of the amazing blog on AI called Interconnects.
They are both highly respected, read, and listened to by the experts, researchers, and engineers in the field of AI. And personally, I'm just a fan of the two of them. So I used the DeepSeek moment that shook the AI world a bit as an opportunity to sit down with them and lay it all out. From DeepSeek, OpenAI, Google, XAI, Meta, Anthropic, to NVIDIA and TSMC, and to US, China, Taiwan relations,
and everything else that is happening at the cutting edge of AI. This conversation is a deep dive into many critical aspects of the AI industry.
While it does get super technical, we try to make sure that it's still accessible to folks outside of the AI field by defining terms, stating important concepts explicitly, spelling out acronyms, and in general, always moving across the several layers of abstraction and levels of detail. There is a lot of hype in the media about what AI is and isn't.
The purpose of this podcast, in part, is to cut through the hype through the bullshit and the low-resolution analysis, and to discuss in detail how stuff works and what the implications are. Let me also, if I may, comment on the new OpenAI 03 Mini reasoning model, the release of which we were anticipating during the conversation, and it did indeed come out right after.
Its capabilities and costs are on par with our expectations, as we stated. OpenAI O3 Mini is indeed a great model, but it should be stated that DeepSeek R1 has similar performance on benchmarks, is still cheaper, and it reveals its chain of thought reasoning, which O3 Mini does not. It only shows a summary of the reasoning. Plus, R1 is open weight, and O3 Mini is not.
By the way, I got a chance to play with O3 Mini, and anecdotal vibe check-wise, I felt that O3 Mini, specifically O3 Mini High, is better than R1. Still, for me personally, I find that Claude Sonnet 3.5 is the best model for programming, except for tricky cases where I will use O1 Pro to brainstorm.
Either way, many more better AI models will come, including reasoning models, both from American and Chinese companies. They will continue to shift the cost curve. But the, quote, deep-seek moment is indeed real.
I think it will still be remembered five years from now as a pivotal event in tech history, due in part to the geopolitical implications, but for other reasons too, as we discuss in detail from many perspectives in this conversation. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast.
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