The TechMobility Podcast

Porsche & Audi's American Manufacturing Pivot, AI Drones' Military Impact, L.A.'s Rebuilding Efforts, and DeepSeek's AI Disruption

TechMobility Productions Inc. Season 3 Episode 9

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Tech Mobility Podcast.

Speaker 2:

I'm Ken Chester On the docket a new way to wage war. Architects band together to rebuild Los Angeles. And what exactly is DeepSeek? To add your voice to the conversation, be it to ask a question, share an opinion or even suggest a topic for a future show. Call or text the TechMobility hotline, that number, 872-222-9793, or you can email the show directly. Talk at techmobilityshow. Also, be sure to check us out on social media our Tech Mobility Show YouTube channel and both of our podcasts, the Tech Mobility Podcast and Tech Mobility Topics From the Tech Mobility News Desk.

Speaker 2:

Here's a question for you, for those of you all who appreciate German performance, german precision, german engineering, german manufacturing when it comes to unique and iconic vehicles. Would you consider buying a Porsche 911 made in the United States? What about an Audi A8L built right here in the United States? Well, with all the recent tariff talk going on, both Porsche and Audi, which are part of Volkswagen they could build cars in the United States and obviously the big thing is to avoid tariffs. But here's the thing, and I've told you this before and I'm going to repeat this Even if they made that decision today, it could be years before the first vehicle rolls off the line. And if you're thinking about that, they would build a brand new factory from nothing. That wouldn't be correct, because you're looking at years and billions of dollars, no matter what they do and where they do it. So it would only make sense, since neither Porsche nor Audi has ever built a vehicle in the United States of America ever, that they would want to piggyback on existing facilities either running or being built, that Volkswagen is building now, and there are two. Volkswagen has their Chattanooga facility, which has been online now for 13 years. Or they could also piggyback on the independently controlled Scout Motors, which is a Volkswagen subsidiary, a standalone one, but they're not even going to be online until 2027. Those are two ways you could do it to be online until 2027. Those are two ways you could do it.

Speaker 2:

All the automakers are looking at the impact of tariffs, and while I'm not going to get into the political part of that, I'm going to skip that, but I will tell you this Just back up a minute. Any automaker that is actively selling vehicles in the United States of America has some level of integrated supply chain between Canada, the United States and Mexico. Parts, partially assembled parts, full vehicles cross the borders. Sometimes a part crosses the borders two and three times in various stages of completion. The automakers are trying to figure out how to go forward. No automaker, no parts supplier, nobody in that automotive chain has a markup of 25%. In the trade press over the last week they have actually said that. Should that have happened, should the administration make good on it, even though they've delayed it for a month, let's say they make good on it, say March 1st. Certain industry watchers in the auto industry said that this full that tariff in Canada and Mexico would bring the auto industry in North America to a screeching halt in three to four days. Three to four days Because here's the problem the automakers can't afford to pass a 25% increase on to the consumer, the Tier 1, tier 2, and Tier 3 suppliers and that determines on the size.

Speaker 2:

Tier 1s work directly with the automakers, tier 2 work with the Tier 1s and Tier 3s work with the Tier 2s. So the Tier 3s are the smallest, most vulnerable suppliers in that whole supply chain. All of them, if they have a contract to supply an existing vehicle program at one of the automakers building vehicles somewhere in North America, they're operating already on razor thin profit margins. They don't have the room. Matter of fact, I reported here and I shared with you all the drama at Stellantis over a couple of their suppliers even outside of this current situation going to court because they're in contracts that they were losing money. They could not profitably meet the terms of the contract because of raising prices of their raw materials and Stellantis didn't want to accommodate them. So, as a result, they stopped shipping and Stellantis took them to court.

Speaker 2:

Imagine now if you have a whole industry that is sensitive to these Automakers. You pick one. They're building in Canada, they're building in Mexico, they have parts plants in all three countries and it's very, very involved and it takes time and it's a very complicated, very involved, very well-timed dance that they do. For the last 40 years the auto industry has employed something what they called just-in-time inventory. They started that in the 1980s because they found that they had a lot of money, millions and millions of dollars tied up in what they call work and process inventory Partially assembled vehicles, partially assembled parts sitting here in massive quantities in massive kind of inventories here, there and everywhere. It added up fast as they got rid of those and they got more efficient.

