It is a well-known fact that humans, having successfully evolved from a bunch of nervous monkeys into a species capable of designing microwaveable burritos, have now moved on to the next great challenge: creating machines that will eventually replace them.

Enter DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup that has somehow built a large language model in just two months with less than $6 million, a financial figure so low it would make Silicon Valley executives clutch their Patagucci vests in horror.

DeepSeek’s engineers, rather than setting fire to small mountains of venture capital in the manner of their Western counterparts, took a rather more thrifty approach. They optimized. They tweaked. They pulled a few obscure levers that, up until now, no one had really bothered to pull. The result? AI models v3 and R1, which reportedly function just as well as OpenAI’s finest but without the need to remortgage the planet.

Marc Andreessen, naturally, is thrilled.

The reasons we should worry

1. DeepSeek is suspiciously competent. If OpenAI and Anthropic need vast stockpiles of cash to produce similar results, how exactly did DeepSeek pull this off? Either they are geniuses, or they have discovered some kind of reality cheat code. Either way, history suggests this sort of thing never bodes well for the average citizen.

2. Geopolitical kerfuffle. The U.S. was quite enjoying its technological stranglehold on AI, and now here comes DeepSeek, merrily disrupting things with its unreasonably efficient methods. This could either lead to healthy competition or some form of diplomatic arm-wrestling that makes nobody happy.

3. Censorship, but make it algorithmic. DeepSeek’s chatbot is already taking the app stores by storm, but given its compliance with Beijing’s content restrictions, you have to wonder: how will future generations think when their primary conversational partner declines to discuss Tiananmen Square but is more than happy to chat about panda conservation?

On the other hand, reasons not to panic just yet

1. Bigger isn’t always better. Sure, DeepSeek can train a model cheaply, but can it scale? U.S. companies still control the cutting-edge GPUs, and when it comes to AI, the bigger the dataset, the louder the bragging rights. The reported $5.6M training cost for DeepSeek-v3 is misleading. It only accounts for GPU rental. A more realistic Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), including hardware, personnel, and other expenses, is closer to $100M. This is still significantly cheaper than ChatGPT-4's ~$500M training cost, but it's far from a "3 guys in a basement" operation.

2. Markets panic over everything. Yes, Nvidia and Microsoft stocks took a nosedive, but let’s be real—markets also panic over rumors about toilet paper shortages. Give it a minute, and investors will be back to betting on whatever the next shiny AI project is.

3. AI is still just fancy autocomplete. Despite the dramatic headlines, AI is still an over-caffeinated parrot predicting the next word in a sentence. It’s not about to become your benevolent overlord—at least, not yet.

So, there you have it. DeepSeek is either the harbinger of a new AI age or just an exceptionally talented upstart that will give the big players a headache for a few quarters. Either way, buckle up—because whatever happens next is bound to be at least mildly entertaining. And remember, nervous monkeys, whatever you do—don’t push the button labeled “Do Not Press This Button” unless you’re ready to activate the Infinite Improbability Drive and witness reality unravel in ways you never expected.