- DeepSeek’s powerful, cheap AI models have taken the tech world by storm.
- Altman said OpenAI will embrace one of DeepSeek’s popular approaches.
- The CEO said OpenAI has “been on the wrong side of history” when it comes to model weights.
When rivals take a different approach and succeed, it sometimes pays to change course.
This is what Sam Altman said OpenAI will do, according to a Reddit AMA session on Friday.
The discussion touched on several AI topics, but in particular Altman was asked about DeepSeek, which has taken the tech world by storm after rolling out top-performing AI models that are relatively cheap to use.
One Reddit user asked if OpenAI could show “all of the thinking tokens.” This refers to the chain of thought that new “reasoning” AI models use to break tasks into smaller steps — similar to how humans think through complex challenges.
OpenAI’s o1 and o3 models use this reasoning approach, however they don’t show any of the intermediate thinking steps to users, and instead just show the final answer.
DeepSeek’s reasoning models, such as its R1 offering, show every step to users. When Business Insider demoed DeepSeek with the Chinese lab’s DeepThink setting, it shared about 16 pages of mathematical steps before providing the correct answer to a tough question.
On Friday, Altman said OpenAI would follow DeepSeek’s approach. “Yeah we are gonna show a much more helpful and detailed version of this, soon. Credit to R1 for updating us,” he wrote.
Open-source and open weights
Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has said the biggest takeaway from DeepSeek’s success is the value of open-source AI models versus proprietary ones.
Meta’s Llama models are mostly open-source, letting anyone access important details such as weights and parameters for free. Sharing the inner-workings of models like this allows other developers and many companies to customize these models for their own use.
Despite its name, OpenAI has taken a more closed approach to AI development so far. Most of its models are proprietary and the startup charges for access.
During the Reddit AMA on Friday, Altman was asked if OpenAI would consider releasing some of its model weights, and publishing some research.
“Yes, we are discussing. I personally think we have been on the wrong side of history here and need to figure out a different open source strategy; not everyone at OpenAI shares this view, and it’s also not our current highest priority,” Altman replied.
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