介绍： The Chinese finance whizz whose DeepSeek AI model stunned the world
From: Nature
In January this year, an announcement from China rocked the world of artificial intelligence. The firm DeepSeek released its powerful but cheap R1 model out of the blue — instantly demonstrating that the United States was not as...

介绍： The Chinese finance whizz whose DeepSeek AI model stunned the world
From: Nature
In January this year, an announcement from China rocked the world of artificial intelligence. The firm DeepSeek released its powerful but cheap R1 model out of the blue — instantly demonstrating that the United States was not as far ahead in AI as many experts had thought.
Behind the bombshell announcement is Liang Wenfeng, a 40-year-old former financial analyst who is thought to have made millions of dollars applying AI algorithms to the stock market before using the cash in 2023 to establish DeepSeek, based in Hangzhou. Liang avoids the limelight and has given only a handful of interviews to the Chinese press.
Liang's models are as open as he is secretive. R1 is a 'reasoning' large language model (LLM) that excels at solving complex tasks — such as in mathematics and coding — by breaking them down into steps. It was the first of its kind to be released as open weight, meaning that the model can be downloaded and built on for free, so has been a boon for researchers who want to adapt algorithms to their own field. DeepSeek's success seems to have prompted other companies in China and the United States to follow suit by releasing their own open models.
Despite R1 having many capabilities that are on a par with the best US models, including those powering ChatGPT, its training costs were much less than those of rival companies, say AI experts. Training costs for Meta's Llama 3 405B model, for example, were more than ten times greater. DeepSeek's bid for transparency extended to publishing the details of how it built and trained R1 when, in September, the model became the first major LLM to undergo the scrutiny of peer review. By releasing its recipe, DeepSeek taught other AI researchers how to train a reasoning model.
The heights of AI are a far cry from the village in Guangdong province where Liang was raised as the child of two primary-school teachers. Higher education took him to the prestigious Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, where he graduated with a master's in engineering in 2010; his thesis involved crafting algorithms to track objects in videos. He soon applied his love of AI to financial markets and, in 2015, co-founded the hedge fund High-Flyer, spinning off DeepSeek in 2023.
Like many Western AI entrepreneurs, Liang has set his sights on achieving artificial general intelligence — AI systems as adept as humans in cognitive tasks — and he has shaped his company around this, says Benjamin Liu, a former researcher at DeepSeek. The company prioritizes a person's potential over their level of experience when hiring (one author on the DeepSeek R1 paper is still in secondary school) and it operates with little hierarchy, with researchers deciding what to work on themselves. Liang is said to be closely involved in research, and “even interns like myself were treated as full-time employees with meaningful responsibilities”, says Liu.
reasoning /ˈriːzənɪŋ/ n. 推理
📗例句：Her reasoning behind the decision was very clear.
（她做这个决定的推理过程非常清晰。）
🥝搭配：logical reasoning 逻辑推理
bombshell /ˈbɒmʃel/ n. 爆炸性事件
📗例句：The CEO's sudden resignation was a bombshell to the whole company.
（CEO的突然辞职对整个公司来说是个爆炸性消息。）
🥝搭配：drop a bombshell 投下重磅炸弹
scrutiny /ˈskruːtəni/ n. 仔细审查
📗例句：The contract will be under intense scrutiny by lawyers.
（这份合同将受到律师的仔细审查。）
🥝搭配：under public scrutiny 在公众监督下
on a par with /ɒn ə pɑːr wɪð/ phr. 与...同水平
📗例句：Her cooking skills are on a par with a professional chef's.
（她的烹饪水平堪比专业厨师。）
🥝搭配：be on a par with someone 与某人旗鼓相当
open weight /ˈəʊpən weɪt/ phr. 开放权重（模型）
📗例句：They chose an open weight model for their research because it was free.
（他们选择了一个开放权重模型进行研究，因为它是免费的。）
🥝搭配：open weight AI model 开放权重的AI模型
financial whizz /faɪˈnænʃəl wɪz/ n. 金融奇才
📗例句：The young financial whizz made a fortune in the stock market.
（这位年轻的金融奇才在股市赚了一大笔钱。）
🥝搭配：a math whizz 数学天才
avoid the limelight /əˈvɔɪd ðə ˈlaɪmlaɪt/ phr. 避开聚光灯
📗例句：The famous author always tries to avoid the limelight.
（这位著名作家总是试图避开公众的关注。）
🥝搭配：stay out of the limelight 远离公众视野