With strong data protection, copyright and privacy laws, it would be a nightmare for any company to train models because activists lawyers would sue left and right.
Even by some miracle they come up with the model, again the hardware would be from US companies. It would take years to build a European equivalent of AWS and not to mention the talent required to do that. Given how low the wages in European countries are compared to American counterparts, and also lack of incentives from the governments I truly cannot think of a way how EU can catch up to US or China. Although I would love to be proven wrong
Worst part is Europe was near the top of nuclear and microchips ~30 years ago, and France had bleeding-edge AI.
To build frontier models you need VC money. There’s no VC money because VC believe that there is no market for a ‘EU Champion’.
There’s no market for a EU champion because internal EU market is not big enough for VC returns. Why invest in EU champion when the US champion is guaranteed to have better returns ?
And there’s no public alternative to VC either because that’s national level and national investment in EU doesnt cross national boundaries
Mistral actions reflect this, they need returns and they target the market where they can be competitive, which is the scraps the US labs cannot address. This is not enough to fund frontier lab research
Also the legal context on regulations is quite different from the US. In the US you can have unlimited damage, that is not the case in the EU, where regulation penalty can never as a matter of principle put the existence of the company in danger, and thus the application of the regulations is always a matter of negociation with the government. You don't have to respect everything all at once, size of the company and ability to actually implement the regulations are taken into account, which means that sartups are usually excempt.
The Southern Countries are parasitically living from EU funds and EU programs, including money transfer for the budgets. The rich countries are desperately seeing China eating their lunch in Cars and all the rest.
Add to this the aging population, and now having the head under the sand on AI, and it does not look pretty...
It will never happen because it's a political decision!
European politicians and bureaucrats, at any level, are idiots(in the best case scenario) or corrupted(in the worst one). Cloud computing is a thing since at least 10 years, and we still don't have a single fucking hyperscaler despite having everything already in place: Ovh, Hertzner + several other big cloud providers in all major countries, but instead of acting as a unique actor ...
The Fable debacle seems destined to be the canonical reason why the EU built their own software / AI ecosystem.
You can't just legislate this into existence, you also need the money and talent to do it, not to mention the hardware.
I would still prefer bureacratic laws to the chaos of the White House.
Anthropic has been asking for a sensible regulatory regime, as you would know if you read their suggestions. What you’re looking at is USG directly integrating with the free market based on personal dislike.
It’s purely a revenge tactic due to Anthropic’s disagreement with Hegseth’s desire to use AI for war crimes.
EU will maybe never be like the US and maybe the US will be stronger and richer than the EU... But us EU people have nice weather and lots of good things like small cars and bike lanes and soccer teams and socker teams and suckerteams and lots and lots of windmills and sea windmills small tiny farms that are super cosy!!!
I think a YT Video about it would take on millions on views. Oh and the bus,no cards...debit or credit...only cash...oh wait...only coins.
German precision...the fairytale adults tell mechanics.
The "strong and deep statements" they release are cheap theater.
The US is defending Europe through NATO. Until that changes, the EU will continue to be the US's slave.
- Commissioner for Digital and Frontier: Henna Virkkunen (JOURNALIST, experience PR) [1]
- Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy: Stéphane Séjourné (LAWYER, politics, but hey, his mom was a telephone switch operator!) [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henna_Virkkunen
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A9phane_S%C3%A9journ%C3%...
inb4, Sacks is MD/lawyer, but he is a Stanford econ graduate, was PayPal COO, is tech VC, etc. So he has a clue. (like him or not)
- Monopolies and related regulation. Of course US has its own companies being treated as monopolies so they will try to save them
- Social systems including healthcare
- Russia being next door vs far away (for US)
- The whole AI buildout
- A little bit of Libre Office smattering at the government level
Whether you consider US to be guarding its national interests, or whether you consider europeans to be taking a free ride on US's defense systems, it seems like 2 partners who got together for whatever reasons, you can even justify them in history, but history has moved on. I think we are going in 2 different directions for even the next president, however big a U turn he/she makes, I do not think the situation is salvageable.
Practically this means Europe has a short window in which to catch up, while the US hobbles its own progress.
You don't really have a choice if the government decides to play hardball
The most egregious example: the core OpenAI team is like forty per cent Polish...?
Additonally, the Chinese AI industry is shifting away from open models and to American-style commercialization as well [2].
