Tingshu Wang/Reuters
A senior researcher from China's AI firm DeepSeek made a rare public appearance on Friday, where he warned about the technology's long-term risks.
AI could eliminate most jobs in the next 10 to 20 years, said Chen Deli during a panel discussion at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen.
"During this period, societal structures will also be greatly challenged," he said.
"Tech companies should play the role of guardians of humanity, at the very least, protecting human safety, then helping to reshape societal order," he added.
DeepSeek has kept a low profile since making headlines earlier this year. The CEO of the Hangzhou-based startup, Liang Wenfeng, has not appeared in public since a televised meeting with China's leader Xi Jinping in February.
On Friday, Chen shared the stage with executives from five other companies collectively known as China's "six little dragons" of AI — a group that includes Alibaba Cloud and Unitree.
Chen said the short-term impact of AI would likely be positive. He dubbed this the "honeymoon phase," when AI cannot independently complete tasks, and people can use AI to boost their productivity.
But over time, the risks could outweigh the rewards. Chen predicted that in the next five to 10 years, AI systems will become increasingly capable, and the workforce as a whole will have to contend with job cuts.
"During this period, tech companies should serve as whistleblowers, warning society of potential risks," he said.
DeepSeek and the US-China AI race
Since its breakout earlier this year, DeepSeek has become a symbol of China's technological ambitions and a point of national pride amid intensifying US-China tensions over the AI race.
Founded in 2023, DeepSeek jolted the AI industry and the US stock market with its low-cost reasoning model, R1, unveiled in January. The company said its R1 model can match top competitors, such as ChatGPT's o1, at a fraction of the cost.
OpenAI wrote in a letter to the US government in March that while America still leads in AI, "DeepSeek shows that our lead is not wide and is narrowing."
In August, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman unveiled GPT-oss, a family of large language models with "open weights." Analysts told Business Insider in an August report that the move was likely influenced by the growing success of open-sourced Chinese models, including those from DeepSeek.
Ray Wang, the research director for semiconductors and emerging technology at Futurum Group, told Business Insider in August that OpenAI's GPT-oss models "narrowed the gap" with China, citing their "competitive performance benchmarks and sizes against their Chinese counterparts."
If the US fails to keep pace in open-source AI, Chinese models could garner more traction and become the default foundation for applications and research globally, Wang said.
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