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Australia bans DeepSeek on government devices over security risk

Australia has banned DeepSeek from all government devices and systems over what it says is the security risk the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup poses.

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Growing - and familiar - concerns

Western countries have a track record of being suspicious of Chinese tech - notably telecoms firm Huawei and the social media platform, TikTok - both of which have been restricted on national security grounds.

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An Australian science minister previously said in January that countries needed to be "very careful" about DeepSeek, citing "data and privacy" concerns.

The chatbot was removed from app stores after its privacy policy was questioned in Italy. The Italian goverment previously temporarily blocked ChatGPT over privacy concerns in March 2023.

Regulators in South Korea, Ireland and France have all begun investigations into how DeepSeek handles user data, which it stores in servers in China.

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Generally, AI tools will analyse the prompts sent to them to improve their product.

This is true of apps such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini as much as it is DeepSeek.

All of them gather and keep information, including email addresses and dates of birth.

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27 comments

  • Meanwhile our governments services and tenders practically demand US software and services provided by US companies on US controlled hosting. I haven't seen any good use for LLMs beyond being an amusement but downloading the Deepseek model to run locally is absolutely safe and local models is all anyone should be using with any data where they have a responsibility, ethical or legal, to maintain privacy and security. And it you are doing things properly and everything is local then Deepseek reportedly has some efficiency advantages that make it worth considering over alternatives.

    Preventing exfiltration of Australian data to foreign jurisdictions is absolutely the correct thing to do but block OpenAI and Microsoft and other US companies as well. Once again Australia does whatever its told. I kind of understand when it is the mining barrons or real estate developers given they do at least make some economic contribution to the country. But I have no idea why we suck off US tech bros when all they do is lower our productivity by addicting us to crap products, corrupt our democracy and extort rent from us for the privilege.

    • You're right but Australian decisionmakers will never care, because IT infrasctucture is as now as political as what rifle is selected for the army. They're fully plugged into Uncle Sam's economic matrix, and that's what will ultimately see Australia left behind on AI and a host of other technology self-sufficiencies, kept a minor second-hand innovator and permanent technology customer rather than exporter. Lobbying and the compliance industry will do their bits to keep the shop closed in most domains.

      In my years of earning a salary I have never once seen a department I worked in procure a product that wasn't the biggest, safest American name. Ever. Oracle, Salesforce, MS, etc. every time.

      The empire may change but Australian subservience remains conscious and deliberate (just like much of Europe tbh)

27 comments