DeepSeek, bottled AI, and humanity’s free spirit
The startling news that DeepSeek, an unexpected Chinese AI powerhouse led by 39-year-old founder Liang Wenfeng, has unveiled a chip and software package that could be superior to America’s revolutionary ChatGPT shocked world financial markets and forced political and industrial leaders to rethink their efforts to control the distribution of advanced information technologies.
Soon after, markets were hit by a double whammy when it was reported that DeepSeek had suddenly become the top-rated free application available on Apple's App Store in the United States.
In a matter of a few hours, it seems, those who are at this very moment attempting to direct where the burgeoning high-tech AI world will and will not take root have experienced a hard lesson: Human creativity and knowledge cannot be successfully bottled and contained. Sooner or later, efforts to do so always tend to backfire.
In just the last few years, power brokers in both the U.S. public and private sectors have sought to control world access to tech that is forming the basis of revolutions taking place across all economic sectors.
Whether it be in health care, writing and publishing, manufacturing or elsewhere, AI is being harnessed to power efforts that could, after some rocky transitions for some of us, deliver a higher level of prosperity for people everywhere.
But in a divided world where some nations are deemed friendly by the United States and our allies and others are deemed adversaries — China chief among them — an extraordinary set of controls is being installed to constrain advanced AI technology and knowledge flows across the globe.
At present, for example, pending U.S. policy has established three tiers of countries for this purpose. The first tier, with which open trade in technologies is allowed, contains America and 18 industrialized allies. A second tier contains and excludes “adversary” nations, which are China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea. A third tier of some 150 remaining nations faces complex, case-by-case rules for limiting technology flows.
While such efforts matter and will affect trade, they also help ensure a high payoff for getting around the rules. DeepSeek’s almost overnight move to the billionaire camp is a case in point.
History teaches that it is almost impossible in the long run for knowledge flows to be bottled and controlled. Sometimes it takes a while to break these controls — but break they will.
For example, seventh-century efforts by Egypt to control knowledge flows by limiting the export of papyrus, the chief writing material for scrolls used throughout the Roman Empire, led to the discovery of parchment in Pergamon. This inspired the invention of the book, which displaced scrolls, revolutionized the production and storage of knowledge and led to the building of the world’s great libraries.
In today’s world, transitions occur more quickly. There are billions of people across borders with smartphones who can access, edit, and contribute to humanity’s store of knowledge. Keeping private-sector technological advancements from reaching an ambitious, competing nation of over 1 billion people is an all but impossible task.
While efforts by politicians to limit the flow of any favored product, service, or person may in some cases be understandable, that does not make them effective. We should know that free human spirits somewhere will be working in the opposite direction.
Bruce Yandle is a distinguished adjunct fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, dean emeritus of Clemson University’s College of Business & Behavioral Science, and former executive director of the Federal Trade Commission.
