576: ChatGPT’s Biggest Threat? China’s AI Breakthrough Could Change Everything

Summary

Podcast Summary: Episode 576 - ChatGPT’s Biggest Threat? China’s AI Breakthrough Could Change Everything

Introduction

In Episode 576 of The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast With Steve Chou, host Steve Chou and co-host Tony delve into the latest developments in artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on China's newly released AI model, Deep Seek. Released amid significant market movements, Deep Seek poses a formidable challenge to industry leaders like OpenAI's ChatGPT. The hosts explore the implications of this breakthrough on privacy, the AI market, and the broader landscape of online business and e-commerce.

China’s AI Breakthrough: Deep Seek

Steve Chou opens the discussion by highlighting the sudden crash of Nvidia stock, attributing it to China's launch of Deep Seek—a powerful, open-source AI model. He explains that Deep Seek has been trained using ten times the resources typically employed, allowing it to outperform existing models like ChatGPT while being offered for free.

Steve Chou [00:00]: "China's release of the new Deep Seek AI... investors took it as people need to buy less Nvidia chips."

Tony expresses surprise at the rapid development, questioning the longevity and potential banning of Deep Seek, especially in light of past incidents like the TikTok ban.

Tony [03:04]: "Is this something that will be around because... is this going to get banned?"

Privacy Concerns and Data Implications

A significant portion of the conversation centers on the privacy implications of using Deep Seek. Unlike OpenAI, which allows users to opt-out of data collection to some extent, Deep Seek mandates the submission of personal information, including email addresses. This raises concerns about data being accessible to the Chinese government.

Steve Chou [04:22]: "By signing up for this and using their free service, you are passing all that information to the Chinese government, essentially."

Tony elaborates on the potential for AI-generated data to be used in criminal investigations, highlighting fears that vast amounts of user data could be exploited.

Tony [07:14]: "Can people, can law enforcement authorities, use your AI history?"

The hosts discuss the broader implications of collective data harvesting, suggesting that while individual data might seem harmless, aggregated information could pose significant national security threats.

Steve Chou [21:05]: "If everyone signs up for this free Chinese AI, the Chinese can make... massage the answers."

Comparison with Other AI Models

The discussion shifts to comparing Deep Seek with other AI models like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and Meta's Llama. Steve points out that while Deep Seek is open-source and freely available, running it requires substantial computing resources, which most individuals lack.

Steve Chou [15:09]: "Most people are not going to do that. And it does require... a hefty computer."

Tony shares personal experiences using different AI tools, noting the strengths and limitations of each. For example, ChatGPT excels as a general-purpose tool and aids in tasks like coding and mathematical calculations, whereas Claude is preferred for creative writing and generating scripts with more controlled outputs.

Tony [27:36]: "Chat GPT is my Google... I use that for a lot of those sorts of things."

Monetization of AI Tools

A critical part of the conversation revolves around the sustainability of free AI models like Deep Seek. The hosts debate how such models can remain free, suggesting that governmental subsidies or data monetization (through ads or selling user information) are likely paths.

Tony [34:09]: "Deep Seek, there's no monetization play. It's a data play."

They compare this to U.S. companies like Google and Meta, which offer free services funded by advertising revenue and data collection. The implication is that while users may access AI tools for free, their data becomes a valuable asset for these companies.

Steve Chou [37:04]: "The first business model that they're going to try AIs with... ads in the search results."

Practical Uses of AI in E-commerce and Online Business

Despite the concerns, the hosts acknowledge the immense utility of AI tools in e-commerce and online business. They share examples of how AI assists in tasks ranging from generating contracts to creating content and optimizing marketing strategies. Steve mentions how his mother uses ChatGPT to write scientific papers, illustrating the accessibility and practical benefits of AI.

Steve Chou [18:40]: "She wants to marry Claude. But imagine like most people haven't even scratched the surface."

Tony provides insights into using AI for medical queries and developing educated questions for healthcare consultations, underscoring AI's role in enhancing everyday tasks.

Tony [19:51]: "AI can give you like a list of questions that are pretty educated... before you go to the doctor."

Final Thoughts and Recommendations

The episode concludes with the hosts reflecting on the future of AI tools and their impact on both individual privacy and the e-commerce landscape. They emphasize the importance of understanding the trade-offs between free access and data privacy, advising listeners to stay informed about the AI models they choose to use.

Steve Chou [40:28]: "If you want every user in the US using it, then you gotta make it free... they're making all this money with selling API access."

Conclusion

Episode 576 provides a comprehensive exploration of China's Deep Seek AI model and its potential to disrupt the current AI landscape dominated by Western companies like OpenAI. Steve Chou and Tony articulate the dual-edged sword of technological advancement—balancing impressive capabilities with significant privacy and security concerns. For e-commerce entrepreneurs and online business owners, understanding these dynamics is crucial as AI continues to integrate into various aspects of digital commerce.

Notable Quotes:

• Steve Chou [00:00]: "China's release of the new Deep Seek AI... investors took it as people need to buy less Nvidia chips."
• Tony [03:04]: "Is this something that will be around because... is this going to get banned?"
• Steve Chou [04:22]: "By signing up for this and using their free service, you are passing all that information to the Chinese government, essentially."
• Tony [07:14]: "Can people, can law enforcement authorities, use your AI history?"
• Steve Chou [15:09]: "Most people are not going to do that. And it does require... a hefty computer."
• Tony [27:36]: "Chat GPT is my Google... I use that for a lot of those sorts of things."
• Tony [34:09]: "Deep Seek, there's no monetization play. It's a data play."

