#459 – DeepSeek, China, OpenAI, NVIDIA, xAI, TSMC, Stargate, and AI Megaclusters

Dylan Patel is the founder of SemiAnalysis, a research & analysis company specializing in semiconductors, GPUs, CPUs, and AI hardware. Nathan Lambert is a research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) and the author of a blog on AI called Interconnects.
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Transcript:
https://lexfridman.com/deepseek-dylan-patel-nathan-lambert-transcript

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EPISODE LINKS:
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SemiAnalysis: https://semianalysis.com/
Nathan’s X: https://x.com/natolambert
Nathan’s Blog: https://www.interconnects.ai/
Nathan’s Podcast: https://www.interconnects.ai/podcast
Nathan’s Website: https://www.natolambert.com/
Nathan’s YouTube: https://youtube.com/@natolambert
Nathan’s Book: https://rlhfbook.com/

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OUTLINE:
(00:00)– Introduction
(13:28)– DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-V3
(35:02)– Low cost of training
(1:01:19)– DeepSeek compute cluster
(1:08:52)– Export controls on GPUs to China
(1:19:10)– AGI timeline
(1:28:35)– China’s manufacturing capacity
(1:36:30)– Cold war with China
(1:41:00)– TSMC and Taiwan
(2:04:38)– Best GPUs for AI
(2:19:30)– Why DeepSeek is so cheap
(2:32:49)– Espionage
(2:41:52)– Censorship
(2:54:46)– Andrej Karpathy and magic of RL
(3:05:17)– OpenAI o3-mini vs DeepSeek r1
(3:24:25)– NVIDIA
(3:28:53)– GPU smuggling
(3:35:30)– DeepSeek training on OpenAI data
(3:45:59)– AI megaclusters
(4:21:21)– Who wins the race to AGI?
(4:31:34)– AI agents
(4:40:16)– Programming and AI
(4:47:43)– Open source
(4:56:55)– Stargate
(5:04:24)– Future of AI