241–250 of 611 posts
I get worried when thinking about Mistral because they make mediocre models and I don't think they will be able to defeat their competition.
That may be true, but there's a non zero chance that frontier AI becomes a controlled export, and that 'local' production becomes a prudent play.
Last I saw job offers for mistral (engineering, Paris) it advertised 90k euros base salary. Not sure how they’re intending to compete with the US when even a top AI lab can’t afford to be competitive :-/
There's more to life than money past a certain point, I'd rather live in the Alps on a lower salary.
Last I saw job offers for mistral (engineering, Paris) it advertised 90k euros base salary. Not sure how they’re intending to compete with the US when even a top AI lab can’t afford to be competitive :-/
Thats quite competitive for a base salary, as high as max ICT5 Staff base at Apple Munich.
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They aren't following the same strategy. Apple does race for the frontier in their main field: beautiful, well-integrated hardware and software. Mistral does not race for the frontier in their main field: AI creation. They're grabbing bits and bobs from people that need (or feel they need) sovereign AI. It's like if you go into making phones for the military. You aren't going for the best phones; you're going for mak…
That's uncharitable. Defense companies do play the game (like anyone in the enterprise space), but they also do ship stuff that is uniquely set up to satisfy the use-case. I don't think an unmodified iPhone would do great in a warzone with no cell signal.
Europe absolutely needs a home-grown AI lab, especially with Pax Americana looking increasingly shaky. LLMs embody value systems, and American and European values are not the same (yes, there are overlaps, but also key differences). More nefariously, I can also imagine LLMs that silently degrade their reasoning when used in a national security context of a non-US country. So, Mistral may not be competitive with OpenA…
> LLMs embody value systems, and American and European values are not the same (yes, there are overlaps, but also key differences). There are also some areas where values across Europe are quite divergent. Think LGBT rights and social acceptance, religion & secularism, immigration & multiculturalism. And countries don’t fall into neat “liberal west vs conservative east”. Spain is exceptionally liberal on LGBT issues…
When you move here, "more religious" turns out to pretty much be window dressing. Yes, they still celebrate a bunch of the old catholic holidays, parading saints around on feast days, but apart from a handful of older folks, nobody actually believes.
Particularly when compared to the US, where a large minority is still going around loudly thumping bibles, Spain is a very secular country.
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When Apple is not racing for the frontier it's a strategy, but when it's Mistral it's a mistake. The two companies have read the market the same. It's always very dangerous for first movers and their investors, and the commodification of intelligence seems even more likely each time a chinese open model release. It's less exciting to do business that way, but if you're building to stand the test of time, it's wiser t…
I am not sure it's correct to lump apple and Mistral's strategies together. Apple's business is selling hardware/services and their stores, but Mistral's business is AI. Apple's strategy seems to be "wait till real business shakes out" but Mistral's strategy seems to be "go after profitable niches and avoid unwinnable fights".
Mistral is an interesting AI company because they clearly have a contrarian business strategy to the other AI labs. They're also landing big customers in Europe for the right reasons. People dump on them because they're not benchmaxxxing which is pretty shortsighted - do you really want to be in a benchmark arms race with China, or do you want to make money and deploy sovereign AI compute in Europe?
We've been migrating all of our AI automations from Gemini to Mistral because of the fear of data transfer regulations. Maybe they don't apply to us (we don't really feed personal data to AI), but we can't afford to find out.
It's been quite annoying too because the Mistral documentation and dashboards are all over the place.
Fear of fines... that's not what I would call "the right reasons".
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> can you elaborate what are their fundamental flaws that are not fixable by funds? Culture. In terms of output, EU working culture is inferior to American/Chinese working culture. Work life balance is irrelevant for frontier/sovereign AI.
Holy oversimplification. Do you get all your information from the internet?
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Holy oversimplification. Do you get all your information from the internet?
[flagged]
Reading this gave me a visceral disgust reaction.
I have worked in the middle of the night here to be able to ship prod fixes for meeting deadlines. But that and even overtime should be exceptions rather than the norm.
This better be bait, in which case good job but flagged anyways. Surely nobody would genuinely make the argument that workers should be worked to the bone?
What I personally think could help would be less bureaucracy and regulation in regards to tech advancements (while preserving privacy of individuals), so that the time is used more efficiently, alongside significant investments.