Timestamped Insights:

• [00:00-02:36]: Introduction and brief mention of upcoming Seller Summit.
• [02:36-38:18]: In-depth discussion on Deep Seek, privacy concerns, comparison with other AI models, and monetization strategies.
• [38:18-41:02]: Further exploration of AI tools' applications in business and personal use, emphasizing data privacy.
• [41:02-End]: Final thoughts on the impact of AI models on the market and user behavior.

For more detailed discussions and strategies related to e-commerce and AI, tuning into this episode is highly recommended.

Transcript

[Steve Chou]

Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to E commerce and online business. In this episode, Tony and I talk about AI models, especially the latest free one that came out of China called Deep Seek and its implications on privacy and the AI market. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale For Seller Summit 2025 over at sellers summit.com the Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high level advice, mine is a curriculum based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e commerce business entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000ft. I personally hate large events, so the Seller Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast and we've sold out every single year for the past eight years. If you are an e commerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to to May 8th. Right now this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellers summit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show. Welcome back to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today Tony and I, we're going to talk about AI because there's just been so many things happening. I woke up the other day to my Nvidia stock crashing at 16 and I was like, what's going on? And it had to do with China's release of the new Deep Seek AI, which ironically I'd heard about the week before and I was gonna try it and then you know, all this news came out saying, oh, they used like 10x the resources to train that model and they're giving it out for free open source. And apparently I think the investors took it as oh well that means people need to buy less Nvidia chips and so and then OpenAI, obviously, who's the leader that runs ChatGPT, they crashed because this model is supposedly better than open AI's model ChatGPT, and it's free. So anyway, we're not going to talk about the news today because that'll bore everyone. I'm pretty Sure.

[Tony]

I don't know, I'm like, already invested. Just.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, are you really?

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Tony]

I am.

[Steve Chou]

Well, the other thing that happened, like this morning, I don't know if you follow, Alibaba released a model.

[Tony]

Okay. But didn't they talk about this at the conference we went to last year? Wasn't this, like, up and coming?

[Steve Chou]

No, no, no, no. Alibaba at the conference talked about using AI to help with sourcing.

[Tony]

Okay. Yes. So this is a whole different.

[Steve Chou]

But this is an AI model like ChatGPT.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

That's supposedly better than ChatGPT. And the one that Deep. Deep Seat, which is the latest one that came out.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And they announced it today right before Chinese New Year.

[Tony]

Okay, I have so many questions. I have so many questions.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, sure.

[Tony]

My first question is, what is it called? Deep Seat. Deep Seat.

[Steve Chou]

Seek.

[Tony]

Seek. Seek. Okay. Deep Seek. So this is a Chinese product?

[Steve Chou]

It is. It's a Chinese open source project, which means all the source code for everything is all released and you can download it and run it on your, your laptop if you want.

[Tony]

Right. So my first question is, since we just recorded a podcast on the Uprise and fall of TikTok.

[Steve Chou]

Yes.

[Tony]

Is this something that will be around because. Is this going to get banned?

[Steve Chou]

I don't want to talk about conspiracy theories here, but there's this conspiracy theory that now that China's lost TikTok, like, it's like a. You have to enter in all your information to get access to this model.

[Tony]

What's all your information?

[Steve Chou]

I think name? Actually, I didn't fill it out. I. I didn't completely fill it out. You used my email, but definitely email for sure.

[Tony]

Yep.

[Steve Chou]

But once you're in, all the things that you, you know, type into it.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

If you look at the terms of service, they're allowed to, you know, look at all that information.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Unlike OpenAI, where you can. I think there's a box that you can check or something where they won't, you know, look into all the stuff that you're typing in personally. Yeah, yeah.

[Tony]

So my. I wonder, like, will this, will this stand the test of Trump? I guess is the question what I'm.

[Steve Chou]

Saying, like, this is much more invasive, in my opinion than Tick Tock, because you're typing in questions about your everyday life. You're asking it stuff.

[Tony]

Yes, yes.

[Steve Chou]

Potentially giving, you know, the owners a lot more information.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

You get from Tick Tock.

[Tony]

Because I can only imagine I. Do you remember, Like, I don't know if I don't know, because I Don't use Google a whole lot anymore. And I don't know if ChatGPT does this, but you know how in Google you type in how do I? And then it will start finishing it for you.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

And like, the top one is always like, how do I poison my wife? Right. It's like, always something, like, really crazy. And you're like, are that many people searching for that? Or, like, how do I fake a car accident?

[Steve Chou]

Just your search history, that's all.

[Tony]

Not.

[Steve Chou]

Not mine. Mine's not like that at all.

[Tony]

But, you know, I'm saying, like, you can. When you start typing into Google, you can see, like, the most common things that people type type in. So I. So my thought is that people ask AI questions that they probably don't know the. They want. They don't want the rest of the world to know about.

[Steve Chou]

Yes. And by signing up for this and using their free service, you are passing all that information to the Chinese government, essentially.

