4 ms·

Europe absolutely needs a home-grown AI lab, especially with Pax Americana looking increasingly shaky. LLMs embody value systems, and American and European va

by tangled 10d ago

Europe absolutely needs a home-grown AI lab, especially with Pax Americana looking increasingly shaky. LLMs embody value systems, and American and European values are not the same (yes, there are overlaps, but also key differences). More nefariously, I can also imagine LLMs that silently degrade their reasoning when used in a national security context of a non-US country. So, Mistral may not be competitive with OpenAI and Anthropic, but in many contexts that doesn’t matter. And, perhaps this gap could be closed with more funding (the three billion funding figure is a rounding error next to US labs). I’m sort of surprised that the EU isn’t stepping in to support them.

andsoitis 10d ago
> LLMs embody value systems, and American and European values are not the same (yes, there are overlaps, but also key differences). There are also some areas where values across Europe are quite divergent. Think LGBT rights and social acceptance, religion & secularism, immigration & multiculturalism. And countries don’t fall into neat “liberal west vs conservative east”. Spain is exceptionally liberal on LGBT issues while remaining more religious than some northern countries; Denmark is socially liberal but has adopted relatively restrictive immigration policies.
- dist-epoch 10d ago
  You are conflating two concepts into one words, immigration and illegal immigration are not the same thing
- swiftcoder 10d ago
  > Spain is exceptionally liberal on LGBT issues while remaining more religious than some northern countries When you move here, "more religious" turns out to pretty much be window dressing. Yes, they still celebrate a bunch of the old catholic holidays, parading saints around on feast days, but apart from a handful of older folks, nobody actually believes. Particularly when compared to the US, where a large minority is still going around loudly thumping bibles, Spain is a very secular country.
  - tm-guimaraes 10d ago
    Well, being secular is kind of a catholic thing. Besides the vatican (for obvious reasons), catholics do have that tradition. To Caesar what is Caesar’s, to God…
fallingbananna 10d ago
>I’m sort of surprised that the EU isn’t stepping in to support them. On a similar note: Why does it have to be the EU to step up? Why doesn't EU rather speed up making VC investments more attractive, so that EU and banks don't do the majority of investing? *I don't have answers to these questions. It just frustrates me how many investments here come from politicians and banks, rather than from investors, people, and companies.
- AureliusMA 10d ago
  It’s a different culture with different rules, if it was that easy it would have been done already. See my other comment about lack of budget at a federal level.
  - disgruntledphd2 10d ago
    > It’s a different culture with different rules Nah, it's more that there's no Capital Markets Union, so there's just ~30 smaller pots of money scattered across each country.
dist-epoch 10d ago
> with Pax Americana looking increasingly shaky. that is being replaced with Pax Silica https://www.state.gov/pax-silica https://www.state.gov/pax-silica
- utopiah 10d ago
  This "Non-Signatory Participants : Taiwan *" is so weird precisely because Taiwan is the one who started the Silicon shield few years ago by making TSMC central to the whole ecosystem.
  - weberer 10d ago
    Its a roundabout way of not recognizing Taiwan as an independent country. The USA officially has a "One China policy".
bambax 10d ago
> I’m sort of surprised that the EU isn’t stepping in to support them. It is! The second largest investor in this round is Scaleup Europe Fund: https://eic.ec.europa.eu/eic-fund/scaleup-europe-fund_en https://eic.ec.europa.eu/eic-fund/scaleup-europe-fund_en
- easytiger 10d ago
  Do you think that's a good thing?
  - bambax 10d ago
    I don't know. Government funds have a unique way of being often wrong, so this may be the kiss of death. But it is a sign that the EU is helping Mistral.
  - AureliusMA 10d ago
    European money invested in a European company ought to be a good thing, don’t you think?
    - Tenoke 10d ago
      It's possible to be a waste of European money that could be better used elsewhere, though. I think the same about LeCun's company sucking up the little funding here.
  - gib444 10d ago
    Do you think it's not?
  - guiriduro 10d ago
    Imagine the fund were distributing to several teams, but let's say Z.ai and Deepseek were european and among them. What percentage would be allocated to Mistral in that case? OK, the other two aren't, but in the same vein, should the EU fund be saving its powder until such a project shows up?
pembrook 10d ago
[flagged]
- AureliusMA 10d ago
  This is a spectacularly prejudiced and insulting comment.
  - pembrook 10d ago
    Can you offer a believable rebuttal to any of my statements? AfD just had a historic victory in Germany, France is leaning the same direction, etc. Just those two are 40% of the EU economy, and do you think them both turning ethno-nationalist and right wing means the EU project is going to get stronger or weaker? More shared values, or less? The truth is the EU didn't go far enough, and created a feckless bike-shedding bureaucracy of papercuts. If the EU were to truly unite around shared values, we could achieve something. But the fundamental issue is the EU doesn't have these shared values. The US had the benefit of starting from 0 and attracting only likeminded people to grow. In Europe every country still identifies with their 19th century national romantic movement definition of who they are (which was itself a construct). The lack of shared values is the problem. We can't even get most of the EU on a common language. There were people like Kalgeri who had a vision for a 'united states of europe,' which arguably would have been better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Coudenhove-Kalergi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Coudenhove-Kalergi But anytime you bring his name up some right wing conspiracy nutjob will call you an evil globalist. And the far left nutjobs (more common here) will call you an evil capitalist/fascist for supporting his vision of trying to compete in global markets through technology.
world2vec 10d ago
"Pax Sinica", Chinese Peace
AureliusMA 10d ago
Europe has no budget of their own like the USA and China do, because there is no debt nor taxation at the European level. That’s the reason for the complication you are noticing.
- kilroy123 10d ago
  They're pushing hard to do Euro bonds precisely for things like this.
  - disgruntledphd2 10d ago
    > They're pushing hard to do Euro bonds precisely for things like this. I really, really wish that this was true, but basically no-one is pushing for euro bonds (even though they'd be a great idea).
- saelthavron 10d ago
  What do you mean by "Europe has no budget of their own like the USA and China do"? The EU was specifically mentioned and the EU does have a budget, debt, and income: https://european-union.europa.eu/institutions-law-budget/budget/how-eu-budget-financed_en https://european-union.europa.eu/institutions-law-budget/bud...
Tenoke 10d ago
> Europe absolutely needs a home-grown AI lab, especially with Pax Americana looking increasingly shaky. The only problem (at least in the LLM space) is that you can do more in Europe by just getting the best Chinese Open weights model (do a finetune if you really want) and do more for cheaper than using Mistral.

