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Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

foreignpolicy.com

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Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#651

Post by echoangle »

treprinum wrote: post #635
onel wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the pie did not remain the same and Europe's slice shrunk. Some parts of the pie just grew faster. It doesn't mean Europe went backwards

Now imagine we are talking about companies: "We grew just our competitors grew 4x as much as we did." - that would be a prime candidate for an acquisition or being labeled a "zombie company" in a few years due to exponential growth effects.

That’s exactly what happens to every large company. At some point, growth is limited. You think google grows as fast as Kagi? Should google be concerned because kagi managed to 10x their users in the past year (made up figure, you get the point) and they didn’t?

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#652

Post by stemlord »

fooker wrote: post #478
georgeburdell wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you actually get relevant online ads? I usually get ads about the thing I just bought

Statistically this works out pretty well. If you spent real money on something, you're far more likely to buy it again or buy it for someone or send that link to someone than a completely new product.

Do you really need an ad to get you to do that?

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#653

Post by bawolff »

ben_w wrote: post #506
bawolff wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, it’s being used to job screen applicants even though we have proven that AI models still suffer from thing like racial bias. Can't we just say racism is illegal, and if a company uses an AI to be racist, they get fined the same way they would if they were racist the old fashioned way?

"Just", no. Fence at the top of a cliff (make sure the AI is unbiased and can be fixed when it turns out it is) vs. Ambulance at the bottom (letting people sue if they think the machine is wrong).

When you make specific methods illegal, it tends to lead to loopholes. If you just make the result illegal then nobody can try and get around it by using a slightly different system design.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#654

Post by rangestransform »

realityking wrote: post #646
Detrytus wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mixing up many things here: 1. Accenture, Capgemini and Atos are consulting companies that don't produce anything, they just rent out their code monkeys to the customers. And you know what those code monkeys are trained in? Software stacks that were created mostly in the US. 2. The rest of the companies you mention do not employ that many software developers. 3. They also do not deliver terribly popular, or im…

Is Tech only Software? If so, Apple and Nvidia won‘t qualify. They‘re more of a hardware company. BTW Bosch‘s main business is automotive supplies. They‘re doing everything down to having their own fabs for automotive chips. It‘s just completely invisible to us as consumers that‘s why you consider it a dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, and power tools company.

Nvidia’s moat is almost entirely software though, not just cuda but all the other bits of drivers required to bitbang a gpu into showing stuff on a screen (see: intel arc for how important this is)

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#655

Post by rangestransform »

tivert wrote: post #454
runday198 wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate. They will probably move to those whacked out societies.

> What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate. You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines? I think you missed the GP's point: a lot of so-called "innovation" is crap, providing as much true value as a parasite (maybe one of those lovely ones that will kill you if…

A lot of “crap” is innovation too. In the past some considered video games to be crap, rotting children’s brains, promoting violence, etc. Look what happened when we figured out that add on cards for projective rendering could also multiply matrices really quickly.

Whether or not an innovation is crap can only be judged in hindsight.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#656

Post by lurking_swe »

ndriscoll wrote: post #310
DataDaemon wrote: post #6

Europe is a place to take social benefits; there is no tech, no innovation. It's better to sit on the couch and watch Netflix than start a business. There is too much risk, too many taxes, and too many regulations.

My impression is that many if not most KDE developers are in Europe. That's some of the most useful user-facing software that exists. Most big American "tech" has essentially no utility, and is built around mindless scrolling, spying, and ads.

No utility you say? i’d argue all of this is relevant to consumers and/or businesses in europe:

• Microsoft windows

• microsoft office (excel, etc)

• google search

• google maps

• gmail and yahoo mail

• smartphones

• space-x (affordable satellite launches - for accurate weather forecasts and GPS)

• OpenAI (pioneering LLM’s from a product perspective)

• Visa and Mastercard networks

• AWS / Azure / GCP

• Adobe (photoshop, etc)

• Zoom / Webex (Skype is an exception, created in europe)

• Salesforce

• DocuSign

• AutoCAD

I can list more if you’d like…this was literally off the top of my head. All of these businesses and products were created in the united states, some with VC funding. They employ hundreds or thousands of engineers, product managers, etc. They provide critical business capabilities to businesses around the world. Some are user facing as well.

As far as critical business software Europe has created Skype, SAP, and i think that’s it? From the hardware side, major kudos for ASML and Airbus.

The stuff you read about in the news is focused on bad actors and toxic social media junk. thats a small piece of big tech.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#657

Post by lurking_swe »

amai wrote: post #575
DataDaemon wrote: post #6

Europe is a place to take social benefits; there is no tech, no innovation. It's better to sit on the couch and watch Netflix than start a business. There is too much risk, too many taxes, and too many regulations.

No innovation in Europe? Who created Linux? Python? ARM? ASML? Outside of IT: BioNTech (first Covid mRNA vaccine), Ozempic from Novo Nordisk? A fee seconds of googling is enough to show how ridiculous this claim is.

The trouble with these examples is that many of them are foundations or open source projects. They don’t employ europeans and provide a direct boost to the european economy. So yes there is definitely innovation but is it translating to JOBS in europe?

Is python a company that hires hundreds or thousands of engineers, product managers, etc? no. Same with Linux. Also Linux was created by a european (torvalds) while he was living and working in the united states, and is now contributed to by engineers all over the world. I’d hardly call that a majority european innovation. A nitpick but I wanted to clarify that.

ASML, ARM, BioNtech and Ozempic are great examples though, i’ll give you that.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#658

Post by paulryanrogers »

ricardo81 wrote: post #448
kelnos wrote: post #394

I don't live in Europe, but wish we had these sorts of regulations in the US. If tech companies cannot provide us a means to control our personal information, and require us to be locked into their gatekeep-y, nanny-state, walled gardens and submit to using locked-down devices that don't actually obey what we want them to do, then those tech companies should not exist. I've gotten a little bit of a taste of some of t…

IMHO the problem has been that FAANG has not been regulated enough. The sheer size of these companies and their market share means there's little chance of competition from anywhere. Though TBF when it comes to poorly thought out regulation, the amount of human time lost to clicking cookie consent/reject screens surely has to be a net loss to society.

The regulations don't require a banner. Just don't gather or share unnecessarily. No banner or notice required. Companies would rather hound users than stop selling them down the river, even their directly paying customers.

And if people are better informed of how far and wide their data will be prostituted, then I'd call it a win.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#659

Post by corimaith »

BobbyJo wrote: post #400
627467 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there maybe better examples of why AI biases provide deep systemic problems but: CV screening? are contemporary LLM really worse that previous screening tech and processes?

I think a worse feature for them to have is consistency . Imagine being someone that has fallen through the cracks of software a significant number of employers are using... Basically soft-locked out of employment with no recourse.

I'd argue consistency in discrimination is easier because it makes it easier to detect and account for.

A range of different people interviewing are going to be alot harder to pin down.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#660

Post by killingtime74 »

paulddraper wrote: post #637
nottorp wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s being used to job screen applicants even though we have proven that AI models still suffer from thing like racial bias I bet they also suffer from other biases that are harder to detect and maybe some biases we can't even imagine and thus control for.

So.....,just like humans?

That's the point though. It's illegal for humans to do things during hiring that are not illegal for AI to do as it stands now (all sorts of discrimination). We want to at least level the playing field.
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