[Tony]

Right. So then also, can it be used to convict you of a crime? Like, you can. I mean, you could go down a rabbit hole on this thing, but yes.

[Steve Chou]

So that's the conspiracy theory. I didn't want to even bring it up. But you brought it up.

[Tony]

Well, I'm so. I'm, like, so curious.

[Steve Chou]

And then the new Alibaba one came out. I don't even know what it's called. It's got some weird name, supposedly better than Deep Seek, literally just announced one week later. And it's better than open AI, it's better than Deep Seek, and once again, it is free.

[Tony]

And who owns that?

[Steve Chou]

Well, good question. It literally just came out this morning. So I just saw the headline, and I didn't.

[Tony]

But is it owned by Alibaba?

[Steve Chou]

I think so.

[Tony]

So that would also be Chinese, but.

[Steve Chou]

I think it's open source. Let me just do a quick Google Haul. Alibaba AI model. Is it open source?

[Tony]

Like, there's just no way that this Deep Seek is gonna be allowed to be used, especially if you said you can download it on your computer. If we won't let people have TikTok.

[Steve Chou]

It doesn't look like. I don't think the Alibaba one is open source, but the deep seq1 definitely is open source. Okay, so it looks like the Alibaba one's owned by Alibaba, but, you know, it's a Chinese company, so in theory, you know, the government could get access to all the queries that are typed in there.

[Tony]

Yeah, actually, that's another. Let's just get I want to get this out of the way because I'm now I'm not gonna be able to sleep at night. So you know how when you get, you get arrested, I mean, you don't know and I don't know.

[Steve Chou]

Oh yeah, I know. Yeah.

[Tony]

This is what happens when I spend a weekend with Andrea watching her true crime shows on tv. You know how they can use your Google search history or your computer? Our friend Kevin talks about this a lot. Like incognito isn't really incognito. So they can use your browsing history to help convict you of something. Can people, can law enforcement authorities, whatever, use your AI history? Like can they log into your. Is that also like, available for people to use to.

[Steve Chou]

Then, you know what's funny is these are not the questions that I think about in life, but I, I would imagine the answer is yes.

[Tony]

Well, it goes to the privacy issue. Right. It's not, it's not because you or, or planning on committing any crimes. It's more about if all of the. Because the whole reason why TikTok, you know, they banned it and then brought it back is the whole data issue. Right. And where's your data going and who has your data? And so to me, with these AI tools like this is basically overtaking Google. Right. It's going to be the new search. It's the new search for people. And so is that something that they can use then against you, for you, whatever?

[Steve Chou]

I think if the government subpoenaed that information, I mean, I don't know the answer, it hasn't happened yet. So I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know this is what I think is going to happen. Since we're talking about predictions here, I think that China is just going to make all these models for free because right now you have to pay for ChatGPT, you have to pay for Claude, and I think you have to pay for Gemini, actually. The higher tier.

[Tony]

Yes, you do.

[Steve Chou]

So China is just going to release all these models that are as good as what's out there for free and harvest all this information from people.

[Tony]

I agree.

[Steve Chou]

It's like the next tick tock but better.

[Tony]

But then what do you, what do you do with that information?

[Steve Chou]

What would you do as a Chinese person?

[Tony]

Yeah, well, you're Chinese, so don't you, don't you.

[Steve Chou]

I don't know what I would do. But you can mine it for information like based on what people are acquiring. It's kind of like Google. Right?

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

What are people interested in and then use that information for marketing. Or. And if you want to get really nefarious, you can, you know, introduce propaganda. I don't know.

[Tony]

Right. Like, I mean, because.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, like you can target. Here's, here's the big conspiracy theory. Once they have all these users, they can tailor the AI results.

[Tony]

Right?

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

To feed whatever information that they want. And what's funny about this is I think someone typed in Tiananmen Square into Deep Seek and I think there was nothing that. Right. No. So clearly it's already been tainted in some way. Yeah.

[Tony]

So that's, so, it's so interesting because they can, obviously they have the power to do this, but I like how we automatically assume that like Chachi, BT and Claude are not already doing that.

[Steve Chou]

The difference is it's an American company.

[Tony]

But you think Americans are. That's good.

[Steve Chou]

I don't, I, I don't. But supposedly in open AI's terms, and I never read these terms and privacy policies, but they're not supposed to. Well, right.

[Tony]

I mean, do you really believe, like genuine. I mean, I don't want to get all like, conspiracy theory.

[Steve Chou]

I don't believe this because. Okay, here's, here's a story that just kind of popped in my feed. And it was an older story, but you know how when you're just talking about something on your phone and all of a sudden you get an ad for it?

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

Well, it turns out there was a company that was listening.

[Tony]

Yeah. And they told us for so long, oh, we can't listen. It's against, it's not possible. It's against terms of service. They fed us that for years and.

[Steve Chou]

Zuckerberg still fed that to us. And in the end it was some third party company that was doing it through whatever, you know, whatever. Right.

[Tony]

It reminds me of when my kids were little and like I used to have to hide cookies after I made them. And they would always like wake up in the middle of the night and eat the cookies. And then I would, you know, I would confront the culprit and he was always like, it was obviously one of the boys. And he was like, I didn't take the cookies, Mom. And he didn't take them. He had his brother take them and then they both ate them. But it was like, I didn't do this. I'm fully aware of the other party that's doing it, but I'm gonna maintain my end. That's what it sounds like. The seven year old. I didn't take the cookie prank, but.

