Welcome to AI 101, an introductory class on artificial intelligence offered without being overwhelmed by technical jargon. Last week, the stock market took a real nose-dive with the announcement of the release of a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) platform called Deep Seek. To explain the fundamentals of AI and the markets’ reaction to Deep Seek, we were joined by Dr. John Licato. Dr. Licato is an Associate Professor of computer science and engineering at USF. He has earned significant recognition for his contributions to the field of artificial intelligence. He is also the founder/director of the start-up company Actualization AI. His research in AI is primarily focused on computers’ human-level cognitive reasoning. Dr. Licato was able to give us a broad overview of the basics of artificial intelligence, the primary AI platforms like Open AI and the widely available ChatGPT, and how they are similar or different from the Chinese Deep Seek.
The tech world is still reckoning with the introduction of Deep Seek, an AI platform designed to compete directly with American AI technology, but reportedly created significantly more cheaply. Open AI has sought billions of dollars in financing to develop and improve what the Chinese developers of Deep Seek have reportedly accomplished for only around $5 million dollars. Deep Seek has also been offered as an open-source platform while Open AI has been closed and protective of its expensive newest tech. Consequently, there is fear in the markets that Deep Seek may disrupt existing businesses and industries and reveal Open AI and other AI companies to be significantly overvalued, subject to inflated expectations, and perhaps less promising.
These fears about losing market share for American AI have only been increased with the Trump administration’s recent rescinding of grant funding to AI researchers, along with losing the grant funding for most other scientific research. Dr. Licato emphasized that without government funding, in time, AI research will be greatly curtailed, as graduate students can not be supported and university labs and other research sites may be rendered less productive, eventually putting America further behind China in the tech race. The loss of funding may affect such research projects as making AI machine learning more energy-efficient and cheaper while developing more robust ethical frameworks for artificial intelligence.
Listen to the full show here.
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