Another strategy, another initiative, another commission.
> All of this AI acceleration will be monitored by an “AI Observatory” and discussed in an “Apply AI Alliance” – a refashioning of the existing AI Alliance, a stakeholder talking shop.
It reminds me of how here in Spain the Government already created the Agencia Española de Supervisión de la Inteligencia Artificial (Spanish AI Supervision Agency) when we barely have an AI industry to supervise. It creates some more cushy jobs for them to hand out though.
Everything in EU is overpriced and worse than things coming from outside the EU, and that is by design. EU basically has no choice but to become more dystopian and adopt policies similar to the USSR to keep itself viable. This includes extreme trade barriers (with exceptions for China, because of course) and extreme restrictions on speech.
Europe is like some rich kid who thinks he somehow has merit of his own, instead of just being well-off because his parents were well-off. Basically Europe is the Greta Thunberg of continents.
Regardless of how you view the current political climate in USA, it's simply become a major risk-management factor for almost any European organisation. We're heavily invested into Azure, but we've had to work out plans on how we could potentially exit within 30 days because we're part of the European energy sector. (We're really part of the global energy sector, but we're based in the EU.) We still view US tech companies as more reliable and secure than a lot of other non-EU places, but it's not like it was 5 years ago. I'm not sure any of us are really happy with this. Mistral is fine, but it's not as good as Claude and similar. It is what it is though.
Ironically there are no current exit strategies for our public sector mobile apps which rely solely on Google play or the Apple store. I've written a plan for how we can move our resources from Azure to Hetzner, luckily I'm not involved with how we would move any 365 products so it was not too bad. Only the plan involves me using our digital national ID app on my phone, which would not work if I wasn't running android with Google Play (or apple). I mean, in the extreme it wouldn't be impossible to use my passport in person, but still.
My problem with the EU overall, aside from being inefficient, is that they don't really push towards intrinsic perfection. They kind of look what others do, try to simulate and copy it, usually fail - and then the same pattern is repeated.
Just take the issue of a european chip industry. Or literally anything China is doing now. The EU just isn't really a driver - it is a maintainer at best. And that also means it will successfully lose out to e. g. China or the USA.
I got a feeling that there's a bunch of European politicians having a FOMO and are way too influenced by AI influencers that post stuff like "It's over", "Bye Bye Hollywood", "17 hours ago OpenAI launched it and this changes everything".
I recall bunch of those also having a FOMO for NFTs and having NFT events in the commission premises.
Probably its O.K. as long as they don't spend consequential money on this stuff. They should just watch the US more closely, keep announcing 600B Euros investment every few weeks and do nothing about it. Make VW invest 5B Euros for AI self driving in Mistral then Mistral buying shares from VW with that money, do some questionable self driving demos etc.
Eurocrats are clueless, they are trying to have something that very small number of people show interest in. What they should really do, IMHO, is to reduce friction induced by bureaucracy and that's it. Contrary to the popular narrative EU is a force for reducing bureaucracy, as the Brits found out when left EU. The idea is that EU coordinates the 27 states to create ruleset that are more or less aligned so there's not too much paperwork when trading between those 27 countries. Unfortunately this is still not good enough and they are working to create the 28th regime which is supposed to be something like streamlined ruleset that bypasses the local ones so that companies can grow in a market of 27 countries without dealing with 27 set of laws. That's when EU can have an actual AI thing because the current state of AI is just bunch of capitalists juggling money and credit among themselves to keep alive this interesting technology that looks promising but doesn't actually accomplish something yet. If EU will have anything of this sort they need a place to hold these capital gymnastics.
This particular "Apply AI" strategy seems to stem from the idea that AI does some great things and EU industry should adopt it to increase productivity and not fall behind. Pure FOMO, considering that studies show very limited gains through use of AI so far.
I work with Hopsworks. I think we are the only European owned software platform for developing and running AI systems (batch, real-time, LLMS/agents) at scale.