[Steve Chou]

I can't tell you how many people have signed up for Deep Seek already in just one week.

[Tony]

Don't you think that's terrifying?

[Steve Chou]

I mean, terrifying.

[Tony]

Did you sign up?

[Steve Chou]

No, I. I didn't sign up. I. I was afraid to because it asked me for all this. Well, you can sign up through Google. Ironically, with a Google.

[Tony]

Of course you can. Yes.

[Steve Chou]

Where, you know, Google will pass your email and all that stuff.

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

I was going to wait till someone else downloaded it and gave it to me so I could run it on my PC. Actually, one of my buddies is going to do that on a. On a burner box.

[Tony]

Okay. We need to have Kevin do it. He's probably got all the equipment.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, Kevin can probably do it. But, yeah, that was. This all happened in the last week and I'm still processing it. But I mean, free is pretty compelling, right?

[Tony]

Over 20. It's only 20 bucks a month, though.

[Steve Chou]

20 bucks a month. You know, that's a Netflix actually does even pay for a Netflix.

[Tony]

I don't know.

[Steve Chou]

They just raised their prices.

[Tony]

I know, everything's so expensive these days.

[Steve Chou]

I just wait, are you. I always want to ask you this. Are you paying for any tool right now? AI tool?

[Tony]

Yeah, I pay for Chat GPT. I'm about to switch it and pay for Claude and not pay for. But I haven't run out of the free CLAUDE yet. I don't use money.

[Steve Chou]

I run out of free Claude. Like, my kids use it.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

In like 20 minutes they're out.

[Tony]

Yeah. I don't. Now that I hired. I just hired a video editor and I'm going to start making more videos and scripts and stuff like that. I'm going to switch it over because I don't use like. I use ChatGPT. Like, for example, the other day when we had to switch our AWS login information and I couldn't figure out how to add you as a user and it wasn't super obvious. So you. I was like, I'll Google it. And you're like, chatgpt it. And I was like, but chatgpt isn't a verb yet. So let me keep saying Google. I mean, I was planning on looking at ChatGPT for the answer, but I was like, I don't know how to say that as a verb, but that's kind of how I use ChatGPT at this point is like today I was doing something in Google sheets and I needed to know how to create a formula. So I just went to ChatGPT and of course they tell you exactly. And with that stuff. I feel like ChatGPT is always, like, pretty correct. Like, you don't get in a rabbit hole of, like, this wasn't right. But yeah, with the script and stuff, I'll probably be working more with Claude, so I'll probably end up switching the paid subscription over there. But, yeah, $20 a month is. Is. You know, it adds up when you have a couple of those.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, just 20 bucks a month versus free.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And potentially better, you know, I mean.

[Tony]

I don't trust anything that's free. That's the problem.

[Steve Chou]

Well, that's you. But just think of, like the average American.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Right there. Let's just take the employees that work for Bumblebee. I know for a fact that they would go for the free version. They don't care. Yeah, right.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Over. Over the paid version. Even me today, actually, I recently just canceled my Mid Journey subscription. I tell you this in case you guys are listening. Mid Journey is like an image AI tool where you can just generate images, and I was using Those for my YouTube videos, thumbnails and whatnot. But the free ones are. They're not as good, but they're good enough.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

You know, so why. Why am I paying 10 to $20 a month for something that I can get for free?

[Tony]

As long as you don't have hands, you're fine.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. So same. Same goes. I mean, if. If this deep seat and this is something that you could actually, in theory, just run on your computer, I'm pretty sure most people aren't going to do it that way.

[Tony]

Yeah, I was gonna say that's my. That was. My next question for you is like, can the average person, like you say open source? That doesn't mean anything to me. I mean, I know what it is, but, like, I'm never going to take advantage of that.

[Steve Chou]

I think most people are not going to do that. And it does require kind of like a hefty computer. Like, you need a good video card. The reason why that was attractive to me was because right now, when you do image generation, it censors it. Like, if you wanted to do an image on, like, Trump, for example, or something like that, it would not let you do that.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

It doesn't let you do images of famous people. Just, you know, because I guess there could be a lot of abuse for that.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

But when you download the model and tweak it or whatever, you can do whatever you want with it.

[Tony]

Okay, so this is going to be a dumb question, but I. I promise you there's someone Listening that has this same misunderstanding that I do. So if you download it onto your computer, then how are they going to get any data if it's.

[Steve Chou]

That's correct. They can't. They cannot.

[Tony]

Okay, okay. That was. I couldn't make that connection.

[Steve Chou]

That's correct. They cannot. But like you said, no one's going to do that. Right. You have to. You have to spend like $1,000 on a video card, a couple thousand dollars to run the better. The better models, the bigger ones. And so we're talking, you know, maybe like a $3,000 expense just to be able to do this.

[Tony]

But if it's open source. And so let's say I'm. So could you. And potentially use this for. Let's just use Bumblebee as an example. Could you use the open source to build your own AI for Bumblebee for, like, customer service and like, all that, like, where is my order and those types of things? Or does it.

