DeepSeek R1

February 8, 2025

Practical Workshop: Democratizing AI with DeepSeek R1

On February 8th, an interesting workshop was held at Hackerspace Valencia about DeepSeek R1, an open-source language model that is changing the AI landscape. The event was led by Ignacio Delgado, a software engineer, who shared practical knowledge about the implementation and use of this technology.

Context and Relevance

The workshop began by explaining the historic moment that AI is going through, comparing it to the “Sputnik Moment” - a turning point where the monopoly of big tech players is broken. DeepSeek R1 represents an important milestone as the first open model to achieve capabilities comparable to commercial systems like OpenAI’s.

Technical Highlights

During the session, several relevant technical aspects were covered:

  • Base architecture of the model and its different variants (from 1.5B to 671B parameters)
  • Hardware requirements and implementation considerations
  • Alternatives to CUDA and optimization options
  • Practical use through Ollama as an implementation base

Tools and Practical Applications

The workshop placed special emphasis on practical applications, presenting various tools:

Resources and Next Steps

Numerous resources were shared for participants to continue their learning:

  • GitHub repositories of the different tools
  • Official project documentation
  • Community-generated resources
  • Project contribution opportunities

Future Implications

An interesting aspect of the workshop was the discussion about the future implications of this technology:

  • More open and efficient AI development
  • Less dependence on large data centers
  • Democratization of access to advanced AI
  • Possible transformation of the current business model

Important pending questions were also addressed such as:

  • Real development costs
  • Undeclared hardware access
  • Compliance with commercial restrictions
  • Sustainability of the open model
  • Privacy considerations

Conclusion

The workshop demonstrated the growing interest in open-source AI solutions and their potential to democratize access to this technology. The practical session allowed participants to better understand how to implement and use DeepSeek R1 in their own projects.

For more information and additional resources, you can visit:

This post is a summary of the workshop held at Hackerspace Valencia. The complete content and more resources are available at the provided links.

IA