Speaker 2:

There's a blessing and a curse, and we learned this during the pandemic. The blessing is that tightly choreographed logistically, that they can have parts brought to the line minutes before it's required to be added to a vehicle coming down the line at that precise time. So it's a complicated dance they do and it's very, very tight. And we're talking just here. But honestly, automakers, regardless of bake source materials around the world, so to time all that and make it work right, that 50, 60, 70 vehicles an hour come off that line like clockwork, with everything coming in just in time, means that they have very little room for error, very little room for problems, very little room for disrupt, very little room for problems, very little room for disruptions in the chain. And again we saw that during the pandemic, where you couldn't buy a new car because they didn't have the parts, because this part of the supply chain down that part, or they couldn't get shipping or the ports were tied up. It was ugly With the tariffs you're looking at that same level of ugly.

Speaker 2:

So let me give you a scenario. In the case of Porsche and Audi, they could have a plan, but even if they decided to do it, like I said earlier, it would take two to three years and that's moving pretty quick and they never said in this automotive news industry piece what vehicles they could offer up for American manufacture. Obviously, it would have to make economic sense for them to bring it over, so it's not going to be an inexpensive vehicle. It would make more sense for them to import something that they make a profit on if they're going to spend all this additional money, something they can make a profit on. If they're going to spend all this additional money, bear in mind BMW, volvo and Mercedes-Benz already build vehicles in the United States of America, and BMW has been doing it for years. As a matter of fact, bmw exports a lot of what they build in their plant in North Carolina to 110 different countries, what they build in their plant in North Carolina to 110 different countries. Volvo moved manufacturing from China to the United States for their S60, which was recently discontinued, so there's a move afoot to bring manufacturing back.

Speaker 2:

The question is, depending on how this works, you may not see the benefit of it for a number of years and if things change again, they can suddenly find out that in the middle of them changing over that now the winds of change have changed again. The automotive industry is a very capital intensive, long lead time industry. What I mean by that is this is not anything that they can do on a dime in months. Flip a switch, grab something new. It's planning locations, contracts they would have to build on the site, get equipment, hire workers, get the manufacturing equipment in, test it, verify it. All of that takes time, even if they were moving quick. You're looking at two to three years and that's from today. If they made that decision today and they had a place to do it whether they did it in South Carolina in the scout plant or they did it at Chattanooga, tennessee two to three years and that's everything breaking right. Two to three years and that's everything breaking right.

Speaker 2:

If they made that decision today and it's unknown how many billions with a B, they would have to spend, even at those sites to get everything up and running, because it's not like they can use the existing assembly lines that are there for the products they need to build and pull over. And then, like I said, there's a matter of can we hire the people that do it? Do we have enough people we can hire and train and get the lines up and running? All of that takes time and money. We'll see. The tech industry pitches a new way to wage war to the Department of Defense. You are listening to the Tech Mobility Show.

Speaker 3:

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Speaker 2:

Social media is the main place to be these days, and we are no exception.

Speaker 2:

I'm Ken Chester of the Tech Mobility Show.

Speaker 2:

If you enjoy my program, then you will also enjoy my weekly Facebook videos, from my latest vehicle reviews to timely commentary of a variety of mobility and technology-related topics.

Speaker 2:

These short features are designed to inform and delight you. Be sure to watch, like and follow us on Facebook. You can find us by typing the Tech Mobility Show in the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to our Facebook page. Social media is the place to be these days. We're no exception. I'm ken chester, the tech mobility show. If you enjoy my program, then you will also enjoy my weekly instagram videos, from the latest vehicle reviews to timely commentary on a variety of mobility and technology related topics. These short features are designed to inform and delight you be sure to watch, like and follow us on Instagram. You can find us by typing the Tech Mobility Show in the search bar. For those of you that listen to podcasts, we have just the one for you. Hi, I'm Ken Chester. Tech Mobility Topics is a podcast where I upload topic-specific videos each week, shorter than a full show. These bite-sized programs are just the thing, particularly if this is Sea Island, georgia.