Ever since GDPR it has been baffling that European companies just reach for the American hyperscalers without a care in the world. Sure, _some_ companies need it, but you can get a long ways with OVH or Hetzner.
I suspect many of them are just ignoring their obligations with respect to data transfers (they also fail to understand the meaning of "Freely Given Consent" or "Legitimate Interest"), and utterly pathetic and useless institutions like the Irish Data Protection Commission (https://www.dataprotection.ie/en) just... let them.
Interesting that the EU wants to push “Buy European AI,” but without clear implementation steps it feels more like strategy theater. I wonder how many of these initiatives will actually help small developers or startups build sustainable AI tools.
Computers: China, Taiwan
Food: splitted between EU 60% China 30% and US 10% (personal experience, YMMV).
Clothes: 95% S-E Asia, including China
Tools: Eastern EU
Energy: US, Russia
13 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 37.2 ms ] thread> All of this AI acceleration will be monitored by an “AI Observatory” and discussed in an “Apply AI Alliance” – a refashioning of the existing AI Alliance, a stakeholder talking shop.
It reminds me of how here in Spain the Government already created the Agencia Española de Supervisión de la Inteligencia Artificial (Spanish AI Supervision Agency) when we barely have an AI industry to supervise. It creates some more cushy jobs for them to hand out though.
Europe is like some rich kid who thinks he somehow has merit of his own, instead of just being well-off because his parents were well-off. Basically Europe is the Greta Thunberg of continents.
Ironically there are no current exit strategies for our public sector mobile apps which rely solely on Google play or the Apple store. I've written a plan for how we can move our resources from Azure to Hetzner, luckily I'm not involved with how we would move any 365 products so it was not too bad. Only the plan involves me using our digital national ID app on my phone, which would not work if I wasn't running android with Google Play (or apple). I mean, in the extreme it wouldn't be impossible to use my passport in person, but still.
Just take the issue of a european chip industry. Or literally anything China is doing now. The EU just isn't really a driver - it is a maintainer at best. And that also means it will successfully lose out to e. g. China or the USA.
I recall bunch of those also having a FOMO for NFTs and having NFT events in the commission premises.
Probably its O.K. as long as they don't spend consequential money on this stuff. They should just watch the US more closely, keep announcing 600B Euros investment every few weeks and do nothing about it. Make VW invest 5B Euros for AI self driving in Mistral then Mistral buying shares from VW with that money, do some questionable self driving demos etc.
Eurocrats are clueless, they are trying to have something that very small number of people show interest in. What they should really do, IMHO, is to reduce friction induced by bureaucracy and that's it. Contrary to the popular narrative EU is a force for reducing bureaucracy, as the Brits found out when left EU. The idea is that EU coordinates the 27 states to create ruleset that are more or less aligned so there's not too much paperwork when trading between those 27 countries. Unfortunately this is still not good enough and they are working to create the 28th regime which is supposed to be something like streamlined ruleset that bypasses the local ones so that companies can grow in a market of 27 countries without dealing with 27 set of laws. That's when EU can have an actual AI thing because the current state of AI is just bunch of capitalists juggling money and credit among themselves to keep alive this interesting technology that looks promising but doesn't actually accomplish something yet. If EU will have anything of this sort they need a place to hold these capital gymnastics.
This particular "Apply AI" strategy seems to stem from the idea that AI does some great things and EU industry should adopt it to increase productivity and not fall behind. Pure FOMO, considering that studies show very limited gains through use of AI so far.
I suspect many of them are just ignoring their obligations with respect to data transfers (they also fail to understand the meaning of "Freely Given Consent" or "Legitimate Interest"), and utterly pathetic and useless institutions like the Irish Data Protection Commission (https://www.dataprotection.ie/en) just... let them.
Computers: China, Taiwan Food: splitted between EU 60% China 30% and US 10% (personal experience, YMMV). Clothes: 95% S-E Asia, including China Tools: Eastern EU Energy: US, Russia
/s