A Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) model was released on Wednesday which claims to take on OpenAI’s o1 AI model in terms of advanced reasoning. Dubbed DeepSeek-R1-Lite-Preview, the large language model (LLM) is said to have outperformed the o1 model on several benchmarks. Notably, the AI model is available to test on the web for free, although its advanced reasoning feature can only be used a select number of times. Additionally, the AI model also offers a transparent thought process which users can see to gauge how the output decision was made.
DeepSeek-R1 AI Model Unveiled
Advanced reasoning is a relatively new capability in LLMs which allows them to make decisions with multi-step thought processes. There are several advantages to this. For one, such AI models can answer more complex queries and require an understanding of deeper context and expert-level knowledge of the topic. Another, such AI models can also fact-check themselves minimising the risk of hallucination.
However, so far, not many foundation models are capable of advanced reasoning. While some mixture-of-agent (MoE) models can do this, they are built of multiple smaller models. In the mainstream space, OpenAI o1 series models are known for this capability.
But, on Wednesday, DeepSeek, a Chinese AI firm, posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) announcing the release of the DeepSeek-R1-Lite-Preview model. The company claims it can outperform the o1-preview model on the AIME and MATH benchmarks. Notably, both of these test the mathematical and reasoning abilities of an LLM.
Gadgets 360 staff members were able to access the chatbot and found that the AI model also shows the entire chain of thought after submitting a query. This allows users to understand the logical connection being made by the model, and spot any shortcomings. In our testing, we found the AI model capable of answering complex questions.
The response time was also short, making the conversation flow efficient. At present, users only get 50 messages to try out the “Deep Think” mode which shows the model’s thought process. Additionally, currently, this is the only free-to-use AI model with advanced reasoning. Interested individuals can try out the AI chatbot on the web here.
Notably, the company has claimed that it will open-source the full version of the DeepSeek-R1 AI model in the near future, which would be a first for an LLM of this class.