[Steve Chou]

I don't know about that bit, but. And here's why, like, let's say like 200 people decide to chat with Bowling be lens at once. My little PC is not gonna be able to handle that.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony]

So it's more about resources.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. For me, I would just use it as my own personal AI that I could just tweak and mainly generate images that I want to generate, because that's one of the reasons why I canceled Mid Journey. Also, like, I. I just wanted some basic. Like, I wasn't going to do anything malicious. Just some basic pictures of people who are well known. Right. Yeah. And it wouldn't let me do that. This is not where I thought the episode was going to go. Sorry, I guess you had so many questions.

[Tony]

I have a lot of. Okay, we can, we can, we can.

[Steve Chou]

Well, no, no, it's okay. I mean, what. What I wanted to talk about was like, all the models and everything that are out there just for people who are listening, that don't follow all this stuff. But I mean, that was the big news for the week, obviously, Deep sea, which caused markets to crash. And I think Alibaba's announcement today caused the markets to crash again today. Because I woke up this morning and, you know, seeing a bunch of red.

[Tony]

Interesting. So I guess the. So for the everyday AI user, I think every. Every AI tool, minus the new ones that have just been released, they have a paid tier.

[Steve Chou]

Yes.

[Tony]

So what would you tell someone? Because I'm always amazed. I feel like, because we live in this, like, digital marketing world, everybody we know has been using AI for like two years. Right. But then I talk to people who don't really live in this, this world and they either have heard of it, they use it a little bit, but they're not, you know. So I would say where do people get started if they want, if they haven't really jumped in yet? Because I just introduced one of my clients to it six weeks ago and she's literally said she wanted to marry Claude when I was with her this weekend.

[Steve Chou]

That's what my mom said. Because she has to write these scientific papers and her grammar isn't great. Right. She has all the data but she's hard for her to put on paper. She's like, oh my God, with ChatGPT, I can write these papers so quickly now.

[Tony]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And so she wants, she said something the same, along the same lines. Not Mary, but oh, she's marrying Claude.

[Tony]

My friend is marrying Claude.

[Steve Chou]

But imagine like most people haven't even scratched the surface. Like have you, have you used voice with ChatGPT where you can have a conversation with it?

[Tony]

No, my brother has, but I have not.

[Steve Chou]

I mean there's a whole bunch of functionality that most of the public has not even tried.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Yet. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store. I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in E commerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be [e-mail] free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and, and I'll send you the course right away. Once again, that's mywifequitterjob.com free. Now back to the show.

[Tony]

So one of the things that just, I think is very, a very public use case for AI that my brother has been doing is that he has been putting in like medical results. Like, and you know, cause you know how you go to the doctor and you know, maybe something's a little bit wrong with you and they run a bunch of tests and you can see the results but you have no idea what they mean, right? And so he will start putting, he will put those results in AI and they will give him like multiple, like, okay, this level is high, but it's actually not high based on your age and Whatever. Or this is like this. Because like five common things. And it literally spits out, like, kind of like what your mom's doing, this full, like, basically report. So that. I think what's really helpful about this is that before you go to the doctor, you can basically create a list of questions that are pretty educated, Right. For what, you know, what your symptoms are, your test results or whatever, as opposed to going in there and not really understanding anything. And you've got 15 minutes, right? To me, that's a really good use case. But then of course, I'm thinking, like, if you put all that information in there, then they have all that information about you. Maybe they do.

[Steve Chou]

That is correct. I mean, the question is, what are they going to do with it?

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

As an individual, I was thinking, when we were thinking about harmful things, I was thinking about more as a collective. Right. If everyone signs up for this free Chinese AI, the Chinese can make. It's funny. I'm talking about Chinese people. I'm Chinese. They can make up whatever answers they want and, like, massage the answers.

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

You know what I'm saying? So that's. That's the tricky part. That's where I think there's a national security threat. Because they can just put all this negative US Propaganda as an answer in there.

[Tony]

It doesn't. It feel like we're like living in some sort of Avengers movie and Tony Stark has, like, created that. Like, it just. It. It feels like this can't be real. But it is. Like, it is, but it just. Yeah. Like the ability to manipulate the information. Like, I didn't. I knew this, but I think I had forgotten when we were. When the whole TikTok thing blew up. And, you know, I guess they have TikTok in China. Yeah, but it's in China. It's like the stem. So, you know, the stem tab on your TikTok account where it's all like, science, engineering, math. So what I've heard is that, like, in China, that's what they're feeding kids, right?

[Steve Chou]

I don't know if that's true or not.

[Tony]

I don't know either.

[Steve Chou]

The app is called douying. And I know there's a lot of sales that happen on that, like online selling, but. Yeah, that's what I heard, too. I've just never verified it because I never tried to download that app.

[Tony]

Yeah. But anyway, it's like, you know, like, it makes sense, right. China's feeding us stupid dances and, you know, garbage, and they're feeding their kids math, science and engineering. Right.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Like, it's just like, well, that, that's what I would do. Start with the kids. Right? Get to the kids, dumb them down. And you're just, you're setting yourself up for success.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, if we're already going down this rabbit hole, you know how there's been export controls on the chips that power AI Nvidia chips to China? Right.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And the reason why this was such a big breakthrough was they don't have a lot of chips supposedly to do this. So like a group, they made it sound like just a group of researchers use like 1/10 or 1/20 of the amount of compute that the US has to generate this model that's better than what OpenAI has been working on for a long time. I see. I, there's, I've talked to some friends here. They all think it's full of bs. Like, you know, they have like this underground stockpile of, of Nvidia GPUs and they trained it based on OpenAI. Like they took OpenAI stuff and trained on top of it. I don't even know what's true or not because it's still only a week old, but that's what some of my buddies think who are in the industry.

