The AI battle drums are beating, and the charge is imminent! Tech giant Kai-Fu Lee recently made a bold prediction: 2025 will not be ordinary; it will be the year of explosive growth for AI applications, a crucial test of survival for large model commercialization! Opportunities and challenges coexist; a transformative storm concerning the future landscape of AI is brewing.
Lee's bold statement is not unfounded but based on his profound insight into industry trends. He cites the emergence of DeepSeek as an example, excitedly stating that it's not only a stunning debut for Chinese AI power but also a powerful global statement for open-source! DeepSeek's appearance is like a guiding light, clearly showing that open-source will be the ultimate answer in the large model field!
Image Source Note: Image generated by AI, image licensing provided by Midjourney
The future AI world will no longer be a cold competition of technical parameters, but rather a competition of who can better embrace open-source and transform open-source models into engines driving business growth. Lee firmly believes that China, with its unimaginably vast application scenarios, will become the best stage for the commercialization of open-source large models. In 2025, Chinese companies are expected to be the first to embrace open-source, leading the global AI commercialization wave and showcasing China's speed and wisdom.
However, while the ideal is appealing, the reality presents harsh challenges. Lee frankly points out that while DeepSeek has the courage to embrace open-source, it still lacks experience in commercialization. Companies may encounter "growing pains" during deployment, such as the huge demand for GPU computing power and stringent requirements for special configurations. This explains the recent surge in popularity of "all-in-one" solutions—they not only solve deployment problems but also build a strong data security defense.
A deeper challenge lies in the fact that DeepSeek generously open-sourced the model but did not simultaneously open-source the code and solutions for pre-training, supervised learning, and reinforcement learning. This means that companies wishing to deeply customize and optimize DeepSeek still need to put in significant effort to fill the technical gaps. This is undoubtedly a major hurdle for all companies attempting to commercialize using open-source underlying models.
Furthermore, the much-discussed issue of large model "hallucinations" still haunts AI applications. Every company wants to connect large models to its vast industry databases, CRM, and ERP systems in real-time to reduce hallucinations and improve the accuracy of answers. However, DeepSeek's current networking solutions clearly cannot meet the personalized needs of all companies; issues such as untimely data updates and incomplete information still exist.
In 2025, opportunities and challenges intertwine, and open-source and commercialization dance together. The future of AI is full of infinite possibilities and unknown variables. In this AI commercialization "exam" triggered by open-source large models, who will be the first to submit a perfect answer? Let's wait and see!
