On January 27, a black Monday, $593 billion of NVIDIA’s value was wiped out. The culprit? A little-known Chinese startup, DeepSeek. It has now outpaced even ChatGPT, a US-based popular generative artificial intelligence chatbot, in terms of downloads from the App Store. While being hailed as a new disruption in the tech world, DeepSeek also has its share of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s take a closer look.

Consider this: Every year, 1,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy is used by an average household in India for electricity. By 2026, America is expected to use the equivalent energy of 2.5 million Indian households just for artificial intelligence (AI) activities. This will total around 270 terawatt-hours of energy. These numbers come from the World Economic Forum. However, the energy used by AI technologies, or rather the costs involved, often go unnoticed.

It is against this backdrop that DeepSeek, a Chinese AI chatbot, emerged as a disruptive product. While it may be called a Chinese startup, it is, in fact, a politically-driven product launched with careful planning and state backing. Compared to ChatGPT, the revolutionary AI tool launched by US-based OpenAI, DeepSeek’s energy consumption and costs are significantly lower. This is the most important (the good) aspect of DeepSeek. Let’s explore why.

The Rise of ChatGPT

ChatGPT, launched in 2022, reached 100 million users within two months. That’s, indeed, a significant achievement. Later, it even challenged Google, the search engine giant, in its dominance.

But have you ever thought about what happens to nature when you ask ChatGPT a question? ChatGPT’s energy consumption has a substantial environmental impact. Each time you ask ChatGPT a question, it consumes 0.0029 kWh of electricity. This is ten times more than a Google search, which consumes just 0.0003 kWh of electricity, according to the Electric Power Research Institute.

To put it simply, while DeepSeek may offer a more energy-efficient AI solution with impressive results, it also carries with it concerns about transparency, ethical usage, and political censorship

Annually, ChatGPT uses 226.82 million kWh of electricity just to answer user queries. With this much energy, you could fully charge 313 million electric vehicles or charge 47.87 million iPhones for a year.

And the cost? A whopping $29.71 million per year. OpenAI spends this amount every year just to answer users’ questions on ChatGPT.

Training and High Costs

ChatGPT works based on large language models that are trained on vast amounts of data. This training requires massive energy consumption. During the training period of ChatGPT-3, a total of 1,287,000 kWh of electricity was used over 34 days. When it came to training GPT-4, the consumption skyrocketed to 62,318,800 kWh over 100 days—48 times more than GPT-3.

ChatGPT, which was introduced to the public in November 2022, became an instant sensation. It’s a chatbot based on a technology called Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), designed to generate a variety of content, including dialogues.

The success of ChatGPT significantly boosted OpenAI’s market value. OpenAI was founded in 2015 by prominent figures like Sam Altman and Elon Musk, aiming to explore the potential of artificial intelligence. Musk eventually left the company, and Sam Altman is the current CEO.

Meanwhile, DeepSeek V-3 required only 836,400 kWh of energy. As reported by tech entrepreneur Joy Sebastian on Facebook, leading companies use tens of thousands of NVIDIA H100 GPUs for AI training and model operation. This heavy investment helped NVIDIA reach the top of the market value charts. AI development, which demands such immense resources, seemed out of reach even for multi-billion-dollar companies.

It was here that DeepSeek amazed the world by entering the AI space with a relatively modest investment of $5 million, offering a model that competes with the best. DeepSeek is said to deliver better results than GPT-4 in several areas.

Top global companies typically use supercomputers with over 16,000 chips for their chatbot training. However, DeepSeek engineers stated that they only needed about 2,000 NVIDIA chips, according to a report in The New York Times.

Given this, it’s clear that AI technologies need to be studied carefully in terms of their energy sources. According to a report from the World Economic Forum, tech giant Microsoft has seen a 30% increase in carbon emissions since 2020, largely due to the growth of AI-powered data centers. This makes DeepSeek’s low energy usage a significant advantage.

The Bad Thing

China is notorious for copying innovations, from electronics to cars and social media platforms. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has confirmed that DeepSeek trained its AI model using ChatGPT’s framework. This has led to some controversy, with OpenAI stating that they have evidence of this. Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, has initiated an investigation into the issue. Despite the US imposing restrictions on product exports to China, DeepSeek continued its operations using NVIDIA chips. It’s been reported that DeepSeek had stockpiled around 50,000 NVIDIA A100 chips before the ban took effect. However, some reports suggest that DeepSeek only used 2,000 chips for training its AI model. This is in stark contrast to major companies that use 16,000 specialized chips. Yet, there’s still a lack of clarity regarding which chips were actually used in DeepSeek’s operations, as commented by figures like Elon Musk.

