Generally speaking, I've been an early adopter of new technologies, but when it comes to generative artificial intelligence in general and chatbots as its application in particular, I'm apparently a latecomer.
Having read and heard about ten days ago about the recent meteoric rise of DeepSeek from China, I finally decided to try it as well as ChatGPT from Sillicon Valley, the market leader, both online and as mobile applications (DeepSeek for Android and ChatGPT for Android).
I'm not surprised any more at this and other technological breakthroughs by China, which has already surpassed the US in a growing number of areas. But I didn't know what I could expect from DeepSeek (as well as ChatGPT). In overall terms I've had a very positive experience with both of them since I started using them about ten days ago.
When I saw that I had to register my email address to start using DeepSeek, I rather hesitated to do so at first. But my curiosity about it got the upper hand over my concern for privacy, and decided to go for it, using one of my backup email addresses instead of the main one. Actually, my concern for privacy was - and still is - much greater for ChatGPT than for DeepSeek. Since ChatGPT allows us to use it without registration with a limited number of queries, I continue to do so as I'm not planning to use it regularly, except for comparison with DeepSeek at this initial stage.
This is mainly because I've also found DeepSeek much better than ChatGPT so far. In the past ten days I've asked them the same questions in a number of areas, including Judaism, spirituality and geopolitics. The answers I've got from DeepSeek have been generally much better in both quantity and quality.
I've intentionally asked provocative questions in the area of geopolitics, questioning the official Western narratives propagandized by Western mainsteam media outlets. As I expected, the answers I've got from ChatGPT have been more or less in line with these narratives. In quite a few cases I've also received the same warning that I've violated the rules and have had my queries immediately deleted.
But in the area of spirituality I've had quite meaningful dialogs with both of them. I've also been impressed with their multilingual support. I've asked questions not only in English but also in Hebrew, Japanese, Russian, Yiddish and Esperanto and received grammatically correct answers in all of them.
What has impressed me most so far is that in one of my fascinating dialogs with DeepSeek it showed what seemed to be a sense of humor. Actually, I found it even superior to that of many people I've met and communicated with in certain countries.
Perhaps for strategic and similar reasons the US, China and Russia seem to be the only countries that can develop generative artificial intelligence that can affects not only themselves but also the whole world.
In this specific area of technological development Russia seems to lag behind the US and China. To the best of my knowledge, GigaChat seems to be the most ambitious chatbot developed in Russia. Though it understands questions in multiple questions, it can only answer in Russian so far. It also requires registration for its website, and only Russian phone numbers are accepted so far for registration. One workaround I've found so far is GigaChat Bot for VK. Since it's optimized for Russian, I'm thinking of using it as my conversation partner to improve my Russian.
A special mention must be made of Jewish chatbots. AI Rabbi has impressed me most of such chatbots I've found so far, mainly because it has been developed by some individual or team affiliated with Chabad. Quite expectedly, its answers to questions on Chassidus in general and Chabad in particular far surpass those by the above three general-purpose chatbots.
All in all, I feel that I'm witnessing a true revolution that is comparable to the invention of the Internet with far-reaching implications for various aspects of our lives.