[Tony]

Yeah. I, I just, I wouldn't. There's a lot of good tools that you can use already without downloading that.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. But you have to pay.

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

Right. And the.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Having to pay is. I mean, look at me, right? I don't pay for anything.

[Tony]

I know, I know.

[Steve Chou]

It's a, it's a strong, you know, impetus to sign up for something when it's free. Right.

[Tony]

And I guess, I guess the other problem is that if you, like, you as an individual, you're like, this is totally free. I'm going to start using it. I don't care if they know this about me. Right, but you're not thinking of the collective. Right? Like, if, who cares if they know something about you? Honestly, like, I don't care what people know about me. There's nothing that interesting. But like if all of a sudden 5 million people, 50 million people are all inputting similar pieces of data. Right. The data points start to make sense. That's where the danger is. It's not in your individual data, it's in the collective data.

[Steve Chou]

Right. So the question, I guess, is the US going to ban this? I, I don't know, but it seems much more intrusive to me than tick tock.

[Tony]

Yeah, for sure. Like, I, Yeah, but let's, let's move.

[Steve Chou]

On to your choices since we're talking about this. Right. Okay, so we've already talked about Chat, actually, let's just talk about what things are good for and what we use them for. Yeah, the Chat GPT is like my general purpose AI tool that I use all the time.

[Tony]

It's like your new Google.

[Steve Chou]

It's like my. Yeah, it's like a new Google. It's like my. It's like a Toyota, you know.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Keeps running.

[Tony]

Reliable.

[Steve Chou]

Reliable. Good old reliable.

[Tony]

Good on the gas mileage.

[Steve Chou]

And then Claude is what I use for creative writing and coding. Actually, I use Chat GPT for coding too. It just depends on what I have open.

[Tony]

Yeah. Okay, so that let's. I want to pause on that because we get this question a lot in the course. Um, we have some people in the course developing things using AI tools, extensions, plugins, things like that. I thought initially you told me you like Chat GPT for coding, but now you've moved to Claude or you still use both.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. So the reason why I like Claude better and ChatGPT actually just added this feature and I haven't really had to got a chance to try it. Claude has this nice canvas window where you can actually see in real time that it's run. It like runs inside of it.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

So if you're doing like a web app, you're actually running the web app on Claude first before you, you know, make it live on your server, which is nice. Yeah, ChatGPT just added that functionality. I just haven't gotten around to. To playing around with it. Yeah, so that's why it's. It was better. And then all the. I don't want to get too technical here, but all the integrated development environments, I think connect to Claude by default because Claude has been the one for coding for a while now.

[Tony]

Who owns Claude?

[Steve Chou]

Anthropic.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

They are the least well funded, I think, of the. Of the AI companies.

[Tony]

Interesting.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

So I think Claude, for me, Chad, I think I just said this earlier. Chat GPT is my Google. How do I do this? How do I find this? How do I create this formula? I'm not great at math, as we all know, so I do a lot of math equations in Chat GPT. Like if this is the sales and I want to find out this percentage of this and that, like, I use that for a lot of those sorts of things. And I like what I like about ChatGPT. If this, if you struggle in the mathing, is that it tells you how it comes up with the answer. It doesn't just give you the answer. It says you take this number and multiply it by this and then divide it by this and times it by percentage and add this. Whatever. So actually I think that's one of Chat GPT's nice features. I haven't really tried to do that in Claude, but for me, Claude and the creative writing is leaps and bounds better than Chat GPT for the stuff that I'm doing as well as I feel like. Claude is really good at. Hooks and headlines.

[Steve Chou]

Yep.

[Tony]

Over ChatGPT, to me, chat GPT, the headline is just too sensational. Like when you say, give me a clickbaity title or give me, you know, a good YouTube hook, it's like it, it, it tries to over perform. Right. And it's like, I'm gonna give you those.

[Steve Chou]

Which I found it the opposite, really. Claude is too sensationalistic at times. I got to tone it down. Whereas chatgpt is the opposite.

[Tony]

Oh, maybe it's how I'm asking for the prompt.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, okay.

[Tony]

It could, it could be that because I, I feel like Chachi BT gives me like this radical new, energizing, transformative, like, I feel like that's what.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, yeah. I don't use it for hook or for, for opening intros. I only use it for titles.

[Tony]

Oh, okay.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, I do it for both and then I compare the two. Cloud is always much more sensationalistic to me for a title.

[Tony]

Interesting. I always use conversational tone as part of my prompt and I think that's why maybe I get a toned down response from it. So anyway. But I also find Claude really good for creating scripts that don't deviate too far from the original content. And then I just recently, this past week used Claude for two contracts. Now, I'm not, I'm not an attorney and I don't recommend doing this if it's like a contract that you like, this is not where you do your divorce papers. Right. Like, this is. But I do think like, for. So I just hired this video editor and I wanted to get like a very simple contract. Just kind of like an agreement of like how many hours you're going to work, what are you going to get paid, what are the expectations? And I didn't want to like, type it all. Like, I was just lazy. And so I just typed in, you know, basically like, hey, I have a contract for a video editor. These are the hours required. This is. And I gave like the parameters and it actually spit out a really good contract basically that I would be fine, like using in that scenario. Right. Or like basically a work agreement, I guess is probably a better word. Contract seems pretty contract.

