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Mistral AI Releases Forge

mistral.ai

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Re: Mistral AI Releases Forge

#141

Post by hermit_dev »

holoduke wrote: post #44
hermit_dev wrote: post #27

The future of AI is specialization, not just achieving benevolent knowledge as fast as we can at the expense of everything and everyone along the way. I appreciate and applaud this approach. I am looking into a similar product myself. Good stuff.

I don't think that's true. Nothing points to specialized LLMs being better. General purpose LLMs are just much more useful in daily work.

To be more specific, I think the future is local and specialized. IBM among others thought the same way with their giant mainframe centralized computers and the original way people would utilize software in the 70s. It's an interesting parallel to today's cloud if you think about it. It's just not scalable from a resource (hardware), energy, and cost perspective. I think we're living a unique time, but it's going to change. Without continued massive funding and a pivot to sustainable, things will (and should) change.

Don't get me wrong, general intelligence will always be important and should be a part of specialist models to a degree for understanding, but it doesn't make sense to use an 800B+ parameter model to help write an email or do research on company trends. Hell, look at what China has been able to do. Qwen 3.5 9B, exceeds Claude 3.5 Haiku and nears Sonnet 3.5 levels. The 27B variation of Qwen 3.5 is superior to both in many ways and even rivals newer models. There is obviously an inherit lag behind, but we will gradually see a shift as these models become more capable.

Right now we are chasing 1-2% improvements at the cost of billions. Local are already absurdly capable (more and more by the day - same with cloud ofcourse) and smarter than most people in specific areas. To do most jobs, can we honestly say it requires a PhD or higher level understanding to perform? We're chasing something that is becoming more and more not needed from a general day to day perspective. AGI is outstanding, but not practical (at least today). I think we'll get there anyway at our current trajectory (though dangerous), but I suspect things will shift.

Re: Mistral AI Releases Forge

#142

Post by philipallstar »

hermanzegerman wrote: post #137
philipallstar wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also EU protectionism itself might be enough.

Where is EU protectionist? I feel we are way less protectionist than most other Economic Regions. Including the USA, which are very protectionist but always claim otherwise

Well, if every big company gets a giant EU fine for, say, preinstalling a web browser in an OS, except for EU companies, that could make it easier for the EU companies.

Re: Mistral AI Releases Forge

#143

Post by rvnx »

hermanzegerman wrote: post #138
drstewart wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This moat doesn't seem to be much of a moat considering a non-US model doesn't even crack the top 5 by usage - except DeepSeek, which would be a strange choice for Europeans looking for data sovereignty.

They offer self-hosted models for big corporate customers. I would also expect those serious about the security of their data to use that option. So you would never get the usage of those customers

If you are a company based in Europe it is silly to give your data security and privacy to a company based in Europe.

If you are in Iran, you don't want to give your data to your government.

If you are in France, you don't want to give your data to your government.

etc

If you are in France, and you host your e-mails in a datacenter in Hong-Kong, well good luck for the authorities to get it.

If you host it in "secure France", on the paper you will have more privacy and laws behind you, but in reality you are jumping into the mouth of the shark.

This is why governments are promoting: "yes yes, host here don't worry, we will protect you"

Re: Mistral AI Releases Forge

#144

Post by rigorclaw »

dash2 wrote: post #49

I think it’s interesting what this approach suggests about who will profit from AI. I’m sceptical that having huge numbers of GPUs is a moat. After all, real humans – even geniuses – are trained on much much less data than the whole Internet. But proprietary and specialised data could very well be a moat. It’s hard to train a scientist/lawyer/analyst without reading a lot of science/law/finance. Companies’ proprietar…

[dead]

Re: Mistral AI Releases Forge

#145

Post by sofixa »

philipallstar wrote: post #142
hermanzegerman wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is EU protectionist? I feel we are way less protectionist than most other Economic Regions. Including the USA, which are very protectionist but always claim otherwise

Well, if every big company gets a giant EU fine for, say, preinstalling a web browser in an OS, except for EU companies, that could make it easier for the EU companies.

Every company would get fined for anticompetitive behaviour, regardless of where are based.

Re: Mistral AI Releases Forge

#146

Post by jstummbillig »

schubidubiduba wrote: post #68
jstummbillig wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that be? Most big EU companies use ms teams or google workspace, for example.

