6 ms·

Yep https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48816025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48816025 And EU leadership completely destroyed Europe's future by betti

by alecco 2mo ago

Yep https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48816025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48816025 And EU leadership completely destroyed Europe's future by betting on depending on US and Chinese models. https://pleias.ai/blog/fable-eu https://pleias.ai/blog/fable-eu

myrmidon 2mo ago
This is pure speculation at this point tbh. You could just as well read the european approach as a bet that frontier models will be unable to keep a significant edge over open competition (and thus not worth throwing subsidies at, because any economic advantage is fleeting at best). Looking at the data and related past experience, this looks like a pretty solid bet (despite the "risk" being hard to quantify).
- sajithdilshan 2mo ago
  > You could just as well read the european approach as a bet that frontier models will be unable to keep a significant edge over open competition And that's a bet they will lose 100%. Once the Chinese starts imposing export bans/controlling the access to their models, Europe would be at the mercy of US/China to allow them access or just rely on miserable mistral
  - myrmidon 2mo ago
    Again, you are assuming that frontier models will stay meaningfully ahead long-term. Export controls/bans are pointless if this is not the case. There is ton of strong indicators that they will not stay ahead: Assuming that technological progress of any kind follows some form of logistic function (where "gains", in this case "intelligence" become sub-linear at some point) is (long-term) a very conservative and proven assumption, and "automatically" negates your lead over time. Similarly, purely "intellectual" advantage in disciplines like cryptography/computer chess/algorithm design never really stayed concentrated, either.
    - sajithdilshan 2mo ago
      It is not about intellectual advantage, but about capabilities as well. Assuming that Europe would get all the knowledge they need on the cutting edge technology on how to train a frontier model (which they won't because US and China would guard this as national secrets), who is going to setup infrastructure to train the model? Who is building the data centers (multi-year project) and who is going to build the energy infrastructure? Just because you know how to do it doesn't mean you have the capability to do that as well. One of the best example is nuclear reactors. By now the know how and technology is fairly mature and open, but not every country gets to build nuclear reactors. Same would be with the frontier models as well. EU should have already started investing in the infrastructure side in-case they obtain the know how, but your politicians are still bickering on pension reforms and Ukrainian war, etc.
      - nightski 2mo ago
        So Deepmind/Meta/etc... would all have to cut off their EU offices even though they hold incredible talent? I'm just not finding this scenario likely.
        sajithdilshan 2mo ago
        Does meta has an AI training data center in EU? They can just operate and provide normal access to their services, just block AI access. This is already happening, apple would not release new Siri in EU (granted it's due to a regulation clash) but this would be a testing point. If Europeans are still paying the same prices for sub par services/products to their American counter parts, it's win-win situation for those companies. Just sell a dumbed down non-AI version of service/product in EU for an inflated price.
        nightski 2mo ago
        Meta's FAIR has several R&D offices in the EU, yes. So you are saying their labs can conduct R&D on models in the EU, potentially even train them there, they just can't have production LLM inference serving or release the model weights? I'm just not seeing it. A not-insignificant portion of the AI/ML research community is in the EU.
- KoolKat23 2mo ago
  Open source is currently entirely reliant on Chinese models. So basically EU will be left behind unless we start doing something about it now. imo Mistral isn't enough by itself.
  - guiriduro 2mo ago
    Pretty sure there would be a number of EU states who'd happily pump some money in if the EU were to mandate the ECB to (incentivise intermediary banks to) buy their corresponding long dated sovereign debt cheaply to fund it.
    - KoolKat23 2mo ago
      Perhaps, but in the same breath, from the limited things I've seen and heard, they're extremely reluctant to take any risk with these types of funding schemes when disbursing, so unless it's tried and tested it's not getting off the ground i.e. it's unlikely to lead anywhere considering current state of market. I mean we can barely get EU to host with EU providers. Nevermind something so speculative.
      - guiriduro 2mo ago
        There's potentially a virtuous circle of increased EU tech investment and increased EU tech provider adoption but given the risk aversion sclerosis that affects the european private investment community this does need to be government led. I'd agree the US private debt fuelled $1Tn build out is mostly unsustainable but when you look at what China was able to achieve with govt support on a ˜120bn AI sector investment it behoves the EU to take a stand, the first 100bn is probably the least risky.
fulafel 2mo ago
EU's leadership doesn't have much power that way, the EU is a thin layer on the countries. In the US the federal government has much more power but nobody is attributing the term good fortunes of the AI industry to the recent federal policy there. (There's long term stuff that does make a difference in hoovering up the global R&D talent and concentrating capital, but that's a different kettle) EU budget is about 1% of the GDP of the countries (from https://commission.europa.eu/topics/budget_en https://commission.europa.eu/topics/budget_en) There's very little betting on any particular AI models going on by the commission/EP. The Pleias article claims a 2020 eurocrat whitepaper determined how things go, but that's fantastical.
fodkodrasz 2mo ago
Why? Worst se we are 10 years behind them. Second mover advantage will also be there, it this is so critical indeed. What happened to China because they were third movers in the race to the nuclear weapons? Nothing. They were pretty behind for a while technologically. The wheels have turned. Stop looking at the world as a short strategy game match, or like a Hollywood movie where everything is all-or-nothing. Many parts of south America are way behind in IT, automotive, space, yet many people have meaningful and happy lives there. I'm yet to accept that the power-block I'm living within being first in the AI race provides a meaningful life to me.
- ChrisLTD 2mo ago
  If anything the first movers would theoretically be the first to destroy their own labor markets and economies.
  - andrekandre 2mo ago
    yep, first-mover disadvantage so-to-speak

by alecco 2mo ago

myrmidon 2mo ago

This is pure speculation at this point tbh. You could just as well read the european approach as a bet that frontier models will be unable to keep a significant edge over open competition (and thus not worth throwing subsidies at, because any economic advantage is fleeting at best). Looking at the data and related past experience, this looks like a pretty solid bet (despite the "risk" being hard to quantify).

