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A designer’s dilemma
How do we deal with disruptive technologies like Deepseek?

Deepseek’s disruptive impact as the underdog
If you look hard enough, you’ll notice similar patterns throughout the tech world.
The latest example is a modern David and Goliath story in AI: OpenAI versus DeepSeek. On one side, OpenAI benefits from abundant resources; on the other, DeepSeek battles challenges ranging from export controls to a lean development team.
So, it’s astonishing to learn that Deepseek is acing the AI race — delivering results at twice the speed and 90% accuracy on just 2% of the budget of its behemoth competitors. And the best part? It’s free and open source.
There’s plenty of time to fully appreciate what Deepseek has achieved, but it only took one model to break the camel’s back before a floodgate of competitors poured in. Shortly after, news of Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5 Max emerged, with Tencent, ByteDance, and many other startups set to follow.
It almost seems as if David has multiplied into a legion of Lilliputians, collectively pinning a once-mighty Goliath to the ground.