[Steve Chou]

You say make it completely unreadable.

[Tony]

Yes. Make sure no one knows what they're getting or losing. But it's done that for me a couple of times. And then also I think kind of like what your mom likes it for is taking like a bunch of information. So I'm getting ready to launch something and we basically have all these like pieces of information in it. And I was like, okay, I want to get it all in like one document. That makes sense. And so I just dumped in all the information and it like, first try was pretty good. First try was good enough to where all I had to do was go in and tweak it. I didn't even have to send it through a second time. Time.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, yeah, it's good for that. Usually what I do is I just take something off the web and I say, hey, is this, you know, and then I modify it from there. So same thing?

[Tony]

Pretty much, yeah. I haven't tried Gemini at all, have you?

[Steve Chou]

Oh, yeah, yeah, I used, I used Gemini. The, the image stuff is not bad.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Which is one of the reasons why I, I quit Mid Journey. Quit paying Mid Journey.

[Tony]

So you're using the free Gemini?

[Steve Chou]

The free Gemini, yes. I don't. The only thing I'm paying for right now is ChatGPT and Claude, depending on whether I keep running out or not. So I actually recently quit Claude because you said, oh, I never run out of credits. I'm like, oh, okay, let me try it for free then. And then I ran out of credits. So yeah, back on the Claude bandwagon again. If you need something free, I mean, it's. Things have been free for a while, like Facebook completely open sourced their model called Llama that you can use within Facebook. You can use it within WhatsApp. Have you ever tried it?

[Tony]

No, I didn't even know about it.

[Steve Chou]

So you'll notice if you open your app, there's in the search, you can actually ask it a question, I believe, and it'll spit out the answer.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. And that's 100% free and it's open source, which means you can download it and run on your machine. From what I heard, Llama is pretty good. It's. It's not quite as good as ChatGPT, obviously, but it's, you know, if you trust Meta, I guess you can just stop.

[Tony]

Just stop talking right there. Are there any new ones on the horizon that we should know about? Like, is Something coming?

[Steve Chou]

Well, there's also Elon's model, which is called Gro.

[Tony]

I don't think anyone's going to use that. Right.

[Steve Chou]

Or, I mean, I haven't. The problem is they all. When. When someone says, like, a model is better, it's based on these, like, artificial benchmarks.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

That. That aren't really realistic to what most people use it for, in my opinion. So really you just have to try it and see if it works for your use case and how well it does.

[Tony]

Well, that's what I think is the most, probably the most important thing for people to take away. Outside of like, everyone's data being stolen all over the world, but. Or given away freely, I guess they're not stealing it. They make it very clear they're going to use it. But it really, I think it really depends on what you're doing and for what you want to use. Because we have people in the course that love ChatGPT. We also have people that love Claude. I think there's someone in there that's using Gemini, like, so it really varies on. And I also think it does depend on how you write your prompts because, like, you and I are getting a lot different responses from the same tool. Right. So I'm sure we're just doing prompts differently. And for me, it's getting, like, probably a better result than what you like for, like, sensationalists and stuff like that.

[Steve Chou]

And then if you're willing to pay $200 a month right now, there's agents. I didn't pay $200 a month, but one of my friends who's in this industry has it. So he was like, oh, yeah, go book me a plane ticket from New York to Boston or, you know, California to Boston. Yeah, you know, and it'll go out and you give it the parameters, like, I don't want to spend more than this. I want to be direct. And it'll come up with the flight for you. And then it'll stop at the credit card processing part where you can enter in your credit card. So supposedly Deep Seek is going to have all this stuff put in your credit card info. Yeah. For free. Right. And so if it pans out, like, I think it's going to pan out, people are just going to flock to this free tool, which will maybe force the other players to go free also. Right. Which will kind of.

[Tony]

How can they go free, though? Because nothing is free. All these.

[Steve Chou]

It's subsidized by the government.

[Tony]

Well, right. But, like, all these other tools aren't Subsidized by the government.

[Steve Chou]

So by the Chinese government.

[Tony]

No, no, no. Red. Deep Seek.

[Steve Chou]

Well, I'm sure it's subsidized by the government somehow.

[Tony]

Right. But I mean, is Claude subsidized by a government?

[Steve Chou]

It is not. This is what Claude has, I think, the smallest pile of chips that they're training on.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So I think they have like every. I don't know enough about this because. Because, you know, to. People call BS on me, but I think you have to selectively decide what to focus on when you're training a model.

[Tony]

Right, Right.

[Steve Chou]

You want to be good at this? Do you want to be good at that? And the rumor mill here is that Deep Seek was trained for the benchmark, so it could say that it was better than ChatGPT. And this is not an uncommon practice. Right. Like, Right. I've been in the PC video card space for a long time, and a lot of times, Nvidia, amd, they tune their drivers and they tune their chips to pass these benchmarks. Right. Even to the point where there was one time there was a scandal with video cards where they actually detected the name of the program being run, and then they completely did different things knowing that it was running that program, so that could perform better. So there's all this manipulation and stuff going on behind. Behind the scenes, I'm sure.