Speaker 5:

Choice of people who could vacation anywhere. Here you will find the world-famous Cloister, a magnificent resort when the red carpet treatment begins with a 1965 Mercury Chosen by the Cloister as their courtesy car for special guests. A new kind of Mercury, now in the Lincoln Continental tradition. A gracefully proportioned Mercury with meticulous coachwork and the most quiet of rides. Built-in air conditioning is just one of many luxury options that make driving this Mercury truly pleasurable. That make driving this Mercury truly pleasurable. What better way to explore the ruins of the old historic fort or the nearby fishing village? Isn't this the way you'd like to drive? You can in a 1965 Mercury, now in the Lincoln Continental Tradition.

Speaker 2:

Now in the Lincoln Continental Tradition? Now in the Lincoln Continental Tradition, wonder what they meant by that. The 1965 Mercury and I believe it was a Monterey, my uncle had one of those Dark blue is a pretty car, an elegant car. But I guess the question is from a marketing standpoint, were they trying to make it look like a Lincoln on the cheap or an expensive Mercury? That I'm really not sure. When they said now in the Lincoln Mercury tradition, which suggests that it's a cut above even a regular Mercury, but if that's the case, why isn't it a Lincoln?

Speaker 2:

I got many questions but I can tell you that car, where they considered that a midsize or intermediate car today would be considered a large car and the rest is history, as they say. But 1965, in the Lincoln Continental tradition, we don't know anything about horsepower other than it has air conditioning and it's comfortable and you look good. Those are the things they talked about in the 60s, let alone whether it was safe and what kind of safety features it had, what kind of a fuel economy it got and you know how long it lasted, which wasn't long. Those vehicles built then didn't cost much, but you were lucky to get 100,000 miles out of them back then. Yeah, getting over 100,000 miles back in the 60s was a miracle, although some did, but most didn't. So for that, a few years ago, I asked during a segment if AI could fight an ethical war. That was my thought. As AI was becoming into its own, I wondered if they could program into it ethics in how you would fight war, which seems like an oxymoron in a way, because war is terrible and horrible and hopefully a last resort, at least for countries that are supposed to have the upper hand in morality and common sense. But apparently that was the wrong question, at least today. The issue now is to fight a war that is AI-infused, with a much lower cost, easy to produce and mass-manufactured weapons that could be easily resupplied during war times. As I always say, what could possibly go wrong? Because I got questions. This is topic A.

Speaker 2:

Right now there is a move afoot to modernize the US military. The weapons systems, the planes, the Navy, the Army everything that the military uses is millions and billions of dollars. I'll give you an example the newest aircraft carrier that they have in the fleet is the Gerald R Ford. It took 10 years to build and it cost just that one aircraft carrier $13 billion. If you're looking at fighter aircraft, they're in millions of dollars apiece, and if you get in a real specialized equipment, hundreds of millions. These programs could run into the billions of dollars, and it's been that way forever, except that the world is changing and, like everything else, how wars are approached are changing.

Speaker 2:

This is where me and this article from Fast Money or Fast Company, I'm sorry are going to deviate. They're contending that using AI-infused drones to track, attack, monitor, respond to threats is the way to go, that you can build them for a fraction of these programs. They gave an example in the article and I'm going to read the example just to give you an idea, because they're not entirely wrong. They talked about one example, a military operation that took place one night this past April, after Iran fired more than 300 missiles and self-destructing drones at Israel from, simultaneously, iran, iraq, yemen and Lebanon. Nobody died. Only a handful of missiles reached their targets, and it's US technology that shot down most of them, but the high-tech missiles that repelled the assault collectively cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The military experts said the weapons Iran fired were much cheaper. The military experts said the weapons Iran fired were much cheaper. Each of those drones. Self-destructive drones that they sent over could be made for 50 grand each. The US response included SM-3 missiles that can cost $28 million each. So let me guess we sent a $28 million missile up to shoot down a $50,000 drone. Yeah, where is the economics in that? And that is kind of the basis for where we're going.

Speaker 2:

My argument is not that we need to take a fresh look. My concern on this whole thing, as we are making that move to AI, as we are making that move to easy to produce and mass manufactured weapons, it bothers me because anything that gets easy to produce can be copied. If it can be copied, it can be ferreted to our enemies and those that would do us harm. Also, nowhere in this article it talks about the new crop of defense contractors coming up with this new technology. Does it talk about the robustness of the security that controls the command and control security software and AI that control all this stuff? What guarantees it won't be hacked? What guarantees that it won't have a bug in it? And if it does, where's the fail? Safe? Because their goal, their point, is to make it autonomous, a relative level of autonomous.