by tangled 10d ago

andsoitis 10d ago

> LLMs embody value systems, and American and European values are not the same (yes, there are overlaps, but also key differences). There are also some areas where values across Europe are quite divergent. Think LGBT rights and social acceptance, religion & secularism, immigration & multiculturalism. And countries don’t fall into neat “liberal west vs conservative east”. Spain is exceptionally liberal on LGBT issues while remaining more religious than some northern countries; Denmark is socially liberal but has adopted relatively restrictive immigration policies.

dist-epoch 10d ago
You are conflating two concepts into one words, immigration and illegal immigration are not the same thing
swiftcoder 10d ago
> Spain is exceptionally liberal on LGBT issues while remaining more religious than some northern countries When you move here, "more religious" turns out to pretty much be window dressing. Yes, they still celebrate a bunch of the old catholic holidays, parading saints around on feast days, but apart from a handful of older folks, nobody actually believes. Particularly when compared to the US, where a large minority is still going around loudly thumping bibles, Spain is a very secular country.
- tm-guimaraes 10d ago
  Well, being secular is kind of a catholic thing. Besides the vatican (for obvious reasons), catholics do have that tradition. To Caesar what is Caesar’s, to God…

fallingbananna 10d ago

>I’m sort of surprised that the EU isn’t stepping in to support them. On a similar note: Why does it have to be the EU to step up? Why doesn't EU rather speed up making VC investments more attractive, so that EU and banks don't do the majority of investing? *I don't have answers to these questions. It just frustrates me how many investments here come from politicians and banks, rather than from investors, people, and companies.

