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Open Euro LLM: Open LLMs for Transparent AI in Europe

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Re: Open Euro LLM: Open LLMs for Transparent AI in Europe

#271

Post by riedel »

sarusso wrote: post #110
riedel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As said before in another comment. The project can likely make use of 'free' EuroHPC resources, which will also be funded simultaneously with hundreds of millions. Still not Stargate, but if they can actually innovate something beyond the obvious (like R1) I think the money is still useful.

On what basis are you are stating this? I'm asking because I have been involved in another project like these (15M budget) and the main issue was the lack of computing resources allocation, because no one thought about it (true story).

The application process IMHO is quite complex (thwy want compute estimations and CVs etc).However if you figure how ist works it is at least relatively easy to get batches of 100k GPU hours via EuroHPC. Currently few calls are open, but there is typically at least also national infrastructure. Again this is nothing compared to what OpenAI or Meta has access to. I just got 25k node hours on Meluxina for a fine-tune project. My colleague got quite some GPU compute oh Germany's Tier3 NHR Clsuter (Horeka with >700 A100/H100 GPUs).

Re: Open Euro LLM: Open LLMs for Transparent AI in Europe

#272

Post by riedel »

menaerus wrote: post #72
riedel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you the best of luck. However, this is basically a still just a European joint research project (admittedly compatibly well funded) with similar partners that have been also connected before in other research projects. To really compete in the space it will require new ideas, great talent and good leadership towards a common goal. I have myself been part of many EU funded projects and know the difficulty of re…

So, if one has a well thought-through idea, what is the process of getting the resources ($$$) from OpenEuroLLM and the compute from EuroHPC? How do I become a partner as a long-standing engineer with plenty of industry practice in research and development? I am asking this because I never really understood how EU funds are working, they always seemed to me as there's a lot of gate keeping.

Applying for EC Projects is a complicated game. For SMEs there is typically Open Calls like this: https://www.ffplus-project.eu/

Regarding compute simply file an application here: https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/access-our-supercomputers/euroh...

The data analytics and AI call is currently not open but the AI factories will start in April, so there will be compute.

If you have questions don't hesitate to contact me as I will have to do commuty management for HammerHAI

Re: Open Euro LLM: Open LLMs for Transparent AI in Europe

#273

Post by rhubarbtree »

isoprophlex wrote: post #57

I'm HIGHLY sceptical. The academics will love it, because they get money. But look at that list of parties involved. More than twenty parties supplying people; none of them will have this initiative on the top of their list of loyalties and priorities. Meaning, everyone will talk, noone will take charge, some millions change hands and we continue with business as usual. Instead this should have been a single new non-…

Ah, so you’ve been an academic before, then.

The problem is academic culture is corrupt, and it’s very hard to reverse the decay.

Simple example: one Russell Group UK university (like many others) was admitting students who couldn’t speak English. A lecturer on a technical subject found they were struggling to understand his course, in part due to the language barrier. Come the exam, most of the students failed. He was told to make the exam easier so they would pass. The lecturer involved is a well meaning kindly man who would consider himself very ethical. But he did what he was told and the students passed.

In such a system it’s hard to see how an individual can fix it. If he had protested, he’d have been gently moved aside and the exam would have been rewritten by someone else.

Research is similarly corrupt. Grants are written to match a call, and they promise the earth. Friends review them and score highly. Pals on the grant committee favour their friends. And it’s implicitly agreed that the outcomes don’t have to be achieved. You go back to doing your original research, or not doing much at all, or more likely figuring out how to get some papers published and writing more grant proposals.

The idealistic, actually interested in progressing the field, leave or are squeezed out, looked over for lectureships in favour of folks who bring in grants via bs and politics.

Choose a topic you know about. Go on the EPSRC website. Look at grants ten years ago and see what their promised outcomes were.

My only answer is that a project like this must be done by people hired from outside of academia, which at this point is probably corrupt beyond repair. I look back at previous generations and wonder how the hell so much advancement was achieved.

Re: Open Euro LLM: Open LLMs for Transparent AI in Europe

#274

Post by Vinnl »

e2le wrote: post #212
Vinnl wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have the numbers at hand or know if they're even public somewhere, but telemetry shows that Firefox Translations is used a lot . Definitely on the list of successful new Firefox features. (I'm a Mozilla employee, but I have not worked on Firefox Translations.)

>I don't have the numbers at hand Is this it? https://glam.telemetry.mozilla.org/fog/probe/translations_re... *

Hmm, I'm not sure, but I'm not sure how to read that page either. That graph has a lot more variability than I'd expect though.

Re: Open Euro LLM: Open LLMs for Transparent AI in Europe

#275

Post by Vinnl »

closewith wrote: post #153
Vinnl wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have the numbers at hand or know if they're even public somewhere, but telemetry shows that Firefox Translations is used a lot . Definitely on the list of successful new Firefox features. (I'm a Mozilla employee, but I have not worked on Firefox Translations.)

What is a lot? Before integration, it had ~490 users as an extension, vs ~800,000 for To Google Translate, the number one option. Offline translation has to be manually enabled per language in Settings. Frankly I don't believe there's any meaningful usage until I see the numbers.

I believe to the order of millions of translations per day, but again, I don't remember where to view this, so might not be correct. But it's definitely orders of magnitude larger than 100s of users.

(And indeed, as a sibling comment points out, the feature is suggested to users in context, which of course massively helps with discoverability, so it's no surprise to me that it's used way more often than the extension.)

