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

Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 313 posts

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#51

Post by sdoering »

beernet wrote: post #45
rootlocus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can debate the details and implementation but EU legislature is, at least in spirit, trying to protect human rights. What does it say about progress that the same laws that protect human rights also stifle innovation?

> What does it say about progress that the same laws that protect human rights also stifle innovation? Claiming that GDPR and the EU AI Act "protect human rights" is very, very far-fetched. How does the training of, say, Claude or GPT-X models, hurt human rights?

[dead]

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#52

Post by Theodores »

epolanski wrote: post #34
cmiles8 wrote: post #22

The question was never do enough computers exist in Europe, but rather can Europe organize the capital and cross-company / cross-border relationships required to build a big model at scale. There the answer still looks iffy at best. This is where the US has, and continues to, thrive and where Europe can’t get out of its own way.

I don't believe Europe can build models that can compete with American ones. 1. In order to build competitive models, you need to offer competitive salaries and equity. Europe has very old and inadequate corporate law virtually everywhere but in UK. European labs cannot attract talent that can build such competitive models with the proper lack of incentives. 2. In order to build competitive models, you need gargantua…

As per your points, Europe really can't compete, particularly when power is considered. However, frontier models that require city-sized data centres might not be all they are cracked up to be.

In China they seem to be nonchalantly doing a lot with AI for specific rather than 'ask me anything' tasks. To them, they are quite used to everyday applications that work well within limited domains, no vast data centre needed, just on-device. Hence the hype is no big deal.

Europe needs to think again about what can be done to make Europe attractive for software development, and I have seen no helpful encouragement from UK or European governments over the last few decades. No word of a lie, all we got in the UK was the BBC Micro, way back in the early 1980s, and since then tech has been culturally uncool.

This cultural aspect has not gone away, if a guy is a software engineer then he isn't going to get lucky with the lasses, they will run a mile.

What gets me is that the UK or places in Europe such as those places where finance matters, could have had active policing and law enforcement of data breaches and hacking, with sensible standards for storing customer data, making Europe the best place to host your data, purely for the legal protections. But we ended up with cookie notices and anti-slavery statements.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#53

Post by aspenmartin »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #41
beernet wrote: post #31

Absolutely not, even if Europe was given all of the compute in the world. The issues are much much worse. Starting at "data privacy", continuing with the "EU AI Act" and just an overall mindset of regulation and German angst. Many structures in the EU actively prevent and fight against innovation. Oftentimes more subtle but the consequences stay the same. If you ever had to use one of the "sovereign" AI provides such…

If your product can't function in a way that respects humans' right to privacy, your product is the problem, not the humans' rights.

You can grumble about the way things are but Europe being so far behind a technological race with important geopolitical ramifications means that you guys are cutting off your nose to spite your face. Have fun with zero of European regulations impacting frontier development and then eventually having to depend on it.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#54

Post by aspenmartin »

rootlocus wrote: post #42
epolanski wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe Europe can build models that can compete with American ones. 1. In order to build competitive models, you need to offer competitive salaries and equity. Europe has very old and inadequate corporate law virtually everywhere but in UK. European labs cannot attract talent that can build such competitive models with the proper lack of incentives. 2. In order to build competitive models, you need gargantua…

You also need to scrape huge amounts of data with no regard for copyright which is: 1. No longer possible the same way it was for openai and anthropic and 2. Much more regulated in the EU Also the EU would need state backing since we don't have the same private capital, meaning the regulations are even tighter.

You can do what frontier labs do today which is to properly license things that are copyrighted and use open source web crawls for things that don’t have copyright issues. You can then also commission new datasets (volume needed goes down when quality is high).

The European regulations are the thing that will kneecap anything meaningful coming out of Europe. Mind blowing to me that this is worth the tradeoff since Europe will be beholden to other frontier labs be it China or the US, so regulations accomplishing very little if anything on impacting actual AI development and losing vast amounts of leverage in the process.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#55

Post by alecco »

epolanski wrote: post #34
cmiles8 wrote: post #22

The question was never do enough computers exist in Europe, but rather can Europe organize the capital and cross-company / cross-border relationships required to build a big model at scale. There the answer still looks iffy at best. This is where the US has, and continues to, thrive and where Europe can’t get out of its own way.

I don't believe Europe can build models that can compete with American ones. 1. In order to build competitive models, you need to offer competitive salaries and equity. Europe has very old and inadequate corporate law virtually everywhere but in UK. European labs cannot attract talent that can build such competitive models with the proper lack of incentives. 2. In order to build competitive models, you need gargantua…

> 1. In order to build competitive models, you need to offer competitive salaries and equity.

FWIW, for the equity part there's a proposal expected to pass for next year: https://www.eu-inc.org/ (but it doesn't address taxes, cross-border employment, or anything significant so it's mostly moot). The main goal is to attract native VCs.

