Q&A: Viola Zhou on the Challenge of Covering Chinese Tech
In January, DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, shook Silicon Valley when it released a chatbot tool that matched the abilities of recent models made by OpenAI, a leading US firm, but for a fraction of the cost and hardware. DeepSeek’s innovations came as a surprise to tech firms that did not expect China to be a serious competitor in AI. Many of the responses—such as a post from the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen calling DeepSeek “AI’s Sputnik moment”—framed the news as a worrying sign of increased competition from China’s tech industry. Much of the media coverage did likewise, refracting the story through a geopolitical lens.
This combative stance matches the outlook of the Trump administration. Last month, Vice President J.D. Vance gave a speech in Paris in which he staked a claim for the US on AI innovation, casting China as an authoritarian competitor to be battled. The Trump administration has reversed AI regulations put in place by the Biden administration in an effort to accelerate the industry, and also laid ground for a trade war with China, imposing 20 percent tariffs on goods from the country. The White House is now reported to be making a deal with Oracle, a US software company, to run the Chinese-owned video app TikTok in the US, after Trump paused a bipartisan Biden-era law dictating that it be sold or face a ban.
Related Knowledge Center: Artificial intelligence
On top of a failing business model, newsrooms must navigate the powerful — and not fully reliable — new capabilities of artificial intelligence and the deployment of large language models.
State of the business model | Copyright and intellectual property
Related Knowledge Center: Inside the newsroom
As newsrooms struggle with rickety business models and precarious finances — as well as new technologies — they are deploying an array of editorial responses.
The Times and its critics | Washington Post mortem