As China’s firms rush to adopt DeepSeek’s AI services, workers worry over impact on jobs

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The hashtag “ask DeepSeek whether my job will be taken” has been trending on Chinese microblogging site Weibo, garnering close to 7.2 million views as of Thursday (Feb 20).

“I thought in the age of AI, an ‘iron rice bowl’ would remain an ‘iron rice bowl’. But I didn’t realise the launch of an AI civil servant would thoroughly change my views, and it looks like now no job is safe,” one user wrote.

“Since we can’t stop the AI wave, guess we’ll have to embrace it. I think everyone should really try out jobs related to AI, after all it’s not going away anytime soon.” 

Amid the debate, Futian officials have clarified that the digital employees are “assistants” and not “AI civil servants”.

Gao Zeng, deputy director of the Futian District Government Service Data Administration Bureau, said in a Tuesday article by Futian’s publicity department that the AI assistants cannot make decisions alone and have a designated human “guardian”.

Gao also described these models as being able to “assist in public management”, improve work efficiency and reduce the burden on a grassroots level. 

Speaking to local news site ECNS, Meng Qingguo from Tsinghua University said DeepSeek is cost-effective with good performance, making it affordable for use in government affairs. 

He added that being homegrown, the AI app also performs well in terms of Chinese processing, making it suitable for local use, including by the government.

Wang Peng, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, said that the move by Futian district is an “active attempt to transform government affairs into an intelligent one”. 

Quoted in the Futian publicity department article, Wang noted that in the future, more government departments and institutions may introduce AI to help improve work efficiency and service quality.

Wang also believes worries that AI will replace human jobs entirely are unfounded, at least for now.

Even though the use of AI may affect some traditional positions, it will also open up new employment opportunities, he said.