The Register Kettle

There's really only one topic for the Kettle this week - DeepSeek. What began as a Chinese hedge-fund venture has blown away [https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/27/tech_stocks_tank_as_us/] nearly a trillion dollars in stock market value from Nvidia, Microsoft, and Meta. But is it all it's cracked up to be? We have our doubts, as you can see below. Tim Prickett-Morgan on The Next Platform has been following [https://www.nextplatform.com/2025/01/27/how-did-deepseek-train-its-ai-model-on-a-lot-less-and-crippled-hardware/] this story before it broke, Tobias Mann went hands on [https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/26/deepseek_r1_ai_cot/] with the LLM on Sunday and our editor Chris Williams has been testing the Chinese system extensively. As ever, your host Iain Thomson keeps things polite.

t's that time of the year again and the tech world heads to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. It's been a bit subdued this year, since Trump's tariff plans [https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/07/trumps_tariff_electronics_prices/] could drastically raise the cost of hardware from China and elsewhere, but the usual suspects unveiled this year's kit. Chip vendors [https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/08/quantum_no_solace_nvidia_ceo/] and laptop [https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/10/lenovo_samsung_rollable_laptop_screens/] slingers have been out in force hoping to piggyback the AI wave and this year's upgrade cycle, and there's been the usual grab bag of wacky ideas [https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/09/ces_worst_in_show_awards/] from plucky young startups. You can see the full discussion below. Chewing the fat we have our editor-in-chief Chris Williams, reporters Brandon Vigliarolo and Tobias Mann, and hosted by Iain Thomson. Nicole Hemsoth Prickett produced the episode.

It's been a rough week for the AI industry as a series of stories have showed the latest LLM technology in a less than flattering light. For example, it appears that AI makes workers less productive [https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/22/ai_pcs_productivity/], mainly because they haven't been trained [https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/20/resume_genius_ai_survey/] how to use it. Gartner, usually a tech cheerleader, has pointed out that expensive AI PCs [https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/22/premium_priced_ai_pcs/] don't appear to be selling. But there's still Microsoft's latest AI enthusiasm [https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/19/microsoft_autonomous_copilot_ai/] from Ignite - Redmond has to recoup that $10 billion investment in ChatGPT somehow. There's some spirited discussion, and not a few chuckles on this week's Kettle episode, that you can watch in full below. Chewing the fat we have our editor Chris Williams, reporters Brandon Vigliarolo and Tom Claburn.

Join The Register's Editor in Chief, Chris Williams along with Reg reporters, Tom Claburn, Iain Thompson,  and Brandon Vigliarolo as they unpack the possibilities.

In this week's Kettle it's all about AI - or rather whether the tech industry can make the technology not only work, but pay its way as well. With trillions of dollars being spent investors are starting to get twitchy about what they can see for their money and patience. Meanwhile, Nvidia and others are facing what could be their peak year for a while as the market settles down a little - for the moment at least. You can see the full discussion below. After a busy week of financial results and announcement in the field we're joined by Tom Claburn, who's done a deep dive into the returns on investment for AI spending, Tim Prickett-Morgan from our sister site The Next Platform - and he knows the market better than most - and Tobias Mann, who has been trawling through the financial figures so you don't have to. This episode was directed and produced by Nicole Hemsoth Prickett. For those who prefer just the audio, the Kettle is available via RSS and MP3, Apple, Amazon, and Spotify. So is the AI snake eating itself? Let us know in the forums.