Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU to mobilize 200B Euros to invest in AI

euronews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 150 posts

Re: EU to mobilize 200B Euros to invest in AI

#21

Post by gizmo »

It's a good thing that EU leadership is finally waking up to the urgency of renewed competitiveness, but the greatest problems are not addressed or even mentioned:

1. Europe's most ambitious entrepreneurs leave for silicon valley because audacious ambition is heavily discouraged culturally. Europe has many talented engineers and many founders who aim for "reasonable" success, but that's really not sufficient.

2. Big investments only work when success means outrageous profitability. That's not how it works in Europe. Businesses are supposed to make at most a "fair" amount of money. Greed, for lack of a better word, is not good. In the US businesses invest 100s of billions in AI hoping to profit trillions. No European business will be allowed to make that kind of money.

3. EU funding is laundered through established players who understand how the game is played. Giving handouts to incumbents harms competitiveness in the long run.

Re: EU to mobilize 200B Euros to invest in AI

#22

Post by Luc »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #8

Yeah, I don't see it happening. This other tidbit from the article was funny as well: €109 billion investment plan for AI projects in France in the coming years. How can a journalist write this verbatim when the likelihood of this happening is next to nil. France had a massive budget deficit last year, it had to pass a law to increases taxes (yet again) and is basically broke. So where is this magic money going to co…

> So where is this magic money going to come from?

It's not a French government investment. It's coming from investment funds, Amazon, the UAE, data centre firms, etc.

Re: EU to mobilize 200B Euros to invest in AI

#23

Post by ivan_gammel »

randunel wrote: post #17
jycr753 wrote: post #4

It's wasted money if they don't change their level of bureaucracy

Indeed. The EU grants are ridiculously red tapey. Companies have entire departments dedicated to the red tape that European grants require, from the initial participation / auction with hundreds or thousands of pages of documentation, through various stages of thorough checkbox ticking, to the final reception of the project. Only the usual players with well established "EU Funds" departments can realistically get the…

I have seen (and worked in) a number of startups that did receive research grants including AI research in Germany. This notion of terrible European bureaucracy is exaggerated. It’s not worse than anywhere else in the world.

Re: EU to mobilize 200B Euros to invest in AI

#24

Post by wafngar »

jycr753 wrote: post #16
bloomingkales wrote: post #10

EU can always get a discount on that once they ratchet up regulations. I don’t understand Europe, why don’t they just focus on hyper growth with limited oversight like America?

I believe it's because they have this massive monster in Brussels that needs something to do ( chiringuitos ) to extract the maximum amount of money—corruption.

Brussels is quite small. Probably less than Washington.

Re: EU to mobilize 200B Euros to invest in AI

#25

Post by tmnvdb »

bloomingkales wrote: post #10

EU can always get a discount on that once they ratchet up regulations. I don’t understand Europe, why don’t they just focus on hyper growth with limited oversight like America?

There is no European (capital) market and the national markets are too small to compete with the US or China. European companies are therefore unlikely to gain trust from investors that they will be able to compete.

Hence these kinds of top-down iniatives are in a sense the best they can do given rather poor ircumstances for private investment.

Re: EU to mobilize 200B Euros to invest in AI

#26

Post by rvnx »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #19
jajko wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I think they are trying to cargo-cult Silicon Valley ecosystem without realizing that it will never have a chance in European's clueless bureaucracy, massive social safety nets etc. It doesn't mean nothing can be built, but it won't ever be as effective and bleeding edge for various good and bad reasons and mere fraction of whatever goals aimed for. And defense spending is a must, how in 2025 they could NOT…

They can't invest 5% of GDP in defense because they don't have the money. Germany does not want to raise it's debt ceiling and France is basically broke and hasn't had a functioning government for the last 7 months. NATO has been treated as a free ride by Europe. They were supposed to invest a certain % of their GDP each year in their defense spending but because the US was always there as backstop, they basically ne…

The irony is that if we don't invest into defense, war would still likely break-out, but we may suffer less (or die less) because of a quick loss.

Now we have a weak army in the EU, if Russia invades one of our friends, then the war will be over in two days because France, Germany, USA will do their usual "we condemn blablabla, we send you prayers and sympathy", but there would be no long-lasting war.

A bit similar to Ukraine, it's a half-assed initiative, drowning billions of USD, but not efficient enough.

If the answer had been much stronger, it would have worked, but now we get the worst of the two options (doing nothing, or going all-in).

Also not to forget, that at the end of the rifle, it's not people saving their house, it's about protecting a system that supports the wealth of politics.

The main difference for the invaded people would be to whom they pay taxes, and ironically, could now be facing sanctions from their supposed friends (like the living folks in Crimea, who got punished by US/EU; punished because they have been invaded and victims of a war).

In the second case, if EU defense is increased moderately (like currently plans), war would still breakout but it may drag for longer, and casualties without increasing odds of winning.

The third case, where EU alone without the US is significantly stronger than China, Russia and North Korea, it's nice but I don't see it happening.

Like you said, Macron is likely going to be replaced with pro-Russian Le Pen / Zemmour-like.

The world is getting dangerous.

Re: EU to mobilize 200B Euros to invest in AI

#27

Post by apeescape »

bloomingkales wrote: post #10

EU can always get a discount on that once they ratchet up regulations. I don’t understand Europe, why don’t they just focus on hyper growth with limited oversight like America?

EU is not a homogeneous single entity. Every state is driving their own agenda, and every state is divided into multiple parties often pulling in different directions. It slows down decision-making, in both good and bad. Oftentimes it's hard to sell a Pan-European long-term benefit, if it's cost is that some member states have to lose something in the short term.

You could make the argument that similar problems exist in the US too, but I'd argue it's worse in the EU.

Re: EU to mobilize 200B Euros to invest in AI

#28

Post by tmnvdb »

wafngar wrote: post #24
jycr753 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it's because they have this massive monster in Brussels that needs something to do ( chiringuitos ) to extract the maximum amount of money—corruption.

Brussels is quite small. Probably less than Washington.

A lot smaller. The city of Amsterdam employs more bureaucracts than the EU.

Re: EU to mobilize 200B Euros to invest in AI

#29

Post by igorkraw »

bloomingkales wrote: post #10

EU can always get a discount on that once they ratchet up regulations. I don’t understand Europe, why don’t they just focus on hyper growth with limited oversight like America?

In the spirit of HN rules, actual answering instead of snark:

1. The memory of Nazis using centralised industrial might and information to kill millions of people (google dutch insurance records Nazis)

2.a much stronger history of workers rights and distrust of rich people together with a different attitude to gouvernement making it politically challenging

Can hate it or love it, but the median life expectancy in Europe is much less correlated with wealth and _I think_ is higher from memory, child hunger and food insecurity is much lower and homelessness and other corporate abuse is much less of a problem corrected for wealth and population.

Whether we manage to keep this remains to be seen, but I think it's a reasonable set of different preferences

Post reply on HN