South Korean media cited a U.S. report stating that China's AI technology lags behind the United States by approximately eight months.

South Korean Media: China's AI Technology Lags Behind the U.S. by Only 8 Months

On May 5, South Korean media outlet JoongAng Ilbo (Japanese Edition) cited a report released by a U.S. government agency stating that China's latest artificial intelligence (AI) model is approximately eight months behind its American counterparts in technological capability.

The Artificial Intelligence Standards and Innovation Center (CAISI), under the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), released the China DeepSeek V4 Pro (hereinafter referred to as V4) Evaluation Report on May 1 local time, stating: "V4's technological level lags behind the latest U.S. AI models—such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5—by about eight months," and "V4 performs best among all Chinese AI models evaluated so far, but still falls short of leading U.S. AI models."

CAISI is responsible for establishing AI technology standards in the United States and has been comparing and analyzing the performance of AI models from competing nations since July of last year.

However, when it comes to cost efficiency, V4 outperforms its U.S. equivalents. Compared to OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 mini (a lightweight AI model), Deep Seek is the lowest-cost AI model among the latest ones tested, with operating costs approximately 53% lower than those in the U.S. This figure was determined based on CAISI’s measurement of costs incurred when processing around one million instruction tokens per AI model.

The strategic directions of AI models developed in the U.S. and China are clearly divergent. U.S. developers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google focus on achieving maximum performance. On May 3, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X (formerly Twitter), emphasizing: “We want our AI models to be cheaper, but highest intelligence remains the top priority.”

On the other hand, Chinese AI developers not only prioritize performance but also actively work to reduce the cost of AI models.

Deep Seek is currently offering a 25% discount on AI usage fees until the end of this month—an actual strategy aimed at attracting enterprise clients through aggressive pricing.

Original source: toutiao.com/article/1864313992856585/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.