Author of “Beyond the Valley” comments on DeepSeek’s toppling of AI giants; the dangers of misinformation with close ties between tech and Trump.
Ramesh Srinivasan, UCLA professor of information studies and design media arts, was interviewed recently by international news outlets on the success of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company whose models toppled ChatGPT and are in competition with OpenAI, but at a lower cost. Srinivasan, who hosts the “Utopias”podcast, also discussed the Stargate project proposed by the Trump administration and the recent AI summit in Paris.
Srinivasan, the author of the award-winning book, “Beyond the Valley: How Innovators Around the World Are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow,” said that DeepSeek’s groundbreaking success – with only a budget of $6 million – is “very, very profound.”
“Basically, for six million dollars, they were able to develop a large language model, which is basically the brains for future AI systems of all kinds… compared to hundreds of billions of dollars that were allocated for initiatives like the Stargate project,” he told Democracy Now! “This is just one thing that’s always been powerful about the internet and the web, which is, people can support one another and build on one another’s work.
“The key issue is this: DeepSeek was able to refine and train its models using open-source kinds of content, getting input from communities of developers all around the world,” said Professor Srinivasan. “It’s an example of something that we’ve always known in tech, that innovation is not just creating the latest iPhone 15 versus 16 or just pouring tons of money into energy and other expenses into a sort of resource-unconscious way. It’s actually being resourceful and the open-source community is why DeepSeek was able to perform very close to the level, if not stronger than ChatGPT’s latest or at least, previous to latest versions, for a fraction of the cost.”
Srinivasan, who has long been an advocate for a Digital Bill of Rights, told Al Jazeera that the concerns over data protection and personal information that inform AI models, down to users’ keystrokes, is certainly an issue.
“Chinese technology platforms are completely built upon the surveillance and extraction of data, but I would argue that many of our American technology platforms do very much the exact same thing,” he said. “The thing is, we live in a democracy where we should get more answers and more transparency and accountability than we actually do.”
Professor Srinivasan acknowledged the “short-term volatility” with NVIDIA and other tech stocks that plummeted as a result of DeepSeek’s success, but said that, “I think Silicon Valley and investors will recalibrate. They have to learn this lesson that it’s not necessarily a question of astronomical costs … astronomical funds to actually generate a pretty persuasive, pretty compelling AI chatbot language model system… I think all of Silicon Valley and certainly the investment world, is paying very close attention to this because if you can have the most compelling, inexpensive, quick-to-market language model – remember, these language models are not just chatting with ChatGPT or the Gemini system or Anthropic system… these are the brains that are going to be in all types of AI systems.”
Srinivasan stated that there is little proof that President Trump’s proposed Stargate project, which is budgeted at $500 billion dollars, will actually create a windfall of tech jobs. He also commented on how big tech CEOs are now cozying up to Trump, and the potential dangers of greater misinformation that can ensue.
“In the United States, we’ve never seen so close a marriage between the state or the political branch, and the corporate branch, and specifically, a few billionaires,” Srinivasan said to the BBC. “These are billionaires who control the ways we get our news, far more so than most media networks. They control the screens by which we receive and exchange information, and they control platforms that have taken over almost every sector of the economy imaginable.”
“We’re seeing an incredibly close relationship between Mr. Trump and these tech oligarchs, which is very troubling because it really confounds how we get our news and whether there is some sort of public component outside of what these corporate leaders and Trump themselves are telling us to do, and their decision almost seems to be omnipotent at this point. So, that’s what we need to be aware of and vigilant of.”
Professor Srinivasan noted the effects of misinformation in the face of recent evacuations and other public messaging due to the Los Angeles wildfires.
“We get our news in many parts of the world and certainly in the United States, far more so on social media platforms, which we know their algorithms tend to privilege and over elevate inflammatory and extreme content,” he said in the BBC interview. “People in my own city … were not sure what to trust and not sure who to trust anymore. Our governor has expressed a lot of concern about this.
“In the past, as a technology designer and a technology scholar, we used to design emergency management and communications systems. But now, because of these social media channels that are just privileging attention and sort of grabbing us and polarizing us, we’re being pulled apart in critical moments.”
Srinivasan also commented on the AI summit that took place earlier this month in Paris, and President Emmanuel Macron’s call to step up AI innovation, despite perceptions that Europe is behind the times in big tech, due to its many cautions and regulations around societal and economic disruption.
“I applaud the European approach … and that Macron is showing his skin in the game,” said Srinivasan to the BBC. “It’s very important that Europe invest in these areas … recognizing all the costs and all the benefits involved: the energy costs, the labor costs, but also, the surveillance costs.
“Remember, all of these large language models are trained using our personal data. We have little to no transparency, except in the European Union, about what’s being collected about us. Warrantless, indiscriminate data collection is the default in the United States and in China. The Europeans can think about a model and we can all learn from that, that actually support economic futures for all of us, while embracing these actual innovations.”
Professor Srinivasan said that true innovation takes into account the real needs of its users and advocated a more balanced approach that recognizes civil rights, privacy, democracy, and labor and economic issues.
“I really hope that the wider world can actually follow some of these innovations coming from the European Union while still, of course, embracing the technical breakthroughs, which are all built upon our personal data, mind you, that are being trailblazed by the United States and Chinese options,” he said. I really hope they come up with some standards that they can actually enforce.”
Srinivasan delineated the “powerful possibilities” of AI systems, but also the great responsibility they have, literally, over life or death matters.
“Artificial intelligence, these generative AI systems, use patterns and data. The patterns are exquisite and they’re incredibly sophisticated because so much data is being collected and so much can be computed and stored, thanks to technical breakthroughs,” he said. “Any time there is generally a right answer and a wrong answer, these AI systems are carefully designed with the right collaborations.
“For example, [with] the prediction of environmental issues or climate threats, drug discovery issues, you have to be careful there because if you don’t include the right data, you might recommend a drug to a given patient that might help them with cancer but might make their heart condition worse if you don’t account for that data.”
Professor Srinivasan is the founder of the UC-wide Digital Cultures Lab which offers a unique, people-focused analysis of new technologies working across every continent and dozens of countries across the world. He is on the board of directors for Digital Democracy, which works with land protectors in the Amazon and all around the world and advises One Project, New Public, members of the U.S. Congress, and global leaders on issues of technology and democracy. Srinivasan also previously served as a national surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and as an innovation policy committee member for President Biden. He also has and continues to informally advise Rep. Ro Khanna. Srinivasan continues to support state, national and international policymakers.
Professor Srinivasan appears frequently on NPR, The Young Turks, MSNBC, BBC, CNN and other major media networks, and his articles and interviews have been published by the Washington Post, Wired, The Economist, Quartz, Financial Times, CNN, Forbes, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, among others.
“Beyond The Valley” was named a Top Ten 2019 Book in Tech by Forbes. Srinivasan is also the author of “Whose Global Village? Rethinking How Technology Impacts Our World,” published by NYU Press; and “After the Internet” (with Adam Fish), published by Polity.