Spotlight on AI as future game changer

"In a competitive market, these challenges will naturally be resolved by the forces of the market itself," Jiang said.

Gao Xuefeng, founder and CEO of AI data infrastructure company Fabarta, said that after DeepSeek's breakthrough, many Chinese companies no longer hesitate to invest in AI.

"Every few months, new technological advancements emerge. Companies can't afford to wait; they must integrate AI into their business and industry now," Gao said, adding that every sector in China can be re-imagined through AI in the coming years.

Amid rising AI enthusiasm, Wang Zhongyuan, head of the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, a leading nonprofit AI institute, said that DeepSeek has indeed delivered impressive results, proving that China can train large-scale AI models parallel to ChatGPT 4 despite limited computing power.

Regarding artificial general intelligence, in which an AI system can match or exceed the cognitive abilities of humans in any real-world task, Wang said that the industry is still far from achieving such capabilities. "I think we are still at least five to 10 years, or even longer, from reaching that level," he added.