The Ugly

While both Google and AI-powered ChatGPT became popular due to their openness and transparency, the same cannot be said for DeepSeek. A major issue is its refusal to answer sensitive political questions, especially those that are inconvenient for the Chinese government. Ask about the Tiananmen Square massacre or Chinese authoritarianism, and DeepSeek will respond with, “Let’s talk about something else.” Regardless of its other advantages, this undemocratic and regressive approach is a major flaw that could affect its global acceptance.

To put it simply, while DeepSeek may offer a more energy-efficient AI solution with impressive results, it also raises concerns about transparency, ethical usage, and political censorship. It’s a reminder that in the world of AI, the good, the bad, and the ugly are often intertwined.

“I’d like the last Guinea worm to die before I do,” former US president Jimmy Carter told reporters in 2015. While Carter’s passing on December 29, 2024, came before this goal was fully realized, his extraordinary efforts have brought the world to the brink of achieving the unimaginable. Guinea worm, once a disease that plagued millions, now affects fewer than 20 people worldwide—an incredible transformation driven by Carter’s tireless advocacy. His unwavering dedication has not only changed the course of public health but has also made complete eradication a realistic, imminent goal.

In the mid-1980s, former US president and Nobel Prize-winning peacemaker Jimmy Carter’s life and legacy took a turn toward global health when he witnessed the damage caused by Guinea worm disease in rural Ghana. It was an encounter that would shape not only his post-presidency but also the lives of millions of people in some of the world’s poorest regions. As he toured the villages, Carter was confronted by a sight that would forever remain etched in his memory: children and adults alike suffering from the parasitic worms that emerge painfully through the skin, often causing severe physical and emotional distress.

“Once you’ve seen a small child with a two- or three-foot-long live Guinea worm protruding from her body, right through her skin, you never forget it,” Carter reflected in later years (An Hour Before Daylight: A Personal Journey, 2001). His commitment to eradicating this disease would become one of the defining aspects of his post-presidential work.

Carter’s focus on Guinea worm disease and his contributions to global health remain a commendable testament to the role of science and leadership in solving complex public health challenges. Guinea worm disease, also called Dracunculiasis, was a significant health crisis, affecting millions of people annually. It was estimated that around 3.5 million cases of this debilitating disease occurred worldwide each year, primarily in rural communities where access to clean water was scarce. Guinea worm, transmitted through contaminated water, is a parasitic infection that involves the slow emergence of long worms from the skin, causing excruciating pain. The cycle of infection was perpetuated by the human tendency to seek relief by submerging affected body parts in water, inadvertently facilitating the worms’ reproduction.

In 1982, the former president and the former first lady Rosalynn Carter established the Carter Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing human rights and improving public health worldwide. Just four years later, in 1986, the organization launched a determined initiative to eliminate Guinea worm disease. This initiative came at a critical moment when the World Health Organization (WHO) set its sights on eradicating the disease globally. The disease’s grip on affected regions demanded a multifaceted approach, and Carter’s leadership brought together political will, scientific expertise, and on-the-ground action to begin a comprehensive campaign against the parasitic threat, along with WHO.

The Carter Center’s strategy was simple yet revolutionary: improve access to clean water, educate communities about prevention, and mobilize local governments and international bodies to take action. One of the key interventions was the provision of filtration devices, called “poultices”, that helped people avoid ingesting copepods, the tiny fleas responsible for spreading the parasite. By ensuring that people had access to clean drinking water, Carter’s team was able to significantly reduce the cycle of infection, ultimately breaking the transmission chain of the parasite.

Carter’s ability to mobilize global resources and create lasting partnerships made Guinea worm disease one of the most successful examples of disease eradication in history. Under his guidance, the incidence of Guinea worm disease plummeted from 3.5 million cases in the 1980s to just 13 reported cases in 2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The disease, which had once ravaged communities across parts of Africa and Asia, was now on the verge of becoming only the second human disease in history, after smallpox, to be fully eradicated.

Sharon Roy and Vitaliano Cama, scientists at the CDC who worked closely with the Carter Center, have consistently praised Carter’s leadership. “Carter’s bold vision, leadership, and ability to create political will for supporting Guinea worm eradication in affected countries were instrumental in this success,” Cama remarked (Carter Center, 2022). The fight against Guinea worm disease continues today, but the almost complete eradication of the parasite is a reflection of Carter’s unyielding dedication to improving the health of the world’s most vulnerable populations.

