“The current state of AI in China is vibrant on the surface but fundamentally chaotic.”

Song-Chun Zhu (朱松纯), a prominent Chinese computer scientist, warns that China’s current AI narrative has “cognitive bias.”

DeepSeek came under scrutiny for potentially using generated outputs from OpenAI’s platforms to train its models. This practice is Knowledge Distillation.

I broke down what KD is, discussed whether DeepSeek distilled GPT models, and what this means.

recodechinaai.substack.com/p/decoding-t...

DeepSeek just dropped an app update, with new features to understand images/photos and process documents. The app development pace is speeding up.

I translated DeepSeek CEO’s first public interview from May 2023, shortly after the DeepSeek’s founding.

It’s fascinating to revisit Liang’s early views, which may hold the secret behind how DeepSeek has risen to become the world’s leading AI lab.
open.substack.com/pub/recodech...

DeepSeek chatbot now tops the iOS free app chart!

The CEO of MiniMax, the company behind Talkie and Hailuo Video, explains why applying mobile internet logic to AI development is a bad idea.

recodechinaai.substack.com/p/why-more-u...

DeepSeek just officially dropped DeepSeek-R1:

The release includes DeepSeek-R1-Zero, DeepSeek-R1 and multiple dense models, trained to improve reasoning in LLMs through RL.

DeepSeek-R1-Zero is trained purely via RL without any SFT as a preliminary step, like AlphaZero.

github.com/deepseek-ai/…

RedNote just introduced a new translation feature that enables users to translate notes and comments with a simple click of the "Translate" button. The feature is reportedly powered by a Chinese LLM (many pointed to Zhipu's GLM or Tencent's Hunyuan.)

Why RedNote, the Social App Hosting US TikTokers, Could Build China's Perplexity
recodechinaai.substack.com/p/why-rednot...

As we close out the year, I want to wrap up with 10 AI stories that shaped 2024. Although these stories don’t capture the entire landscape of China’s AI progress, they highlight what I believe were the most significant developments.

recodechinaai.substack.com/p/top-10-chi...

Three things to know
1. OpenAI’s Sora faces stiff competition from Chinese AI video generators.
2. The paper co-authored by a ByteDance-sued intern wins NeurIPS Best Paper.
3. Chinese game developer unveils an AI model for interactive game environment.
recodechinaai.substack.com/p/sora-vs-ch...

Welcome to Recode China AI, your hub for trending AI news from China!

1️⃣ Alibaba’s QwQ beats OpenAI’s o1-preview on math benchmarks.
2️⃣ Zhipu AI unveils an agent to operate desktops like humans.
3️⃣ U.S. to announce new chip restrictions on China

recodechinaai.substack.com/p/alibabas-o...