China’s DeepSeek AI, and the missing discourse on privacy and ethics
As the global west and emerging economies obsess over DeepSeek’s disruptive commercial popularity in the AI development space, the more value laden considerations of privacy and ethics cannot be brushed under the rug
Harsh Gour
15 February 2025
AS the U.S. President Donald Trump began his second term, among the first in the order of business was the launch of the Stargate Project—a $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure partnership with large technology firms like OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, Microsoft, and NVIDIA.
What enraptured the world, however, was the disruptive introduction of the Chiene AI company - DeepSeek, which sent shockwaves across the tech industry, and exposed vulnerabilities in AI governance, national security, and global data privacy frameworks.
DeepSeek’s rapid success in the AI innovation space has ignited fierce debates on technological sovereignty. It has already been alleged that DeepSeek relied on OpenAI’s training data without explicit permission. It is an allegation that raises ethical questions—not only about data integrity but also about the hypocrisy of existing AI leaders.
For years, OpenAI and other Western firms have been criticized for scraping vast amounts of data from the internet—often without user consent—to train their large language models. Now, DeepSeek’s approach seems to mirror those same methods, challenging the very foundations upon which OpenAI and other tech behemoths built their dominance.
This raises a critical question: Does OpenAI itself scrape data without permission? If so, is it now falling victim to its own methods?
The largely west led backlash against DeepSeek underscores the grave consequences of leaving the AI development space majorly unregulated. Beyond regulation, the industry seems to conveniently ignore data ethics until geopolitical pressure compels greater scrutiny upon it.
Meanwhile, regulatory bodies worldwide are scrambling to understand, adapt, and respond to the implications of this new AI arms race.
AI Rivalry: Tariffs or Bans?
Tariffs appear to be the Trump administration’s go-to mechanism for countering economic and technological threats. But it is contestable if that might be enough to curb China’s rapid AI expansion. The U.S. has already taken aggressive action against Chinese tech firms, banning Huawei from 5G networks and forcing TikTok to divest its U.S. operations due to concerns over data privacy and potential state surveillance. Now, DeepSeek presents another challenge, one that may not be as easy to regulate through tariffs alone.
Banning DeepSeek could further escalate tensions between the U.S. and China. But failing to act could enable AI models that potentially train on unauthorized datasets and pose privacy risks to U.S. users.