This extraordinary public health achievement is not just a victory for science, but a lasting mark to the power of compassionate leadership in advancing global health. Carter’s work with the Guinea worm eradication program is often cited as one of the most effective and far-reaching scientific interventions of the 20th century. His legacy demonstrates that when science is combined with moral vision and political resolve, great change is possible—even in the most challenging circumstances.

Jimmy Carter passed away on December 29, 2023, in Plains, Georgia, at the age of 99, after entering hospice care earlier in the year. His death marked the end of a remarkable life dedicated to public service, humanitarian causes, and advancing global health. Alongside his wife, Rosalynn Carter, who passed away in November 2023, Jimmy Carter left an indelible mark on global health, using his platform to better the lives of those in need.

The nearly eradicated Guinea worm disease stands as one of the greatest successes in the field of public health. As we pay tribute to the late president, it is clear that his scientific interventions and humanitarian work will continue to inspire efforts to combat disease, poverty, and suffering for generations to come. Through his vision and the ongoing work of the Carter Center, Jimmy Carter’s legacy in the world of science and global health will remain an enduring example of the positive impact one individual can have on the lives of millions.

Reference:

• Carter, Jimmy. An Hour Before Daylight: A Personal Journey. 2001.
• Vitaliano Cama and Sharon Roy, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Global Guinea Worm Eradication Efforts and Achievements.” Carter Center, 2022.

(The article first appeared in the February 2025 edition of EdPublica magazine)

Amid rising concerns over climate change and its impact on human health, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the former Chief Scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO), highlighted the pressing challenges facing global health, particularly the rise of zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance, and the growing threat of climate change.

Dr. Swaminathan made these remarks at an event in Cochin, the bustling port city in the southern Indian state of Kerala, on January 25, 2025. The event marked the launch of several initiatives as part of a significant research project on water quality and waterborne diseases in Vembanad Lake at the ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI). Dr. Swaminathan stressed the urgency of addressing these interconnected global health issues.

She explained that most emerging viral threats today are zoonotic infections, transmitted from animals to humans, which are becoming more frequent due to environmental factors exacerbated by climate change. “Most of the health threats today originate from environmental factors,” she said, calling for a stronger focus on integrated research. This includes collaboration across weather, climate, health, and environmental data to predict and prevent future outbreaks of infectious diseases.

Dr. Swaminathan also called for the establishment of an Environmental Health Regulatory Agency in India to better manage the risks posed by climate change and other environmental factors. “We need a more systematic and comprehensive approach to protecting public health,” she noted.

Dietary Risks and Non-Communicable Diseases

In addition to environmental concerns, Dr. Swaminathan raised alarms about the rising health risks linked to poor diets. “Half of Indians cannot afford a nutritionally sufficient healthy diet,” she revealed, highlighting the growing crisis of malnutrition, obesity, anaemia, and micronutrient deficiencies in the country. She particularly pointed to South Indian states Kerala and Tamil Nadu, where these health issues are escalating, despite the rising rates of obesity and non-communicable diseases.

Dr. Swaminathan also called for the establishment of an Environmental Health Regulatory Agency in India to better manage the risks posed by climate change and other environmental factors

Dr. Swaminathan emphasized the untapped potential of marine resources as a key solution to improving nutrition in India, urging for a greater focus on incorporating these resources into the national diet to combat these nutritional challenges.

Climate Change and Public Health

The devastating effects of climate change were another focal point of Dr. Swaminathan’s remarks. “India is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change,” she warned. “Almost the entire population is exposed to climate hazards such as floods, droughts, cyclones, and extreme heat, which are detrimental to both physical and mental health.” She pointed out that the most vulnerable populations, including the poor, are hit hardest by these hazards and called for enhanced adaptation strategies and resilience-building measures to mitigate these impacts.

Collaboration and Citizen Science: A Path Forward

Dr. Swaminathan also underscored the importance of collaboration between government agencies, research institutions, and local communities in tackling these multifaceted health challenges. She highlighted the role of citizen science initiatives in empowering communities and gathering valuable data.

Reflecting on the success of the global scientific response to COVID-19, she praised the unprecedented collaboration and data-sharing that led to the rapid development of vaccines. “During my time at the WHO, I witnessed first-hand the extraordinary level of networking and data sharing,” Dr. Swaminathan said. “Scientists prioritized rapid dissemination of findings over individual publication, which paid off.”

However, she also warned about the dangers of misinformation, particularly in the digital age, where misleading health advice can easily spread on social media. “This was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, when everyone considered themselves an ‘expert’ and offered advice to the public,” she said, stressing the need for clear, evidence-based communication.

Dr. Swaminathan also praised Kerala’s proactive approach to public health, particularly in effectively containing the Nipah virus, which serves as a model for other states in India.