Bhubaneswar: Earlier on Thursday, Union Minister of Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw announced that DeepSeek, the popular Chinese open-source artificial intelligence model (AI), will soon be hosted on Indian servers to address privacy concerns.
Specialists have described being deeply worried about DeepSeek, particularly about information security and the transportation of information to China.
For example, a partially redacted policy document from the new service DeepSeek states: ”We may collect your text or audio inputs, prompts, uploaded files, feedback, chat history, or other content that you provide to our model and services. We may retain the information we collect on secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China.
Also, OpenAI, a top-notch US AI firm and ChatGPT’s parent company, has alleged that DeepSeek has improved its work to speed up the advancement of its AI models.
In response to these issues, Vaishnaw said India will create its base model in the next few months, detailing the nation’s AI aspirations. The minister also announced the empanelment of 18,693 graphic processing units (GPUs) under a shared computing facility.
Vaishnaw, in a string of announcements aimed at putting India on the global AI turf, said that the country will also set up an AI safety institution.
IT Minister Vaishnaw said, “Bringing modern technology to the common man is the economic vision of our Prime Minister…We have the most cost-effective compute facility at the moment.”
In March, the government announced an AI investment of over Rs 10,300 crore as part of the IndiaAI mission, which includes investments in AI startups and in building its own infrastructure.
There is debate about how much money the government has committed to the IndiaAI mission.”But wait, have you seen what DeepSeek is doing? “This is a compelling model available for $5.5 million, and through brain use,” Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Tuesday at an event in Odisha.
The minister was seemingly echoing OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who last year, during a visit to India, said that he was doubtful whether an Indian team could build a large AI model.
A Chinese startup recently announced the availability of the DeepSeek AI model, raising eyebrows in AI. This model, known as DeepSeek R1, is praised for its efficiency and effectiveness, especially for complex reasoning tasks. It recently pulled ahead of OpenAI regarding app downloads on Apple’s App Store.