Speaker 2:

Now they do say in the article that there will be a level of human supervision and control. But I can't get past a movie that was made in the 1980s called War Games and obviously the computer there was very crude compared to what we're looking at now. But the military had given over control of attack and weapon sequence and tactics to the computer. The computer went rogue and almost caused the end of the world as we know it in that movie. My concern here, obviously it's a bunch of different things, but as a network together, ai-infused, semi-autonomous, in most cases an autonomous to some where's the control? Where is the human control point that says no, this is false. No, no, we're going to abort. It says it will have human responsibility, but it doesn't say control, meaning that somebody somewhere in the middle of this can make a decision. Because AI right now is not ready for prime time. It still hallucinates, it still has issues. So I'm a little concerned right now that they are proposing this as the be all end all. Maybe in five to 10 years China's there. We need to be there, but we also need to make sure that it is robust, safe and fail safe. That's my concern. More work than anybody can handle. Architects step up to rebuild Los Angeles.

Speaker 2:

This is the Tech Mobility Show. Do you listen to podcasts? Seems that most people do. Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. If you missed any of our weekly episodes on the radio, our podcast is a great way to listen. You can find the Tech Mobility Podcast just about anywhere you can enjoy podcasts. Be sure to follow us from Apple Podcasts, iheart Radio and many platforms in between. We are there. Just enter the Tech Mobility Podcast in the search bar. Wherever you listen to podcasts, social media, it's the place to be, and we're no exception. Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the TechMobility show. Several times a week, I post to TikTok several of the topics that I cover on my weekly radio show. It's another way to keep up on mobility, technology news and information. I've built quite a library of short videos for your viewing pleasure, so be sure to watch, like and subscribe. That's the Tech Mobility Show on TikTok. Check it out.

Speaker 2:

As the vastness of the destruction due to wildfires became known in Los Angeles, the city's large architecture and design community knew that they would be called upon to help in the massive rebuilding effort Rather than compete. More than 350 Los Angeles area designers came together, which is amazing. This is Top topic B. I can't even begin to imagine the cost of rebuilding, all the crazy stuff that goes on in clearing the land and getting estimates and getting insurance settlements, and finally, when you get all that done and you're able to get the lot cleared and okay, if you've decided to rebuild and we talked maybe three years ago about climate refugees and we talked specifically about California so let's say you live in the Pacific Palisades, which is an upscale tony community in greater Los Angeles. A lot of it got destroyed by fire. A lot of well-known people lost their homes. Right now, the demand to find an architect to even start thinking about building, rebuilding, building better it's going to be crazy. So LA, which has this big community of architects and designers, rather than compete against each other, they figured quickly there was going to be plenty in fact more than enough work to go around. They decided to collaborate and by collaborating they became a resource. They're using Slack to do it, but all sorts of resources. So small firms, large firms, firms that aren't even in a home building but need to know some of this other stuff for civic projects and commercial or government projects can tap into it, which I think is pretty amazing.

Speaker 2:

But the bigger question how much is all this going to cost? How many insurance companies are going to go broke Because California had a problem with insurance companies leaving the state no longer insuring? Will the state be responsible for that tab? Will the federal government chip in anything? And how many years is it going to take? This is not something that's going to be one and done in a year or two. You're looking at maybe five, 10 years at least of rebuilding, clearing, settling Insurance claims. Honestly, at this magnitude will probably take six months to a year just to even get your money. And that's assuming that the insurance company is still solvent. Still, you had insurance to begin with.

Speaker 2:

What about the people who didn't? What about the people who took that risk, rolled the dice they own their home and they said we're going to self-insure Now they lost everything. I don't even know where to start. I really don't. But to get back to this, I thought this was phenomenal because, for a field often defined by competition, these designers are collectively wrapping their heads around the recovery to come, and hundreds of people logged into the Zoom call. That was the initial call. Within three or four days, their Slack group was three to four hundred people.

