"With dirt cheap models like deepseek-v4-flash that will run "forever" on $10, the answer for me is clearly: no."

When it's free, you are the product.

Deepseek flash is open weight, this means we can download and run that model without any connection to deepseek, no data/tokens/usage data ever reaches them. They cannot make us their product.

	▲	Gigachad an hour ago \| parent [-]
		All those random api providers are absolutely scooping up your data though. And the hardware to run it locally is absurdly expensive.

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prplxd_nihilist 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I see many people saying deepseek and other chinese providers have always been profitable. Also they show their training costs publicly. Can't say for sure since I have not used it personally, but I think they'll for sure outlive the western SOTAs.

	▲	LogicFailsMe an hour ago \| parent [-]
		OpenAI apparently runs a profitable inference business with 40% gross margin, but their advertising budget is nutso and their real costs are pretraining and research. I suspect Deepseek's comp is not predicated on capturing the lightcone of all future value, some googling insinuates their top pay is $212K US which would support that suspicion. Compare and contrast with the $1.35M and up at OpenAI.

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amrit3128 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Ah yes, I'm sure Trovalds and Stallman are harvesting my data through free software, aren't they? This argument is used by boomers who were fed cold war era propoganda that surely everybody is selfish, and you're always at fault.

	▲	kipchak 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Think they're talking about things that are free as in beer but not free as in freedom, not FOSS