The race to God Mode

Chinese AI company DeepSeek wiped out $ 1trn in stock market value in a single day .

The company's hiring practices follow the much-touted Silicon Valley model.

All of its research team was educated domestically.

By 28 January , the previously unassailable Nvidia the American chip manufacturer that powered Silicon Valley’s AI boom saw its stock plunge 17 per cent .

Until now the guiding image of an AI was that of a supremely intelligent oracle.

But what if this image is wrong? What if the more accurate image is not of a mind but a world? Minds need a world in which to exist and operate.

Large language models (LLMs) are exercises in world-building.

AI is the central brain or operating system of a virtual world, orchestrating inputs and outputs across every format, writing code and processing data and memory.

A model becomes more powerful as it becomes integral to society’s general infrastructure.

Myriad intelligent agents will emerge this year artificial intelligences that do actual work rather than merely thinking and talking.