AFAIK it's designed by lawyers and old money, with little to no input from tech entrepreneurs.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#56

Post by rootlocus »

aspenmartin wrote: post #54
rootlocus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also need to scrape huge amounts of data with no regard for copyright which is: 1. No longer possible the same way it was for openai and anthropic and 2. Much more regulated in the EU Also the EU would need state backing since we don't have the same private capital, meaning the regulations are even tighter.

You can do what frontier labs do today which is to properly license things that are copyrighted and use open source web crawls for things that don’t have copyright issues. You can then also commission new datasets (volume needed goes down when quality is high). The European regulations are the thing that will kneecap anything meaningful coming out of Europe. Mind blowing to me that this is worth the tradeoff since Eu…

Regulations aside, Europe is extremely divided. There's constant resistance from individual states, disputes and far right extremism gaining traction. At this point, it seems like EU can barely agree to make any decision.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#57

Post by boothby »

rootlocus wrote: post #38
beernet wrote: post #31

Absolutely not, even if Europe was given all of the compute in the world. The issues are much much worse. Starting at "data privacy", continuing with the "EU AI Act" and just an overall mindset of regulation and German angst. Many structures in the EU actively prevent and fight against innovation. Oftentimes more subtle but the consequences stay the same. If you ever had to use one of the "sovereign" AI provides such…

We can debate the details and implementation but EU legislature is, at least in spirit, trying to protect human rights. What does it say about progress that the same laws that protect human rights also stifle innovation?

> What does it say about progress that the same laws that protect human rights also stifle innovation?

Innovative methods to destroy human life are "stifled" by measures intended to preserve human life. What to you mean by "progress" -- the betterment of the human condition, or the enrichment of the few and powerful?

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#58

Post by quatonion »

epolanski wrote: post #34
cmiles8 wrote: post #22

The question was never do enough computers exist in Europe, but rather can Europe organize the capital and cross-company / cross-border relationships required to build a big model at scale. There the answer still looks iffy at best. This is where the US has, and continues to, thrive and where Europe can’t get out of its own way.

I don't believe Europe can build models that can compete with American ones. 1. In order to build competitive models, you need to offer competitive salaries and equity. Europe has very old and inadequate corporate law virtually everywhere but in UK. European labs cannot attract talent that can build such competitive models with the proper lack of incentives. 2. In order to build competitive models, you need gargantua…

Just as a reminder, Google DeepMind is right here in the UK, and there are hundreds, thousands of top AI researchers that are foundational to everything that the US is doing, as much, if more so than the Chinese contributions.

We need compute, yes, but we certainly aren't short of talent if we put our minds to it, and many of them are already here.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#59

Post by smashini »

ymir_e wrote: post #32

Can Europe train a frontier AI model? It seems unlikely at the moment. The writeup you have is quite interesting, but notably distributed compute for frontier is at least a bump in the road. As other's have pointed out, if resources across Europe came together there could be a good amount of resources today to do so, but it is fragmented. Project Glasswing, and most recently the blocking of Fable 5 potentially only f…

Thanks! Will give it a read :)

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#60

Post by jandrewrogers »

oliver236 wrote: post #20
morkalork wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a weird sense, the EU exemplifies what the USA would be like without a strong federal government: Dysfunctional as states compete with, undercut and stifle each other.

isnt the eu basically a less federalist version of the usa? how is it then that the usa claims its more free? the individual state members in the EU have more freedom than individual states. someone explain this to me please

In the US, the freedom is explicitly for the people, not Federal nor State government. States are relatively more free than the Federal government, but both are greatly restricted by the Constitution. Before the Constitution, the US had a previous government under the Articles of Confederation (see below) that had many deficiencies and only gave freedom to member States.

The EU is organized more similar to the US under the Articles of Confederation.

The first American government (Articles of Confederation) gave State governments almost unlimited power e.g. they could print their own money. It did not grant freedom to the people in any meaningful way. States were free to abuse this power both against their own citizens and, more importantly, the other member States. This created many practical problems.

The second and current American government (Constitution) learned lessons from this experience. It removed a limited set of key powers from the States and gave it to the Federal government such as the creation of currency. It also forced all States to interact with each other on the same terms, with strict oversight from the Federal government. Additionally, it explicitly granted rights to the people rather than their State governments, since the States had demonstrated they could not be trusted to do the right thing. These changes forced the States to play nicely with each other and treat their people better.

These changes were a large improvement. Almost every law an American experiences is State law, because States have much more freedom to create laws. The Federal government can only make laws from a short list. Both State and Federal governments are strictly prohibited from creating many kinds of laws.

In the US, freedom is for the people, not for the member States. The Federal government has even less freedom than the member States to make law.

Post reply on HN