#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:

Dylan’s X: https://x.com/dylan522p

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