Speaker 2:

This workspace that they set up is part resource library, part ad hoc task force. There are about a dozen separate channels focusing on various sides of the architecture profession in the context of the wildfire recovery. One channel is aimed at helping architects understand how to work within the strictures of the city's LA Department of Building and Safety, another one sheds light on the process of handling claims with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and still another is a smattering of information and personal experience on dealing with fire insurance claims. Good luck with that. One particularly active channel has formed around the idea of creating what's being dubbed the Rebuild LA Handbook, compiling information homeowners can use as they venture into rebuilding their lost homes.

Speaker 2:

Here's a question, and this article did not address it, but I ask it If your house is level due to fire and we're going to say you're one of the blessed ones, you still had insurance and the insurance company's paying the claim and it's enough to rebuild, which is a bunch of ands, but let's go there Does city code require you to build to current code? Let's say your house is 50 years old, okay, and with improvements, but still about 50, 60 years old, maybe because a lot of these homes were older. How much more money will meeting the current code add to the cost of construction, assuming you can get it to do it? Because the architects which is it's great, it's wonderful, it's fantastic to have architects because you need them. But you're going to need builders, you're going to need construction folks, you're going to need masons and carpenters and folks that hang sheet rock, electricians and plumbers. You're going to take a while because right now every single one of those, probably within three, four hundred miles of la, is probably getting phone calls. So, while the architect part is awesome because that's an important first step to even figure out the plans, getting the materials affordable, getting the people who know the various disciplines you're gonna need need in order to build it good luck.

Speaker 2:

And you're looking at years. It could be one, two, three years before you can even build it. So, yes, it's great that the architects are going to step up and help and maybe you have architectural plans in your hand in six months to rebuild the house you want to build. Question is how long is it going to take you to actually secure a contractor? How long will that contractor take to secure the plumber, the electrician, the drywall folks, the framing folks, roofing folks heat. You know climate control folk. You're going to need all of them to build the thing and right now they're all in demand within 300 or 400 miles of LA, and that's assuming nothing else happens. They're talking about mudslides now and of course there's always the risk of earthquakes. So assuming nothing else bad happens in LA, you could be looking at 5 to 10 years, with architectural and design being an important first step.

Speaker 2:

One thing I want to add here while Pacific Palisades was the well-heeled Tony community that could afford these architects, the Eaton Fire was more in a middle-class neighborhood that still has needed those services. So the question for the architects is are there any architectural houses that can offer these people something affordable to help them at least get plans together to build a home? Maybe they come up with some sort of a variety of standard plans which will lower the cost, which would be really great, and this article doesn't talk about that. But for poorer communities that would be great if you had maybe five different plans that they could do that would meet all the standards. You could pick one and you've got contractors that know, and you know exactly down to the last nail what you're going to need, as opposed to the unique all kinds of stuff that you had prior to the fire. I mean, granted, it means you're going to have some sameness, but having a roof over your head is kind of important right now, as opposed to cosmetic value. Having a safe roof that's going to be fire-resistant going forward. If they let you build back where you were, which is another question that's a state and a local city question. It's a lot of questions here. I mean I brought this up. I think it's awesome that the architects are stepping up, but it's the first step in many, many steps, from the time they lost that home to the time they move into the new one. And this is to get to this point means insurance payments happened and you're at a point where you can clear a lot, or your lot is cleared so that you can even start. So yeah, and I don't have a dollar amount, but they said it's in the billions of dollars, maybe even tens to hundreds of billions and at least five to ten years, easy assuming. Again, nothing else bad happens in LA. So hats off to the architects. But yeah, I want to hear about the contractors.

Speaker 2:

Deepseek is China's version of ChatGPT, which is turning the AI community on its head. We are the Tech Mobility Show. To learn more about the Tech Mobility Show, start by visiting our website. Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. The website is a treasure trove of information about me and the show, as well as where to find it on the radio across the country. Keep up with the happenings of the Tech Mobility Show by visiting techmobilityshow. That's techmobilityshow. You can also drop us a line at talk at techmobilityshow. You can also drop us a line at talk at techmobilityshow.

Speaker 2:

Did you know that TechMobility has a YouTube channel? Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the TechMobility Show. Each week, I upload a few short videos of some of the hot topics that I cover during my weekly radio program. I've designed these videos to be informative and entertaining. It's another way to keep up on current mobility and technology news and information. Be sure to watch, like and subscribe to my channel. That's the Tech Mobility Show on YouTube. Check it out.

