The House wants to ban Chinese AI program DeepSeek from government devices...

 

File photo of the DeepSeek. AP.

The House wants to ban Chinese AI program DeepSeek from government computers and may move to ban it entirely from the United States. AP. DeepSeek took the tech world by storm by being as effective as American AI programs but with much cheaper costs. However, major security concerns exist. The program can send login information to a company that has been banned from operating on US soil. The ban would be similar to the one currently in use for TikTok, which is banned from government devices. Another bill has been introduced that would ban all AI that comes from China. 

My Comment:

It's not surprising that DeepSeek would have the ability to steal login information. The whole thing seems like a major scam by China in order to use AI against the rest of the world. Banning this technology from government devices is a major no-brainer. DeepSeek appears to be slightly better than other chat based AI but the security threat obviously isn't worth it. 

Some will say that this is just the United States not wanting to compete with DeepSeek, which appears to offer a superior product. I am sure that is part of it as tech stocks took a massive hit after DeepSeek was released. But just because that is true does not mean that DeepSeek should be used on government devices. 

I also have questions about how China was even able to develop this program. I think they are obviously smart enough (and willing to steal) to pull it off, but they do not have the production ability to get the chips needed to run them. You need high end, professional GPU's to run these kinds of programs and supposedly China does not have access to those chips. They may have made their own but it's more likely that they were able to obtain them from Taiwan somehow. 

I don't really know why AI programs like this would be allowed on government devices in the first place. AI chat programs are just toys and don't seem to do all that much useful other than function as a better search engine than Google. Supposedly chat based AI is supposed to change the world but I also don't know why the government would need to use it. 

Besides, there are plenty of US based choices they could use even if the AI was necessary. ChatGPT and Claude are supposedly only slightly worse than DeepSeek and I have found that Grok, Elon Musk's AI program based on the X platform, works fine. That comes with a X subscription and you can also use it to generate stupid pictures like this:

Regardless, I am not sure if a full ban of DeepSeek is necessary. I think if the ability to scan someone's login info is removed than it should be fine for domestic use. I still wouldn't be comfortable having it on government devices, but that's true no matter the program, I don't think Facebook, Instagram or X should be on government devices either, unless it's for official accounts. Either way, if DeepSeek cleans their act up then it would be fine to allow them for domestic use. If they don't then a full ban might be necessary.