Re: Open Euro LLM: Open LLMs for Transparent AI in Europe

#276

Post by amunozo »

esperent wrote: post #19
sarusso wrote: post #8

They allocated €37.4 million [1]. As an European, I truly don’t understand why they keep ignoring that the money required for such projects is at least an order of magnitude more. [1] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/pioneering-ai-...

Deepseek's release has shown that there's no great risk in getting left behind. All the info is out there, people with skills are readily available, creating a model that will match whatever current model is considered frontier level is not that hard for an entity like the EU. For everyone here shouting that the EU needs to do something, be a leader, what have they lost so far by choosing to lead in legislation inste…

I partially agree with you. The only problem is that these markets are highly monopolistic, and we will be creating another technological dependency on the US.

Re: Open Euro LLM: Open LLMs for Transparent AI in Europe

#277

Post by microtonal »

627467 wrote: post #95
microtonal wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it just takes time to enforce the regulations. As an EU citizen, the recent regulations have already helped me a lot - a lot of companies provide data takeout now, it has become easier to remove accounts, many more websites ask specific consent, etc. Or even small things, our daughter's school has to ask specific consent if they can make photos and where they can post them (of group activities, etc.). Does everyon…

> our daughter's school has to ask specific consent if they can make photos and where they can post them The result of this is we don't see anything out daughter does in school because school decides to comply with draconian regulation by saying "fuck it". The same applies to having parents present daily: we don't touch the grounds of the school unless we make a formal request, we don't see the teacher everyday, we d…

The result of this is we don't see anything out daughter does in school because school

This makes very little sense. Our daughter's school just has three checkboxes: private school website, social media, local newspapers. We checked 'private school website' and we get pictures of school activities, but they don't post them on Facebook, etc.

we don't hear how the day went from professionals who actually spent time with them

Uhm, so? I don't feel the need to micro-manage our daughter's school life? She'll tell us what she did after school if she so pleases. If there is something important, the teacher will send a message. Not everything needs to a 24/7 live social media feed. Kids go to and from school by themselves and arrange their own playdates after a certain age, that's how they learn to be independent.

When I was a kid I also went from/to school by myself starting when I was maybe 7 or 8?

Re: Open Euro LLM: Open LLMs for Transparent AI in Europe

#278

Post by Xelbair »

varjag wrote: post #207
closewith wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about Huygens? That was launched on a Titan IV in 1997(!) and landed in 2005! In 1997, the EU was a global economic and scientific powerhouse. We're talking about the ossification in the last 15-20 years that has not only allowed the US to leapfrog Europe as the largest economy, but China too. You are bordering on delusional with these comments.

Was that literally you who complained that Galileo was too new? Is Huygens too old now? Well take your pick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:European_Space_Agency...

too new? what?

It took too long. around 10-15 years too long.

and that probe is older than quite a big portion of HN users.

Re: Open Euro LLM: Open LLMs for Transparent AI in Europe

#279

Post by MR4D »

dgroshev wrote: post #250
MR4D wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s absolutely asinine and not at all what I said. The EU over regulates things like tech and that why they won’t be successful at have an AI tech scene. Over time, anyone good will migrate to the US or China where they can work faster and not have as many rules to deal with. A simple example is hiring and firing people - it’s much easier to make personnel changes in the US than Europe. As a result, US companies c…

From experience, regulation as an explanation for EU startup competitiveness is overused so much it's almost meaningless. Can you point out specific laws that you consider existential for startups? What I find matters way, way more is two factors: - Concentration of capital. The US has an ecosystem of wealthy people that want to put their money somewhere. This is good for startups, but can also backfire as we can see…

First, your last point answers your first question: a non-unified market is an implicit result of too many regulations. Harmonizing them would create a more unified market. The US is efficient because it is more homogenous. That efficiency is one of the things that leads to capital formation.

So, I think you have causation backwards. Capital formation doesn't really happen because it's too difficult to build and grow things in Europe.

Look at tech in Silicon Valley - all that capital formation is years worth of growth and reinvestment.

Look at oil & gas Texas - again, all that capital comes from years of growth and reinvestment.

And what you learn in silicon valley you can generally apply to starting a company in Austin Texas. What would happen if Mercedes wanted to move it's company (HQ and all) to Spain? How much would it have to relearn from a regulatory perspective?

Re: Open Euro LLM: Open LLMs for Transparent AI in Europe

#280

Post by MR4D »

askonomm wrote: post #239
MR4D wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s absolutely asinine and not at all what I said. The EU over regulates things like tech and that why they won’t be successful at have an AI tech scene. Over time, anyone good will migrate to the US or China where they can work faster and not have as many rules to deal with. A simple example is hiring and firing people - it’s much easier to make personnel changes in the US than Europe. As a result, US companies c…

Yes, US has at-will firing, and healthcare tied to the employer, and so forth. Basically the US has made sure that the corporations have all the power, and the people have none of it. Does this make it easier to make companies? Well of course it does, just like slave trade made it easier to collect crops. Unlike the US however, we in EU really like having basic human rights - such as mandatory minimum vacation time,…

I disagree with "basic human rights". They aren't. And the reason they aren't is because one person's mandatory minimum vacation time is another person's liability.

Yeah, it's great for the employee - I totally agree. But if you run a startup, that's a huge cost.

So yes, we disagree on approaches, and that's fine. Not everyone needs to be like us, and if you reread my original comment, I never said they did. [0]

[0] - "My guess is that the paperwork will kill this."

------ side note:

I'm American. I spent 2 weeks in Europe last summer for vacation. I loved it. Food was great, Formula 1 was great. Overall a fantastic time.

But if I'm going to run a startup, I would never do it in Europe. An organic foods company - sure - that would be a great place to do it.

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