誰是人工智能初創DeepSeek的創辦人？ （1/2）

Recently the New York Times reported the following: 

 Who Is the Founder of the A.I. Start-Up DeepSeek? (1/2)

(Source: NYT)

The New York Times

The Chinese company DeepSeek seemed to have come out of nowhere this week when it upturned markets. Here’s what to know about Liang Wenfeng, the engineer who started it.

Jan. 29, 2025

In technology, many entrepreneurs get only one defining act. Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek, is already on his second.

The engineer, described by colleagues as introspective, first made his mark in China’s investment world in the late 2010s, cofounding a hedge fund that used artificial-intelligence models to deliver strong returns and attracted billions of dollars in capital.

Buoyed by profits and wary of Beijing’s tightening grip on speculative trading, Mr. Liang pivoted in 2023. He poured money into artificial intelligence, betting on A.I. chips and assembling a team to build China’s answer to the Silicon Valley front-runner OpenAI.

Now, just two years later, DeepSeek has upended the global tech landscape. Here is what you need to know about Liang Wenfeng.

He’s a deeply technical engineer. That puts him in a line of other successful Chinese tech executives.

When Chinese technologists debated why the country’s biggest investors and tech firms failed to anticipate the rise of generative A.I., many pointed to a single culprit: China’s companies were obsessed with quick returns in a fiercely competitive market.

Armed with those lessons — and backed by his own trading windfall — Mr. Liang has made it clear his ambitions lie far beyond commercial applications.

His focus, he has said, is on what he sees as China’s only real chance to catch up with the United States. That means taking bold, idealistic swings at fundamental A.I. challenges. His primary ambition is to create artificial general intelligence or A.G.I. — the elusive goal of building machines that can think and learn like humans.

When DeepSeek undercut its Chinese competition last year by offering its model at bargain prices, forcing larger rivals into their own price cuts, Mr. Liang dismissed the significance.

“To be honest, we didn’t really care — it was just something we did along the way,” he said in a widely shared interview with 36Kr, a Chinese tech outlet. “Providing cloud services is not our main goal. Our aim is still to achieve A.G.I.” (DeepSeek has remained mostly silent this week and has not responded to requests for comment.)

In his convictions that superhuman artificial intelligence is just around the corner, Mr. Liang sounds a lot like OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman. But the similarities end there. Mr. Liang, a low-profile executive with a deep technical background in A.I. engineering, more fits the mold of Pony Ma, a co-founder of China’s Tencent, than Silicon Valley’s charismatic visionaries.

He started as a hedge fund trader. And then he turned to pure A.I. research.

In many ways, Mr. Liang’s career traces the major shifts in China’s technology landscape.

(to be continued)

Translation

誰是人工智能初創DeepSeek的創辦人？ （1/2）

本週，中國公司DeepSeek 似乎突然出現，扭轉了市場局勢。以下是關於這家公司的創始人工程師梁文峰的一些資訊。

在科技領域，許多創業家只經歷一決定性的舉動。 DeepSeek 創辦人梁文鋒是在經歷第二次決定性的舉動。

同事們都說這位工程師是很自省的，2010 年代末，他首次在中國投資界嶄露頭角，與他人共同創立了一隻對沖基金，利用人工智慧模型實現豐厚回報，吸引了數十億美元的資本。

受利潤的鼓舞，加上擔心北京方面加強對投機交易的控制，梁先生在 2023 年做出了轉變。他向人工智能投入了大量資金，押注人工智能晶片, 並組成團隊打造中國對矽谷領跑者OpenAI的回應。

如今，僅僅兩年後，DeepSeek 已經顛覆了全球科技格局。以下內容是關於你需要了解梁文峰的。

他是一位技術精湛的工程師。這使他躋身其他成功的中國科技高階主管之列。

當中國技術專家爭論為何該國最大的投資者和科技公司未能預見到生成人工智慧的興起時，許多人指出了一個罪魁禍首：在競爭激烈的市場中，中國公司沉迷於快速回報。

憑藉這些經驗教訓，並藉助自身交易所得的意外之財，梁先生已明確表示，他的抱負遠不止於商業應用。

他說，他的焦點是他認為這是中國趕上美國的唯一真正機會。這意味著對基礎人工智能挑戰進行大膽、帶理想主義的出擊。他的主要目標是創造通用人工智能（AGI）。 — 建構能夠像人類一樣思考和學習的機器這一難以實現的目標。

去年，DeepSeek 透過低價推出其模型來削弱其中國競爭對手，從而迫使規模更大的競爭對手也降價，但梁先生否認了此舉的重要性。

他在接受中國科技媒體36Kr採訪時表示: 「說實話，我們不太在意的 - 這只是我們在這個過程中所做的事情」, 這採訪受廣泛分享。 「提供雲端服務不是我們的主要目標。我們的目標仍然是實現 AGI。 （DeepSeek 本週基本上保持沉默，沒有回應置評請求。）

梁先生堅信超人類的人工智能即將到來，他的觀點與 OpenAI 的執行長 Sam Altman 很相似。但相似之處僅止於此。梁先生是一位低調的主管，但在人工智慧領域擁有深厚的技術背景, 更符合中國騰訊聯合創辦人馬化騰的形象, 多於矽谷那些魅力非凡的夢想家。

他最初是一名對沖基金交易員。然後他轉向純人工智能研究。

從許多方面來看，梁先生的職業生涯都見證了中國科技格局的重大轉變。

（待續）