Emma Schaible/Fourth Estate
Governor Youngkin’s DeepSeek AI ban in effect at Mason
BY BARRETT BALZER, NEWS EDITOR AND IAN VLAHOS, STAFF WRITER
On Feb. 13, Mason students and faculty received an email from Information Technology Services detailing an executive order by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin banning the use of DeepSeek AI on university-owned devices and networks. A rising AI platform, Deepseek AI, is said to be a better version of ChatGPT but has raised concerns about data protection and privacy.
Executive Order 46, signed by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and attested by Secretary of the Commonwealth Kelly Gee on Feb. 11, details the ban, stating it “raises significant security and privacy concerns that call for similar restrictions on Commonwealth of Virginia devices.”
In accordance with the executive order, Mason has forbidden the use of DeepSeek AI, preventing any person on campus wifi, with a campus-issued device from accessing the AI platform. The exceptions included off-campus use with personal devices, or for certain employees for law enforcement-related purposes, as said in the email.
According to a report by the Associated Press, the users’ data is stored within the People’s Republic of China. Feroot Security, a Canadian security company, first found the potential data leak. The Associated Press stated that Feroot Security did not observe data being transferred over to China.
Concerns were raised due to information found about user data being sent to China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company, according to the Associated Press. China Mobile is barred from operating in the United States.
Chief AI Officer and Associate Dean for AI Innovation at Mason Amarda Shehu, when asked about her thoughts on the ban, said, “It is difficult to determine what a model is capable of doing. One side of the coin allows researchers to figure out what it does. The other side is not quite sure what the mode is capable of or what you might expose.”
Alex Tabarrok, an economics professor and chair at Mason’s Mercatus Center, said that the national security concerns are “unproven” and “probably overblown” but stressed the need to be mindful of the role of AI in future conflicts.
In February, DeepSeek AI had amassed 61.81 million users, according to Backlinko, making it the fourth most popular AI app to date. It was said that DeepSeek AI was the rival to ChatGPT.
Explained by Newsweek, “DeepSeek-R1 claims to rival OpenAI’s model in reasoning and mathematical problem-solving. The platform’s ability to generate Python code more effectively than ChatGPT has been a highlight in discussions among tech enthusiasts.”
Amarda Seshu had other ideas when asked if DeepSeek would become the new ChatGPT. “Whenever there is a new model out, there is the novelty effect, folks want to try it out.” Later stating, “It is not the best performer, a little bit better one on a few tasks, overall, it was acceptable but not necessarily the replacer of ChatGPT.
The Fourth Estate has reached out to Governor Youngkin for comments about the ban but has not received a response.