[0] - https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3351292/...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/eu-firms-brace-more-shut...
Does "Europe" need a leading-edge model? Yeah, most likely, but chasing the "SpaceX-buys-all-the-Nvida-chips-then-rents-them-out" model is pointless, and the "China distills it all" market seems to be rather saturated as well. So, another vote for "meh", I guess?
That's a strong statement, isn't it? But so far it seems true. They lower barrier to entry but they don't enable experts to get more things done better. Studies like the METR report show they make experts less productive but with the feeling of being more productive.
Yeah, but isn't the "common knowledge" that the EU can't produce software anyway, annoying outliers like SAP nothwithstanding?
And: "Fable" being 10x (or even 2x, or even 1.1x) better than Opus 4.x is not agreed-upon fact, right?
Yes, I know Mistral exists but they're into the b-2-b sovereign enterprise/government niche, not winning the consumer space. And if history taught us anything from the Blackberry vs iPhone wars is that products winning over the consumer preference end up dominating the market over those dominating enterprise. Simple as.
Not many consumers and small-medium businesses will prefer to buy an inferior but domestic products for the sake of sovereignty, if the foreign imports can deliver better faster/results for cheaper. Same how Chinese car brands are now easting European ones on the European market. The free market is brutal and merciless when it gets to be actually free.
The only problem is - when US services are available, there's no incentive to bring anything to the market.
It's too late for this. The time to execute this was 20 years ago when EU had leverage (the EU stock market was bigger than the US one in 2004, now it's half). Now that leverage is gone and EU is bogged down with massive domestic issues it can't recover from (some of which you mentioned), and starting a massive tech IP/trade war now with the US over Claude as retaliation for Trump will only hurt the EU working class more, as the US has more levers to pull being a big consumer of EU exports.
Unfortunately due to decades of neglect, mismanagement and bad policies, EU has backed itself into a corner making itself an easy mark for both the US and China to take advantage of as they lack any leverage to dictate international policies on their terms so they have to fold in the end.
Also, many EU politicians have no idea how the internet works let alone what Claude is. So much talks coming from them out of the blue on this topic will be the mouthpieces of the lobbyists funding them in exchange for government money to build "EU sovereign products" which may or may not deliver which is irrelevant as the goal will be to laudner public money into private pockets for shipping a sovereignty sticker.
@snovv_crash
>You spend too much time online
How can you insult people like that?
I base my assessment on the visible decline me and everyone around me see with our own eyes over the past 10 or so years. I can see for myself how my purchasing power has dropped like rock, how brutal inflation is, how much more expensive housing is relative to wages, how much more difficult it is to get a state doctor and childcare, the waves of layoffs me and friend experienced, etc. the news didn't have to tell people that, people can see and experience that for themselves. All these are not caused by one single issue that you can easily revert, they're a cumulation of multiple issues that accumulated over decades and are impossible to reverse in the current situation the EU is in.
It's so insulting when people are trying to gaslight you that your lived expiries are just "being online". So disingenuous and bad faith.
>The EU isn't bogged down with issues
It definitely is. That's why it can't take decisive actions against foreign bullies like Trump or even Putin(he invaded Ukraine in 2014 BTW). Like the EU talks a lot about its freedom and humanitarian values and policies but sheepishly fails to impose them on its trading partners, because it would suffer retaliations its economy can not absorb. It's too dependent on energy and tech trade with the US and too dependent on manufacturing from China, so it can't piss either of them off and is forced to play ball to their tune regardless of diverging values, while also playing to the tune of Azerbaijani authoritarianism for their gas imports and to the whims of Indian nationalists for access to their market. EU is currently in no position to bargain so it folds to everyone's demands.
Besides, it's a bit strange to argue that it's impossible to make a change, and as proof of that take the fact that there's been a big change over the last 20 years.
I feel this is mostly to do with the EU having more companies that stay private for longer and partly to do with the USA's currency manipulation which maintains the dollar value artificially high.
Where did you get that from??
Even if you overcome all of this and become successful, you'll get chased by politicians for having too much money (which is not allowed in the EU).
And even if you don't, today, it will be tomorrow.
Easier to just take a long haul flight to your favorite US coast and do it there.
Jared Kushner will get a sweet package of private Anthropic shares and everything will be forgotten.
You should cool it with the racially charged remarks.