sajithdilshan 2mo ago
> You could just as well read the european approach as a bet that frontier models will be unable to keep a significant edge over open competition And that's a bet they will lose 100%. Once the Chinese starts imposing export bans/controlling the access to their models, Europe would be at the mercy of US/China to allow them access or just rely on miserable mistral
- myrmidon 2mo ago
  Again, you are assuming that frontier models will stay meaningfully ahead long-term. Export controls/bans are pointless if this is not the case. There is ton of strong indicators that they will not stay ahead: Assuming that technological progress of any kind follows some form of logistic function (where "gains", in this case "intelligence" become sub-linear at some point) is (long-term) a very conservative and proven assumption, and "automatically" negates your lead over time. Similarly, purely "intellectual" advantage in disciplines like cryptography/computer chess/algorithm design never really stayed concentrated, either.
  - sajithdilshan 2mo ago
    It is not about intellectual advantage, but about capabilities as well. Assuming that Europe would get all the knowledge they need on the cutting edge technology on how to train a frontier model (which they won't because US and China would guard this as national secrets), who is going to setup infrastructure to train the model? Who is building the data centers (multi-year project) and who is going to build the energy infrastructure? Just because you know how to do it doesn't mean you have the capability to do that as well. One of the best example is nuclear reactors. By now the know how and technology is fairly mature and open, but not every country gets to build nuclear reactors. Same would be with the frontier models as well. EU should have already started investing in the infrastructure side in-case they obtain the know how, but your politicians are still bickering on pension reforms and Ukrainian war, etc.
    - nightski 2mo ago
      So Deepmind/Meta/etc... would all have to cut off their EU offices even though they hold incredible talent? I'm just not finding this scenario likely.
      - sajithdilshan 2mo ago
        Does meta has an AI training data center in EU? They can just operate and provide normal access to their services, just block AI access. This is already happening, apple would not release new Siri in EU (granted it's due to a regulation clash) but this would be a testing point. If Europeans are still paying the same prices for sub par services/products to their American counter parts, it's win-win situation for those companies. Just sell a dumbed down non-AI version of service/product in EU for an inflated price.
        nightski 2mo ago
        Meta's FAIR has several R&D offices in the EU, yes. So you are saying their labs can conduct R&D on models in the EU, potentially even train them there, they just can't have production LLM inference serving or release the model weights? I'm just not seeing it. A not-insignificant portion of the AI/ML research community is in the EU.
KoolKat23 2mo ago
Open source is currently entirely reliant on Chinese models. So basically EU will be left behind unless we start doing something about it now. imo Mistral isn't enough by itself.
- guiriduro 2mo ago
  Pretty sure there would be a number of EU states who'd happily pump some money in if the EU were to mandate the ECB to (incentivise intermediary banks to) buy their corresponding long dated sovereign debt cheaply to fund it.
  - KoolKat23 2mo ago
    Perhaps, but in the same breath, from the limited things I've seen and heard, they're extremely reluctant to take any risk with these types of funding schemes when disbursing, so unless it's tried and tested it's not getting off the ground i.e. it's unlikely to lead anywhere considering current state of market. I mean we can barely get EU to host with EU providers. Nevermind something so speculative.
    - guiriduro 2mo ago
      There's potentially a virtuous circle of increased EU tech investment and increased EU tech provider adoption but given the risk aversion sclerosis that affects the european private investment community this does need to be government led. I'd agree the US private debt fuelled $1Tn build out is mostly unsustainable but when you look at what China was able to achieve with govt support on a ˜120bn AI sector investment it behoves the EU to take a stand, the first 100bn is probably the least risky.

fulafel 2mo ago

EU's leadership doesn't have much power that way, the EU is a thin layer on the countries. In the US the federal government has much more power but nobody is attributing the term good fortunes of the AI industry to the recent federal policy there. (There's long term stuff that does make a difference in hoovering up the global R&D talent and concentrating capital, but that's a different kettle) EU budget is about 1% of the GDP of the countries (from https://commission.europa.eu/topics/budget_en https://commission.europa.eu/topics/budget_en) There's very little betting on any particular AI models going on by the commission/EP. The Pleias article claims a 2020 eurocrat whitepaper determined how things go, but that's fantastical.

fodkodrasz 2mo ago

Why? Worst se we are 10 years behind them. Second mover advantage will also be there, it this is so critical indeed. What happened to China because they were third movers in the race to the nuclear weapons? Nothing. They were pretty behind for a while technologically. The wheels have turned. Stop looking at the world as a short strategy game match, or like a Hollywood movie where everything is all-or-nothing. Many parts of south America are way behind in IT, automotive, space, yet many people have meaningful and happy lives there. I'm yet to accept that the power-block I'm living within being first in the AI race provides a meaningful life to me.

ChrisLTD 2mo ago
If anything the first movers would theoretically be the first to destroy their own labor markets and economies.
- andrekandre 2mo ago
  yep, first-mover disadvantage so-to-speak