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

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

#111

Post by JumpCrisscross »

SyneRyder wrote: post #99
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Mistral really throw in the towel on building frontier models?

Well, the front page of their website claims "Frontier AI In Your Hands", so I guess they're not marketing it that way. I personally think there's a hint in that Mistral Medium 3.5 costs 5x the price of Mistral Large 3, and that Mistral Large is not listed anymore as a "Featured Model" and hasn't been updated since Dec 2025: https://docs.mistral.ai/models/overview But what I really base it on is an interview the Mist…

> they think the future of AI is small dedicated-task models

I mean, I do too. Or at least, this will be a large market. But the natural leader for that space is the firm building the frontier models. They have the most control and access for distillation.

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

#112

Post by ExoticPearTree »

pelorat wrote: post #13
barrenko wrote: post #6

Sure, theoretically, if it could come to an agreement, and meanwhile the cross-border cooperation of even the inter-EU countries is at an abysmal rate, and currently, even during a goddamn land war with Russia, Germany and France can't come to an agreement to build a fighter jet ensemble (together).

The fighter jet program was a jobs program, not dissimilar to how many US government programs are jobs programs by having different parts of it made in different states for no goo reason. Add in some nationalism and it was inevitable it would not work out.

And what, they couldn't split the jobs 50/50 in any meaningful way so that everyone was happy? Dunno, you can let the french design and the germans build or something.

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

#113

Post by cess11 »

nekitamo wrote: post #105
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?

You can protect human rights without stifling progress. It's not a "pick one of the above" situation. The EU can and should reform many parts of its sclerotic laws and bureaucracies. Whether it can do so before it becomes a subservient puppet state which serves as a battleground for competing powers remains to be seen.

The usian 'frontier' "AI" corporations are involved in severe human rights abuses and war crimes.

I'm not so sure the ideal should be to substitute for those.

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

#114

Post by pfdietz »

rootlocus wrote: post #56
aspenmartin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well-meaning restrictions that threaten Europe's ability to compete sound like something that would eventually encourage far right extremism by impeaching the validity of the restrictions' philosophical underpinnings.

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

#115

Post by ux266478 »

throw-the-towel wrote: post #39
LastTrain wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of those seem like good things TBH.

Yes, but they are incompatible with being on the forefront of AI.

Not at all, they can just use the petabytes of data sold on the cheap by American and Chinese companies instead of their own.

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

#116

Post by MattDamonSpace »

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?

“Human rights” as defined by the continent that brought you both The Enlightenment and The Holocaust

Feels like a reaaaaal roll of the dice

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

#117

Post by ExoticPearTree »

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

> isnt the eu basically a less federalist version of the usa?

And what good does it do? The EU cannot speak in a single voice - there is no foreign minister, no defense minister, no whatever minister.

Like the EU foreign function: you have a person claiming to be the EU voice, and then you have the foreign ministers of every EU member that can just say whatever they want if what the EU voice says is contrary to their political game in their own country. Same for the other functions.

Being less federalist is not better, it is worse. The EU does not speak in a single voice in any domain.

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

#118

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#119

Post by michaelt »

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…

> 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).

It cost Anthropic $1.5 billion for training on libgen's 480k pirated ebooks.

Investors will cough up that money if you're already clearly a frontier lab with a model people are paying a lot of money for.

Tough to get that much cash without anything to show.

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

#120

Post by pfdietz »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #112
pelorat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fighter jet program was a jobs program, not dissimilar to how many US government programs are jobs programs by having different parts of it made in different states for no goo reason. Add in some nationalism and it was inevitable it would not work out.

And what, they couldn't split the jobs 50/50 in any meaningful way so that everyone was happy? Dunno, you can let the french design and the germans build or something.

That's how you get something like Ariane 6 -- engineered to satisfy political constraints rather that to be competitive. Granted, NASA or to some extent the US military have the same problem.
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