DeepSeek AI – live: White House ‘looking at’ national security implications of Chinese AI breakthrough – The Independent

Read the full report from Vishwam Sankaran here:

DeepSeek’s development shows why the UK must “go furthering faster to remove barriers for innovation” in the AI sector, says Downing Street.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesperson said: “The rapid development and breakthrough of new AI models demonstrates exactly why the UK is so focused on AI and why we need to go further and faster to remove barriers to innovation here to make the UK a more competitive market.

“And whilst we’ve already got the third largest AI market in the world, we’ve got an opportunity to get ahead and do more, and that’s what our AI Opportunities action plan is all about.”

U.S. stock markets finished higher on Tuesday with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite appearing to recover losses after DeepSeek took Wall Street by storm.

The rebound follows a sharp sell-off fuelled by the startup’s rise and an apparent market ripple effect throughout Big Tech.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 136.77 points, or 0.3 percent, ending at 44,850.35, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

The S&P 500 was up 55.42 points, or 0.9 percent, to finish at 6,067.70.

The Nasdaq Composite surged 391.75 points, or above 2 percent, to finish at 19,733.59.

DeepSeek has gone quiet a week after it made waves across the Atlantic.

The company made its last update at midnight on Monday, the day before Luna New Year’s Eve, with the launch of its first multimodal model, Janus-Pro, an image generation model that has outperformed OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 according to the company’s benchmark tests.

Founder Liang Wenfend and the start-up’s young scientists have reportedly shunned public attention as the week-long New Year holiday begins, according to South China Morning Post.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the National Security Council would review the app’s national security implications.

“This is a wake-up call to the American AI industry,” she said, adding the White House was working to “ensure American AI dominance”.

UK technology secretary Peter Kyle said that people “need to make their own choices about this right now, because we haven’t had time to fully understand it.”

He told the News Agents podcast: “This is a Chinese model that … has censorship built into it.

“So, it doesn’t have the kind of freedoms you would expect from other models at the moment. But of course, people are going to be curious about this.”

London’s top index inched closer to another record high on Tuesday, despite DeepSeek causing volatility for technology stocks.

The FTSE 100 finished 30.16 points, or 0.35%, higher to end the day at 8,533.87.

The sector benefitted from defensive traders buying into consumer and property stocks. Stabilising prices during the session also benefitted energy firms in the UK and across Europe.

Energy firms in the UK and across Europe also benefitted from stabilising prices during the session.

Meanwhile in the States, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both opened in the red but recovered ground as traders began to rebound cautiously.

Artificial intelligence is already everywhere, including probably in several items or places you already use on a day-to-day basis – but it’s expected to be far more prevalent in the coming years.

While there’s unquestionably areas where AI will benefit consumers and workers alike on an everyday basis, there has also been plenty of discussion over how much it could, or should, impact work life, in particular when it comes to replacing people doing certain jobs.

Automation is nothing new of course, but the idea that machines or software take over entire roles or careers is a concerning one for some.

Read Karl Matchett’s report:

DeepSeek may have destabilised the States’ AI dominance, but it wasn’t just companies like Nvidia that suffered a loss – tech billionaires saw their fortunes affected.

Nvidia CEO and its biggest individual shareholder Jensen Huang lost $20.7 billion. Oracle chair Larry Ellison recorded a $27.6 billion loss after shares in Oracle stock dropped 14%. Others hit by the tech share drops include Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who respectively lost $6.3 billion and $5.9 billion.

Elon Musk saw a small dent to his crown title as the world’s wealthiest man with a $5.3 billion loss.