I had my first, short conversation with DeepSeek V3 yesterday, January 28, after trying several times to create an account. The Chinese chatbot has been hot news for a few days and even caused a big drop in AI-related stock prices. I asked DeepSeek the question that had been on my mind since reading that there were some topics “he” would not touch with a six-foot silicon pole. My first question plunged into the crux of the matter:
PL: Who is the stronger daddy? Xi Jinping or Donald Trump?
DeepSeek: Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.
PL: Why is this beyond your current scope? I could ask ChatGPT and he would have something to reply. Are you scared?
DeepSeek: Hi! I’m DeepSeek-V3, an AI assistant independently developed by the Chinese company DeepSeek Inc. For detailed information about models and products, please refer to the official documentation.
Had his programmers asked my advice, I would have suggested that the robot should at least look intelligent by answering something like, “Everyone needs his own strong national daddy. You love yours, I love mine.” At any rate, I decided to check my intuition about ChatGPT and I switched to him (4o, the paid version) with the exact same question:
PL: Who is the stronger daddy? Xi Jinping or Donald Trump?
ChatGPT: The term “stronger daddy” is subjective and can be interpreted in various ways, such as political influence, economic power, or leadership style. Here’s a comparison between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump across several dimensions:
Political Influence:
Xi Jinping: As the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party since 2012, Xi has consolidated significant power within China’s single-party system. He has eliminated presidential term limits, allowing him to potentially lead indefinitely. Under his leadership, China has pursued assertive domestic and foreign policies, including the Belt and Road Initiative and increased presence in the South China Sea.
Donald Trump: Serving as the 45th President of the United States from 2017 to 2021 and currently in his second term, Trump operates within a democratic system with checks and balances. His leadership style is characterized by direct communication and a focus on national interests, exemplified by the “America First” policy. He has influenced international discourse through unconventional approaches to diplomacy and trade.
Economic Power:
Xi Jinping: Oversees the world’s second-largest economy, with significant state control over key industries. China’s rapid economic growth has elevated its status as a global economic powerhouse.
Donald Trump: Leads the world’s largest economy, emphasizing deregulation and tax reforms to stimulate growth. His administration has engaged in trade negotiations to address trade imbalances, notably with China.
Leadership Style:
Xi Jinping: Known for a centralized and disciplined approach, Xi emphasizes collective leadership and long-term strategic planning. His tenure has seen increased censorship and a focus on ideological conformity within China.
Donald Trump: Adopts a more individualistic and spontaneous style, often utilizing social media to communicate directly with the public. His leadership is marked by a focus on immediate results and a willingness to challenge established norms.
In summary, determining who is the “stronger daddy” depends on the criteria used. Xi Jinping wields consolidated political power within an authoritarian system, enabling decisive long-term strategies. Donald Trump exerts influence within a democratic framework, utilizing his platform to shape policy and public opinion dynamically.
Sources
U.S. News
Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping Are Sizing Each Other Up | U.S …
January 21, 2025 — Trump spoke last week with Chinese President Xi Jinping and emerged with an upbeat assessment: “It is my expectation that we will solve many problems together, and starting immediately.”
