Russia and China, in a long-term partnership, discussed cooperation in the field of AI, including its potential use in military applications, though the specifics of their collaboration remain undisclosed to the public.
While the long-term sustainability of the AI investment wave is debatable, AI technologies continue to attract interest, with governments exploring their potential applications across various sectors.
Both China and Russia face challenges in developing domestic computing capacity due to sanctions that restrict imports of Western hardware. In response, they are exploring alternative solutions. Sberbank, originally a state savings bank, expanded into one of Russia's players in AI and launched its GigaChat model in 2023, to optimise digital capabilities.
Russia currently ranks 31st out of 83 countries for AI implementation, innovation, and investment, according to UK-based Tortoise Media's Global AI Index. The index evaluates national AI capacity through both absolute and relative measures, with the final index scores representing a combination of the two.
DeepSeek's rapid adoption aligns with Sberbank's strategy of finding cost-effective AI solutions, reinforcing the idea that strong performance can be achieved with limited resources. In line with this approach, Sberbank made several of its AI platforms publicly accessible, including the text-to-image model Kandinsky and its foundational AI model, GigaChat Lite.
Since the launch of DeepSeek's models, the bank compared them to GigaChat MAX, its most advanced AI model, establishing that DeepSeek performed better in scientific tasks, while GigaChat demonstrated stronger capabilities in banking-related applications. This reflects broader trends in AI specialisation and could influence a potential international AI collaboration between Russia and China.
GigaChat is mainly focused on the Russian market needs, so its cost-effectiveness is moderate compared to DeepSeek, which presents low-cost models. The Russian AI also expands through partnerships, but not at the global level DeepSeek is operating at.
DeepSeek is also community-driven and committed to open-source development, which fosters a global developer community.
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