[Tony]

Yeah. But so this. I want to. Let's talk about this. Agents. One real quick. 200 bucks a month. Yeah, That's. That's expensive.

[Steve Chou]

It's. It's agents, not Asians. Is that.

[Tony]

I said agents.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Tony]

I didn't say Asians. It's really just a room full of Asians booking your plane tickets. No agents. Sorry, I did not emphasize the G. Yeah, I mean, so here's the thing. So Deep Sea comes out with a free model of this. Let's just say hypothetically. But agents, like, they have to, like, this stuff costs money. Right. So it's to run if it's. Yes. Like you. You're paying programmers, you're paying for server. Like, you're paying for all this. So it's not. It's not like some guy in his basement doing this.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony]

So I don't like. It can't. It can't be free forever because there has to be a. There always is a monetization can be free forever. Yeah. If the government subsidizing. Subsidizing.

[Steve Chou]

Google's been free forever.

[Tony]

They're making money through ads. They're making. Google makes money through other ways. So, like what's the monetization play? Because to me, like Deep Seek, there's no monetization play. It's a data play. Right. And eventually they'll sell all your data. So like, is that going to be the monetization play for all these people? Like our companies over time? Because there has to be. It's just like, so is Facebook's free, right? Like, but it. Is it free? Not really. We're inundated with ads and junk we don't want to.

[Steve Chou]

I mean that's, I think, the first business model that they're going to try AIs with. With ads. Right? Ads in the search results.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So yeah, there will be some business model for it. Yeah, I think that, I think you need to attract users first. Right. Which is what all these companies did.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

Like meta. Resisted monetizing for a long time. Once they had the users locked in, then they started doing it. Same with Google, to a certain extent. It was once upon a time, there was no ads. I don't know if you remember back then, it was 19 to the year 1994, I want to say. Right. Or five. That was when I first started using it.

[Tony]

Yeah. It was a very long time ago. 30 years.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. I didn't want to say how many years it was.

[Tony]

30 years. You were 10 using Google. We know. Right. But so like to me, if you're gonna make something free, do you have a monetization plan down the road? Or you. Or, or you. You. You're going to get one. I know a lot of people start and like, we'll figure it out as we go. Which is not my favorite business model, but yeah, I just wonder if they make these tools free. What are we giving up for that? Because you're paying for it somewhere.

[Steve Chou]

Are you talking about U.S. companies or Chinese companies?

[Tony]

U.S. companies. I think the Chinese companies, like, no hate on China, but I think they're mining data. That's what I would do.

[Steve Chou]

Well, yeah, this is like the best data ever.

[Tony]

Yes, like that. I mean, it would be dumb not to. Like, why would you do it if that wasn't your plan? In my opinion, like, that seems like a smart international espionage thing to do. But for US companies, I think they also want to mine data. I think everyone. I mean, like, we, like, why do, why do we love Klaviyo, right? Like, why do we think Klaviyo is so great? Because it gives us so much data about the people, even people that aren't customers. Right. We know what pages they visited and what their. What Their actions are. And you know, to the point where we can tell when people hover over stuff with certain, you know, it's like that's, that's Google. I mean remember Google Analytics? I hate Google Analytics now. But you know, they had like you could ruin it. They did. But like you could put it up on your, like you could put your webpage up there. You probably can still do this and it would show you like hotspots on your page. Right. And I think. Is it. There was a Shopify tool that did that as well. Right. It told you where people helped.

[Steve Chou]

There's a bunch. Yeah, there's a bunch of tools that did that. Yeah.

[Tony]

So like the data is really valuable, but to me, I would rather pay than have, you know, too much of my data taken.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, if you want every user in the US using it, then you gotta make it free, right?

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Right. And then with that data, I'm sure there's, there's a way to monetize it somehow, whether it be through ads or just selling the information. Yeah, perhaps to sell.

[Tony]

Wouldn't, wouldn't you want to know like if you wanted to start something or create something, wouldn't you want to know like what. It's kind of like why do we like Semrush and, and what's ahrefs? Right. Because it's telling us the volume of things. Like is there an AI tool that tells you the volume of things yet?

[Steve Chou]

I mean, if you think about it this way, I'm just thinking about it from Bumblebee Linen's perspective. If there's a user who's typing in all these wedding related questions into AI, like where's the best wedding venue? Where can I get favors? Whatever. You better. They know. Right. AI knows. And so like I would pay to get in front of that customer.

[Tony]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. So that's probably the likely monetization path going forward. And plus, you know, they're making all this money with selling API access to all these tools that are incorporating into their, their tools. Right.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So I'm sure they'll find a way to fund itself. The real question is whether the return on that is going to be more than the cost of them. All the engineers, all the hardware that's required to do all this because it's very heavy on compute all the energy costs involved.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Hope you enjoyed this episode. What AI models are you using? And would you dare use the free Chinese AI model? For more information and resources go to my wife. Quitherjob.com Episode 576. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellers summit.com if you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com and if you're interested in starting your own e commerce store, head on over to my wife, quithherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I'll send the course right away via email.