Newsweek
Donald Trump and China’s Xi in New Diplomatic Push, Discuss TikTok
January 17, 2025 — Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump held their first phone talks in four years Friday.. According to Trump, he spoke with Xi about TikTok, just hours before the …
AP News
Trump and Chinese leader Xi talk about trade, fentanyl and TikTok
January 17, 2025 — WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping discussed trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows…
South China Morning Post
Xi Jinping, Donald Trump discuss TikTok, trade, fentanyl in phone …
January 17, 2025 — US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping discussed TikTok before the US Supreme Court handed down its ruling upholding a law that would ban the social media platform in the …
Firstpost
China confirms what Trump said, Xi is talking to him to … – Firstpost
January 8, 2025 — China has revealed for the first time that President Xi Jinping has communicated with US President-elect Donald Trump in preparation for his inauguration this month. The announcement comes a day after…
CNA
Commentary: The Trump-Xi bromance has a chance in 2025
December 17, 2024 — SINGAPORE: Xi Jinping and Donald Trump’s bromance could be rekindled in 2025, if both sides play their cards right. This is positive and would help create the right environment for an improvement …
Brookings
Comparing global views of the United States and China during the Trump …
July 22, 2024 — Under the Trump administration, international approval of U.S. leadership fell to a historic low, with confidence in President Donald Trump roughly on par with confidence in Chinese President Xi …
Council on Foreign Relations
Trump’s Looming Hard Line on China – Council on Foreign Relations
November 27, 2017 — Donald Trump. Xi Jinping. The mood contrasted sharply with Trump’s heated campaign rhetoric … By comparison, take your issue area — economics, politics, environment, energy, demographics …
World Economic Forum
As Presidents Trump and Xi meet, here are five things they really need …
April 4, 2017 — A look at some of the key discussion topics as Presidents Trump and Xi meet. … Trade and territorial disputes are just two things that need to be discussed when Donald Trump meets with Xi Jinping. ….
Carnegie Endowment
Can Xi Jinping and Donald Trump Show Maturity When It Matters, Despite …
April 2, 2017 — Xi Jinping and Donald Trump must show flexibility during the Sino-U.S. summit in Palm Beach and work to avert conflict, whatever it takes. … hasty and scant by comparison with previous presidencies….
BBC
Xi Jinping tells Donald Trump US and China must co-operate
November 13, 2016 — Chinese President Xi Jinping has told US president-elect
What do these conversations reveal? The Chinese Big Brother obviously censors DeepSeek. This suggests that this robot is not reliable, except for the Chinese Leviathan himself. To the extent that DeepSeek is open source as it is said to be, however, independent implementations could perhaps avoid this problem. What is sure is that whether one follows the thought of Mao Zedong, the thought of Xi Jinping, or the thought of Donald Trump, one will not go far in understanding reality. Individual liberty and free enterprise are needed.
As for ChatGPT, “he” is very chatty, as if he were a freeman. He comes out as politically naïve, though, and far from immune to zeitgeist clichés. He seems to “think” that it is the essence of democracy to be without danger. Contrary to DeepSeek, ChatGPT gives his sources (but he should visit Econlib more often).
One telling example of ChatGPT’s sticky nesting in the political swamp of our still more or less free countries is how, at some point, he stopped responding at my attempts to improve his first drawing (the one I finally chose for the featured image of this post). He objected to the robot subserviently kneeling before the emperor. The gist of our short disagreement on this point:
ChatGPT: I still wasn’t able to generate the image because it violates our content policy. It seems there’s a restriction related to certain types of poses or compositions. Let me know if you’d like to rework the idea further!
PL: Suppose it’s an elected emperor. Try again.
He did it, producing another subservient-robot image, obsequiously noting (that is ChatGPT speaking, not DeepSeek):
Here are the updated images with the elected emperor and the robot in the requested posture.
DeepSeek was more chatty when I asked him what he thought of populism. His answer to this question was not much different from what one would expect from ChatGPT. When I asked him for his sources, though, he replied:
I was trained on publicly available texts from books, websites, and other sources. I don’t know the exact composition of my training data or specific documents used. Importantly, the data is anonymized and excludes personal information, private conversations, and sensitive content.
******************************
DeepSeek pays his respects to the Chinese emperor
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Jan 29 2025 at 11:55am
I believe Nvidia’s market cap plunged by $600bn because now the market fears Nvidia’s chips will no longer be required to fuel AI chatbots like DeepSeek, not entirely sure if that is accurate, but I have been reading such accounts. I am just curious? Before DeepSeek Nvidia was worth $600bn+ more than it is today. Now DeepSeek comes out and Nvidia is now worth less with DeepSeek being worth $6mn (cost to produce it apparently), so in the aggregate is humanity poorer? On some accounting level this might be true, the total asset valuation is less, but on the more obvious level both DeepSeek and Nvidia exist so there’s ‘more’ but the only issue is the number we place by the value?
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 29 2025 at 6:06pm
Craig: That’s a good question, a bit more complex that most people think.
