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GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands

tno.nl

31–40 of 325 posts

Re: GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands

#31
post #21

I feel that not only is Europe losing its independence to the US and China, but it does not even try to take part in the race. Unlike the US, Europe has no California-level VCs. I don't expect hundreds of billions of Euros to be poured into long-shot projects. Unlike China, Europe has neither cohesive public investment at the global level nor the drive to grow. Long-term investments have a lot of words, a lot of regu…

> Unlike the US, Europe has no California-level VCs.

Some would consider that a good thing. There is a lot to be said for VC in recent years not being beneficial for the economy, certainly on an individual level, other than "number go up".

Re: GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands

#32
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Have you heard of ASML? NXP? Ignorant comment

Please don't move the goalposts. What computer parts does ASML or NXP make?

ASML only makes the lithography machines, 85% of which go outside the EU (let that sink in). And then fabs in Taiwan, Korea or the US use those ASML machines to etch US IP for computer chips. EU doesn't make any computer parts domestically.

And NXP mostly makes various microcontrollers and small chips, not high margin IP decenter centric parts like ASICS, FPGAs, CPUs or GPUs.

So not only are you the ignorant one here, but you also have the audacity to insult others with so much confidence.

@dwa3592 below. Firstly, why are you moving the goalposts in bad faith again just to stir an argument? What does that have to do with my original comment?

And secondly, there's other lithography machines out there, not just ASML.

And thirdly, the IP Nvidia, AMD, etc develop to etch on silicone via ASML machines makes them more valuable than ASML.

Fourthly, repeating my "let that sink in" phrase is just childish and low-IQ trolling, unworthy of this platform.

Re: GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands

#33
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should Dutch people be expected to make do with models 99% trained on American/Chinese cultural context and language?

Understood, but they could fine tune base models on their own cultural context and language. Why reinventing the wheel?

This gets better short-term results for a fraction of the cost, for sure, but what do you when China places an export control banning the release of open weight models? If you don't have your own talent, you're then relegated to using a base model from 2026 or whatever the cutoff date is, forever. That defeats the purpose of a 'sovereign' model made for and by your people.

Re: GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands

#34
post #31
post #21

I feel that not only is Europe losing its independence to the US and China, but it does not even try to take part in the race. Unlike the US, Europe has no California-level VCs. I don't expect hundreds of billions of Euros to be poured into long-shot projects. Unlike China, Europe has neither cohesive public investment at the global level nor the drive to grow. Long-term investments have a lot of words, a lot of regu…

> Unlike the US, Europe has no California-level VCs. Some would consider that a good thing. There is a lot to be said for VC in recent years not being beneficial for the economy, certainly on an individual level, other than "number go up".

Sure.

At the same time, it made in many cases EU dependent on the US. A lot of governments are basically dependent on MS Office or Google Cloud.

With AI, it is even more strategic.

Re: GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands

#35
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>>Yeah but Europe doesn't build any computer hardware, Well, then this is will be a good start.

EU bureaucrats are too busy trying to keep the welfare/pension system from collapsing, defeating Russia, supporting Ukraine, managing the fossil fuels energy shortages, figuring out how to nerf Chinese EVs while supporting domestic car companies, and restricting social media free speech to make sure the "far right" don't win elections.

So of course, semiconductor manufacturing sovereignty is very low on their priority list.

Re: GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands

#36
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should Dutch people be expected to make do with models 99% trained on American/Chinese cultural context and language?

Understood, but they could fine tune base models on their own cultural context and language. Why reinventing the wheel?

They could apply the Polder Model of consensus decision making with a mixture of experts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder_model

Re: GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands

#38
post #21

I feel that not only is Europe losing its independence to the US and China, but it does not even try to take part in the race. Unlike the US, Europe has no California-level VCs. I don't expect hundreds of billions of Euros to be poured into long-shot projects. Unlike China, Europe has neither cohesive public investment at the global level nor the drive to grow. Long-term investments have a lot of words, a lot of regu…

Europe is not a country.

Regulations are not even throughout each of the 27 member states. Each country is relatively small in the world stage.

Until EU progresses towards federalization, discussing this is a moot point.

Re: GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands

#39
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of ASML? NXP? Ignorant comment

Please don't move the goalposts. What computer parts does ASML or NXP make? ASML only makes the lithography machines, 85% of which go outside the EU (let that sink in). And then fabs in Taiwan, Korea or the US use those ASML machines to etch US IP for computer chips. EU doesn't make any computer parts domestically. And NXP mostly makes various microcontrollers and small chips, not high margin IP decenter centric part…

>>ASML only makes the lithography machines

Woah! only lithography machines???? it is literally impossible to make any device capable of running anything close to AI without ASML. Let that sink in.

Re: GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the exact skepticism? The only thing I could get from that was from some "tech entrepreneur": > GPT-NL was never built to compete with Claude or ChatGPT. It was trained exclusively on licensed data, and is intended more for governments and companies where privacy and compliance matter more than raw performance.” That's it? That it didn't aim to compete with SOTA models? Maybe this is something you have to sta…

I mean if you are wasting funds kind of knowing it's nowhere near remote competitive, then it's kind of a fraud.

TNO is something like semi-DARPA. It gets a lot of stuff tax free and a lot of gov funding, but a lot of their budget is from getting businesses to hire their R&D teams.

They do really good R&D on a lot of stuff. This is just their attempt at public credibility/internal skill building to enter the LLM business.

Doubt its going to be successful, but they "waste" a lot more money on other things that you never heard of. Its not fraud, its just R&D dressed up a little too much too early.

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