Speaker 3:

Are you tired of juggling multiple apps and platforms for meetings, webinars and staying connected? Look no further than AONmeetingscom, the all-in-one browser-based platform that does it all. With AONmeetings, you can effortlessly communicate with clients, host virtual meetings and webinars and stay in touch with family and friends all in one place and for one price. Here's the best part you can enjoy a 30-day free trial. It's time to simplify your life and boost your productivity. Free trial it's time to simplify your life and boost your productivity AONmeetingscom where innovation meets connection.

Speaker 2:

Get started today and revolutionize the way you communicate. Social media is the place to be these days, and we're no exception. I'm Ken Chester of the Tech Mobility Show. If you enjoy my program, then you will also enjoy my weekly Instagram videos, from the latest vehicle reviews to timely commentary on a variety of mobility and technology-related topics. These short features are designed to inform and delight you. Be sure to watch, like and follow us on Instagram. You can find us by typing the Tech Mobility Show in the search bar.

Speaker 2:

With the introduction of DeepSeek, china's version of ChatGPT, america's AI industry was left reeling. Deepseek not only outperformed even the most recent version of ChatGPT, but it cost a fraction and I do mean a fraction of what American AI tech companies are spending in development. Talk about a game changer, and we're going to talk about what all the fuss is about. This is topic C. Let me back up first. I think what I need to explain is what is deep seek? Let me explain it, and then I'm going to get to the meat of matter, which is always about the money, and then we're going to work backwards. What this is is that. Let me. Let me get to it here. I'm sorry, here we go. Here we go. That's the right place.

Speaker 2:

Deep seek is a chinese artificial intelligence lab. It was founded in 2023, and it's based in one of the provinces I'm not even going to try to butcher the Chinese name of the province and it's released an open source AI model, also called DeepSeek. Now let me stop. If you've heard the term open source, what that means is it's open to everybody, everybody can work on it, everybody can see it, everybody can have input to it, and a lot of your free software is open source, meaning people can improve upon it and it's available to everybody.

Speaker 2:

The latest version of DeepSeek, called DeepSeek V3, appears to rival and, in many cases, outperform OpenAI's chat GPT, including its GPT-40 model and its latest O1 reasoning model. However, the idea that DeepSeek V3 chatbot could outperform OpenAI's chat GPT, as well as Meta's Llama 3.1 and Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 3.5, isn't the only thing unnerving America's AI experts. Hmm, it's the fact that DeepSeek appears to have developed it in just a few months. Check that, using AI's hardware that is far from state-of-the-art. Check that, and at a minute fraction of what other companies have spent developing their large language model chatbots. How much did it cost? According to the company's technical report, the total cost of developing the model and I'm talking about DeepSeek came to $5.576 million. Hold it, I said million with an M. For less than $6 million, deepseek has managed to create a large language model, while other companies have spent billions developing their own. For example, in just training GPT-4, openai spent $100 million. That's just training it. The dominoes fall all over the place. Here's what this is.

Speaker 2:

Let's come from a couple different directions. Let me talk about a couple directions that impact you directly. Up till now, it was believed, in order to develop AI at the pace and at the depth and the complexity and the maturity that was going to be required going forward, that you'd have to build these large data centers that used all this energy and cost billions of dollars and use NVIDIA's most latest, fastest, fanciest, most expensive computer chipsets. You're going to spend billions of dollars and you're going to put one heck of a strain on the power grid. That was till DeepSeek got introduced. It don't use hardly any power because of American restrictions on technology available to China. They could not get NVIDIA's best chips. They were using mid-range chips off the shelf. This is like building something that will outrun the Lamborghini by going to AutoZone and buying parts.

Speaker 2:

Think about that for a minute. That's exactly what this is. What if you're an investor in an upstart AI company and you, just before this happened, valued the round in billions of dollars? Then this happens and you find out that all that money would be missed. Well, now these people would have to justify.

Speaker 2:

If DeepSeek can do it for less than $6 million, why are you asking for over a billion dollars to do something that's not even as good? And they've already done it and they will get better. By the way, which has been the big thing With technology right now, there are variations and versions and versions. It doesn't stay still. No doubt they're working on V4 of DeepSeek. That will even be better and probably faster and use less energy. That is the big thing, on top of everything of outperforming these folks who spend billions of dollars. Deepseek doesn't use that much energy and they don't even use a fancy hardware or anything that's even close to state-of-the-art, and they did it in a couple of months.