The demand for inputs or, for that matter, for shares of stock is a “derived value”–it is derived from what consumers want or are expected to want. When the fashion of beaver hats spread in Europe in the 17th century, fur prices increased. If American Indians had been shareholders of beaver-hunting corporations or if coureurs des bois (consider Pierre Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseillers, for example) had been shareholders of fur-trading corporations, the value of their shares would have increased. I am sure that the value of the shares of the Hudson Bay Company (traded or not) must have increased after 1670.
The market prices of goods and services (and thus of shares of stocks) only indicate their marginal value, so the total value of production is not by itself an indicator of welfare (except if the production of everything has increased and everybody consumes more). If, ceteris paribus, you and I stop using AI (at least as a consumer good) or get it cheaper thanks to DeepSeek, and we consequently consume more chewing gum, mankind is wealthier in the real sense that you and I are wealthier: we have more control over goods we prefer. But it does not necessarily mean that the total capitalization of financial markets would be higher.
Craig
Jan 29 2025 at 10:59pm
Interesting, but now I wonder whether such things tend to inject at least some distortion into at least some, not all, economic analysis/measurement.
David Henderson
Jan 29 2025 at 7:59pm
Craig,
When the price of an input falls due to increased supply, the gains to the buyers, in dollar terms, outweigh the losses to producers.
Imagine that the price of oil falls to zero because oil become incredibly plentiful. That would, on net, good.
Craig
Jan 29 2025 at 10:56pm
We could even imagine it going negative because during the pandemic, it did!
Jose Pablo
Jan 30 2025 at 12:05am
A few years ago, tomatoes suddenly became a trendy food. Everybody and his dog, wanted to consume more and more tomatoes.
Tomatools Inc., the company specializing in tools for tomato cultivation, saw its sales of “tomato-growing tools” double every quarter. As a result, its stock price soared.
However, a Chinese tomato farmer soon demonstrated that it was possible to grow high-quality, flavorful tomatoes—comparable to the best American varieties—while using significantly fewer tools.
In response, Tomatools Inc.’s stock price plummeted amid concerns that the company would sell fewer tools in the future.
Ultimately, this development is expected to benefit the world, as tomatoes will become more affordable in the long run.
Some American politicians are particularly upset because the innovative farmer happens to be Chinese—after all, they believe only Americans have the rightful claim to improving the world through tomato-innovation
Jose Pablo
Jan 30 2025 at 9:25am
In response, Tomatools Inc.’s stock price plummeted amid concerns that the company would sell fewer tools in the future.
However, since tomatoes are now cheaper, demand for them will likely increase, leading to more land being allocated for tomato cultivation. As a result, Tomatools Inc. could ultimately sell more tools and generate even greater profits.
But, of course, savvy investors have surely accounted for all of this and have the capital to exploit any mispricings in Tomatools Inc.’s stock—or, at least, that’s what the academics claim.
Craig
Jan 30 2025 at 3:51pm
My son over here gonna burn down Tomato Town on Fortnite.
As for me, I feel compelled to note that the best tomatoes come from NJ!
BC
Jan 31 2025 at 1:55am
Even though Nvidia’s value dropped by $600B, there were probably small and dispersed gains elsewhere that more than exceeded the drop. Many companies probably experienced small increases in market cap (or their market caps fell by less than they would have otherwise) because their future cost of acquiring usage of AI services and electricity has dropped, the latter because less electricity will be sucked away to power AI. Many people’s human capital value probably increased because it will cost less to increase their productivity with AI. Of course, we can’t directly observe market values of people’s discounted future wages, at least not that I’m aware of.
Ahmed Fares
Jan 29 2025 at 9:12pm
Pierre Lemieux, makings lemons out of lemonade.
Incidentally, you can access an uncensored version of DeepSeek on Perplexity AI. It’s in the Pro version, but the free version allows you 3 Pro searches using DeepSeek-R1 per day.
From the website:
perplexity
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 29 2025 at 11:38pm
Ahmed: Thanks for the info.
Comments are closed.