AureliusMA 10d ago
It’s a different culture with different rules, if it was that easy it would have been done already. See my other comment about lack of budget at a federal level.
- disgruntledphd2 10d ago
  > It’s a different culture with different rules Nah, it's more that there's no Capital Markets Union, so there's just ~30 smaller pots of money scattered across each country.

dist-epoch 10d ago

> with Pax Americana looking increasingly shaky. that is being replaced with Pax Silica https://www.state.gov/pax-silica https://www.state.gov/pax-silica

utopiah 10d ago
This "Non-Signatory Participants : Taiwan *" is so weird precisely because Taiwan is the one who started the Silicon shield few years ago by making TSMC central to the whole ecosystem.
- weberer 10d ago
  Its a roundabout way of not recognizing Taiwan as an independent country. The USA officially has a "One China policy".

bambax 10d ago

> I’m sort of surprised that the EU isn’t stepping in to support them. It is! The second largest investor in this round is Scaleup Europe Fund: https://eic.ec.europa.eu/eic-fund/scaleup-europe-fund_en https://eic.ec.europa.eu/eic-fund/scaleup-europe-fund_en

easytiger 10d ago
Do you think that's a good thing?
- bambax 10d ago
  I don't know. Government funds have a unique way of being often wrong, so this may be the kiss of death. But it is a sign that the EU is helping Mistral.
- AureliusMA 10d ago
  European money invested in a European company ought to be a good thing, don’t you think?
  - Tenoke 10d ago
    It's possible to be a waste of European money that could be better used elsewhere, though. I think the same about LeCun's company sucking up the little funding here.
- gib444 10d ago
  Do you think it's not?
- guiriduro 10d ago
  Imagine the fund were distributing to several teams, but let's say Z.ai and Deepseek were european and among them. What percentage would be allocated to Mistral in that case? OK, the other two aren't, but in the same vein, should the EU fund be saving its powder until such a project shows up?

pembrook 10d ago

[flagged]

AureliusMA 10d ago
This is a spectacularly prejudiced and insulting comment.
- pembrook 10d ago
  Can you offer a believable rebuttal to any of my statements? AfD just had a historic victory in Germany, France is leaning the same direction, etc. Just those two are 40% of the EU economy, and do you think them both turning ethno-nationalist and right wing means the EU project is going to get stronger or weaker? More shared values, or less? The truth is the EU didn't go far enough, and created a feckless bike-shedding bureaucracy of papercuts. If the EU were to truly unite around shared values, we could achieve something. But the fundamental issue is the EU doesn't have these shared values. The US had the benefit of starting from 0 and attracting only likeminded people to grow. In Europe every country still identifies with their 19th century national romantic movement definition of who they are (which was itself a construct). The lack of shared values is the problem. We can't even get most of the EU on a common language. There were people like Kalgeri who had a vision for a 'united states of europe,' which arguably would have been better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Coudenhove-Kalergi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Coudenhove-Kalergi But anytime you bring his name up some right wing conspiracy nutjob will call you an evil globalist. And the far left nutjobs (more common here) will call you an evil capitalist/fascist for supporting his vision of trying to compete in global markets through technology.

world2vec 10d ago

"Pax Sinica", Chinese Peace

AureliusMA 10d ago

Europe has no budget of their own like the USA and China do, because there is no debt nor taxation at the European level. That’s the reason for the complication you are noticing.

kilroy123 10d ago
They're pushing hard to do Euro bonds precisely for things like this.
- disgruntledphd2 10d ago
  > They're pushing hard to do Euro bonds precisely for things like this. I really, really wish that this was true, but basically no-one is pushing for euro bonds (even though they'd be a great idea).
saelthavron 10d ago
What do you mean by "Europe has no budget of their own like the USA and China do"? The EU was specifically mentioned and the EU does have a budget, debt, and income: https://european-union.europa.eu/institutions-law-budget/budget/how-eu-budget-financed_en https://european-union.europa.eu/institutions-law-budget/bud...

Tenoke 10d ago

> Europe absolutely needs a home-grown AI lab, especially with Pax Americana looking increasingly shaky. The only problem (at least in the LLM space) is that you can do more in Europe by just getting the best Chinese Open weights model (do a finetune if you really want) and do more for cheaper than using Mistral.