Speaker 2:

So if you're an investor in an AI upstart, you're asking some hard questions right now how come they can do it for this amount of money? And you need to justify, because everything you just showed me is bogus. If DeepSeek can do it for a fraction of the cost, with parts, without using any of the stuff you want to buy, burning my money, then you need to show me how this differs and why they can outperform what you're showing me right now. Right now, they're outperforming everything that's in the market right now and they developed it in a couple of months for less than six million dollars. I'm not even going to tell you what Meta, who owns OpenAI, google and these other folks have spent in the billions of dollars.

Speaker 2:

And oh yeah, you can use DeepSeek. You can go to the Apple App Store and download it for free. You can use it yourself and right now it's the number one app in the Apple App Store. Right now. If you want to use OpenAI, it will cost you $200. But if you want to use this, it's free. Did you hear me? Free? Not only is it faster, cheaper, better uses less energy, but it's free.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, let that sink in for a minute. That is why all this rumbling that you may not have understood. You heard deep seek and you didn't really figure out what all the fuss was about. It is because they figured out, in the technological world we live in, that they could do it faster, cheaper, with less fuss, off-the-shelf parts and beat everybody. That's where they're at right now. They just ruined.

Speaker 2:

The valuations of most AI companies in America Got tore up when they came out and the truth came out and they found out that it was performing better. Now it's not perfect None of it is but they're getting better and in two years' time ain't no telling how much better this will be, and they'll do it for a fraction. Meanwhile, if you're Meta, if you're Microsoft, if you're Google, you got some inflection to do, because now you can't justify the money you're trying to spend and your investors ain't going to have it, because that's going to be a problem with fiduciary duty. Saying how can you do this for all this money? You're wasting this fraud somewhere is what they're going to say, and investors are hardcore a lot. You don't spend their money. So they got some rethinking to do.

Speaker 2:

It should be interesting to see how the American AI community responds to deep seek Right now. It's a game changer and we'll see how the American AI community responds to DeepSeek Right now. It's a game changer and we'll see how far they get. It ain't perfect, but it's come a long way. It will only get better, and that's the thing. It's just unbelievable how this did. It means anybody can do this. Now We've come to the end of our program. Be sure to join me right here next time. This has been the Tech Mobility Show.

Speaker 1:

The Tech Mobility Show is a copywritten production of Tech Mobility Productions Incorporated. Any rebroadcast, retransmission or any other use is prohibited without the written consent of Tech Mobility.

Speaker 2:

To podcasts we have just the one for you. Hi, I'm Ken Chester. Tech Mobility Topics is a podcast where I upload topic-specific videos each week Shorter than a full show. These bite-sized programs are just the thing, particularly if you're interested in a particular topic covered on the weekly radio show. From Apple Podcasts to iHeartRadio and many podcast platforms in between, we got you covered. Just enter TechMobility topics in the search bar. Wherever you listen to podcasts, social media, it's the place to be. We no exception.

Speaker 2:

Hi, I'm ken chester, host the tech mobility show. Several times a week, I post to tiktok several of the topics that I cover on my weekly radio show. It's another way to keep up on mobility technology news and information. I've built quite a library of short videos for your viewing pleasure, so be sure to watch, like and subscribe. That's the tech mobilityility Show on TikTok. Check it out. To learn more about the Tech Mobility Show, start by visiting our website. Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. The website is a treasure trove of information about me and the show, as well as where to find it on the radio across the country. Of information about me and the show, as well as where to find it on the radio across the country. Keep up with the happenings at the Tech Mobility Show by visiting techmobilityshow. That's techmobilityshow. You can also drop us a line at talk at techmobilityshow.

Speaker 2:

Do you listen to podcasts? Seems that most people do. Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. If you missed any of our weekly episodes on the radio, our podcast is a great way to listen. You can find the Tech Mobility Podcast just about anywhere. You can enjoy podcasts. Be sure to follow us from Apple Podcasts, iheart Radio and many platforms in between. We are there. Just enter the Tech Mobility Podcast in the search bar, wherever you listen to.

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