They use those because the decision to use them was made years ago. Things have changed since then

I don't think big business is genuinely planning for a world where US tech becomes completely unavailable.

Re: Mistral AI Releases Forge

#147

Post by sofixa »

newswasboring wrote: post #114
soco wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But wouldn't winning devs be a neat helping point in winning b2b contacts? Or they think golf courts are enough for success? Okay they might be right here, but still they make it so confusing for no obvious reason.

To me it's obvious because the size of companies they are targeting (ASML being an obvious one). I think golf course marketing works well in the EU context when decisions are being made not purely on tech reasons.

> I think golf course marketing works well in the EU context when decisions are being made not purely on tech reasons.

It's not like b2b sales is more technical merit based, individual contributor led, elsewhere.

It's always the same, depending on the field individual contributors can have some flexibility on picking tools (so a developer in a mid sized company would be able to pick whatever, an accountant probably would be more constrained, meanwhile a developer at a big bank would not have any choice). But for strategic software choices, that impact the whole company, where standardisation makes sense or is even mandatory to get actual value out of it, you need to sell to high level decision makers, not individual contributors. A CTO or a VP of X can decide to buy and mandate the implementation of something as impactful, workflow changing and potentially time and money saving as a company wide AI platform. A dev can't.

Re: Mistral AI Releases Forge

#148

Post by sofixa »

rvnx wrote: post #143
hermanzegerman wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They offer self-hosted models for big corporate customers. I would also expect those serious about the security of their data to use that option. So you would never get the usage of those customers

If you are a company based in Europe it is silly to give your data security and privacy to a company based in Europe. If you are in Iran, you don't want to give your data to your government. If you are in France, you don't want to give your data to your government. etc If you are in France, and you host your e-mails in a datacenter in Hong-Kong, well good luck for the authorities to get it. If you host it in "secure…

This flat out isn't true. Police forces / investigative authorities have been collaborating with one another since 1923: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpol . We have tons of examples of this working for the digital world as well (like Proton complying with Swiss legal orders at the behest of non-Swiss police forces for illegal activities in other countries).

The trick is to host your data in a country with a strong rule of law, and avoid illegal / geopolitical lines. If you're an American company hosting stuff in Russia, you can bet the GRU/SVR would be very happy to abuse it. If you're running a torrent site in Ukraine, you can bet the US would be very happy to claim extraterritorial magic jurisdiction and get you extradited from Poland.

As a French company, you're already beholden to French law and French legal decisions. "Data is hosted in Hong Kong" doesn't matter in the slightest, it only exposes you to more risk.

Re: Mistral AI Releases Forge

#149

Post by sofixa »

jstummbillig wrote: post #146
schubidubiduba wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They use those because the decision to use them was made years ago. Things have changed since then

I don't think big business is genuinely planning for a world where US tech becomes completely unavailable.

Not entirely, but putting more eggs in that basket would certainly be considered lack of planning. Why increase your risk even further when everyone has seen how volatile things can get quickly?

Re: Mistral AI Releases Forge

#150

Post by sofixa »

drstewart wrote: post #104
schubidubiduba wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They use those because the decision to use them was made years ago. Things have changed since then

No they haven't. Proof: Most big EU companies use Claude or Gemini or OpenAI, not Mistral. That choice was made recently. Things have changed in the loud echo chambers of the internet, maybe (but not really, since people were saying that EU data sovereignty was happening any time now since 2016).

> Proof: Most big EU companies use Claude or Gemini or OpenAI, not Mistral. That choice was made recently.

IS a statement with no supporting facts considered "proof"? Just the public list of Mistral customers (https://mistral.ai/customers) is proof alone that quite a few big EU companies are _not_ in fact using Open AI or Claude or Gemini at the strategic level.

Contrast with Antrhopic's Europe based customers, the majority of which are small companies (only big one I can identify from a skim is L'Oreal): https://claude.com/customers?f80ce999_sort_date=desc&f80ce99...

Or OpenAI's customers, of which the only big European ones I can spot are Scania and Philips: https://openai.com/stories/

Note: I'm talking about strategic enterprise AI deployments for the company or at least a division, not individual developers being allowed to use Claude Code etc. The moat and the money will be in the former, not latter.

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