Google AI Chief tells employees company has ‘all the ingredients’ to hold AI lead over China’s DeepSeek

Google’s AI chief told employees that he’s not worried about China’s DeepSeek and said the search giant has superior artificial intelligence technology, according to audio of an all-hands meeting in Paris on Wednesday.

At the meeting, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai read aloud a question about DeepSeek, the Chinese start-up lab that roiled U.S. markets recently, when its app shot to the top of the Apple’s App Store, supplanting ChatGPT. DeepSeek released a research paper last month claiming its AI model was trained at a fraction of the cost of other leading models.

The question, which was an AI summary of submissions from employees, asked “what lessons and implications” Google can glean from DeepSeek’s success as the company trains future models.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis was called on to provide the answer.

“When you look into the details,” Hassabis said, some of DeepSeek’s claims are “exaggerated.”

Hassabis added that DeepSeek’s reported cost of its AI training was likely “only a tiny fraction” of the total cost of developing its systems. He said DeepSeek probably used a lot more hardware than it let on, and relied on western AI models.

“We actually have more efficient, more performant models than DeepSeek,” Hassabis said. “So we’re very calm and confident in our strategy and we have all the ingredients to maintain our leadership into this year.”

But he admitted that DeepSeek’s accomplishments are impressive.

“It’s definitely also the best team I think I’ve seen come out of China so something to be taken seriously,” Hassabis said, noting that there are “security” and “geopolitical” implications. Several U.S. agencies have barred staffers from using DeepSeek, citing security concerns.

Google declined to comment. DeepSeek didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Google executives also received a number of employee questions about the company’s recent decision to change its “AI Principles” to no longer include a pledge against using AI for weapons or surveillance.

Pichai read aloud an AI-summarized version of the questions, ending with “Why did we remove this section?”

Pichai directed the question to Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, who said he had worked with Hassabis, James Manyika, a senior vice president a the company, and others on an effort that “shifted our approach,” starting last year.

Google established its AI principles in 2018 after declining to renew a government contract called Project Maven, which helped to analyze and interpret drone videos using AI.

“Some of the strict prohibitions that were in v1 of the AI principles don’t jibe well with the more nuanced conversations that we’re having now,” Walker said, referring to the rules from 2018.

Walker said “an awful lot has changed in those seven years,” and that the technology has advanced to the point where “it’s used in lots of very nuanced scenarios.”