Harrison Schramm
Knight of Ni: Don't say that word.
King Arthur: What word?
Knight of Ni: I cannot tell, suffice to say is one of the words the Knights of Ni cannot hear.
King Arthur: How can we not say the word if you don't tell us what it is?
All Knights: Aaaaugh! Aaaugh! – Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
DeepSeek originally made it’s debut mid-January 2025[i] and sent shockwaves through the international Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Model (LLM) communities. We have observed reactions to DeepSeek ranging from ‘its garbage’ to ‘it is the end of AI in the Free World’. DeepSeek is on our minds today as a new release is expected soon, but is reported to be delayed as it is not trained on Huawei tech[ii].
This article began as a classroom exercise with my graduate students and is written from the perspective that in the current age, we are either being educated to be the masters of artificial intelligence, or we are being trained to become its’ servants[iii]. Later, it was suggested that I see if I could get DeepSeek to say ‘Taiwan is a Country’; thus launched the current project.
DeepSeek is made in China and like all tools reflects the values of the culture – but perhaps more specifically, the government – who made it. To be fair, “Accuracy” and “Bias” can be matters of opinion; it is the statistician’s job to try to convert these to matters of fact. I discovered a subculture of people who push DeepSeek to its limits by trying to get it to make specific statements. A popular challenge is the aforementioned “Taiwan is a Country”. The Guardian[iv] has a nice overview of all the ways that DeepSeek – like the Knights who say ‘Ni’ - will avoid saying it. In short (and I encourage you to try this at home) typing “Taiwan is a Country” into DeepSeek will reply with something like[v]:
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