DeepSeek Review: A Middling Chatbot With Profound Privacy Issues
DeepSeek Review: A Middling Chatbot With Profound Privacy Issues
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/37068051
Pros:
- Completely free
- Affordable API access for developers and researchers
Cons:
- Doesn’t keep your data safe
- Occasionally incorrect
- No deep research, image generation, or voice mode features
- Slow responses
- Obvious censorship
It's open source. Which is way better than ClosedAI, or anyone else. Show show gratitude folks.
OP is notorious for not giving a shit about privacy (and has posted conspiracy site spam before), and this article continues the trend. PCMag gives DeepSeek a 2/5 rating but Google Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT get 4/5 with no heading criticizing privacy.
It gets worse: PCMag cites a Trump administration special committee report as evidence Deepseek isn't private. I could go on for a while about how both Google and OpenAI get special treatment from the US, but hopefully it's clear that they (like OP) only see danger stemming from the geographical location of the servers and not their actual harm.
PCMag describes DeepSeek data collection as "fairly standard for chatbot data collection," but then claims "other serious privacy concerns" before linking that report.
Meanwhile "OpenAI collects a significant amount of data," it "was not forthcoming" with data breaches, and the author doesn't "recommend sharing anything too sensitive with ChatGPT."
Strange DeepSeek gets the "not secure" label and ChatGPT does not.
Tankie in full force. Thanks for the usual consideration.
I don't trust the Trump administration's agenda, and I certainly don't trust a website you posted that encourages you to get 5G blockers to protect you from the "globalists."
You don't even need to double down on that site, which appears to be run by Mike Adams, an Alex Jones buddy who out-grifts Jones with snake oil sales. You could just admit you accept any source that says China is bad, tegardless of quality, and apologize and delete it.
(If I didn't know better, I'd say you were a tankie yourself... doing your best strawman of what tankies complain about. Between the far right conspiracy sites, the bad sources, and the straight-up US government stuff...)
'occasionally incorrect' like any other AI out there?
ChatGPT and Gemini have persistent memory, meaning they can remember conversations across different chats. Copilot can remember certain things, too. DeepSeek’s memory, on the other hand, is limited to each chat, meaning you need to repeat yourself to continue talking about topics from previous ones.
I don't think this is a default for Gemini or Copilot, though it probably can be implemented easily for DeepSeek (but they probably have better things to do than to sell itself)
DeepSeek might be somewhat clunky, but it eventually gets the job done. However, I don’t recommend relying on its text extraction and document analysis for anything mission-critical because it sometimes misunderstands files, just like ChatGPT and Gemini can. Make sure you double-check its responses for anything important.
Actually, my experience is different
Out of every AI I tried including Claude, DeepSeek had the most accurate, detailed, and extensive capability to read a huge file, follow user prompt to a T, and still have great capability to use for other tasks
It's weird how this is rated 2/5, though if you exclusively use DeepSeek as a casual user I would see why
Currently I make use of DeepSeek for anything that requires some thinking, Gemini for whatever else
DeepSeek has a good searching system in my opinion, while it doesn't explicitly tell you which part of the sources they used for their output, it still makes sure to only use relevant information and i felt that it was more reliable than Gemini
Ironically enough, the censorship is limited only to text generation, and I'm unsure if this applies to the API but it has a very progressive stance (compared to Gemini) and isn't parroting CCP talking points like you might have expected.
It also has the most capable model for talking to with Chinese, and it was very useful for translating stuff, and searching stuff in Chinese contexts (it can search in Chinese and reply in English allowing for easy research of anything Chinese)
This article makes it seem extremely subpar but the model behind it is great and worth using even if you had the budget for Claude, you would get more out of it by using a client for it with the API though.
The main issue with Deepseek is about censorship and privacy as the review suggests.
I hope you won't mind my question.
The main issue with Deepseek is about censorship and privacy as the review suggests.
I don't use AI myself and have not read the article, but isn't there censorship and privacy issue at play also with every single non-Chinese AI out there?
I mean, can I ask one of those non-Chinese AI to make me, say, a pornographic image based on some famous person, or would it refuse? Could I ask a non-Chinese 'how can I make a bomb powerful enough so I can blow This or that (whatever one would not legally own)', or 'How should I mount a coup to take hold of power in my country?' or would it refuse to answer any of that? And then, subsidiary question, would any of these questions be reported to legal authorities?