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Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

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Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#171

Post by jochem9 »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #122
logicchains wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you get less differences in wealth Yes so if you were in the higher percentiles of wealth, like many engineers in the US, you'd end up with less wealth in Europe, while if you were in the lower percentiles then in Europe you'd end up with more wealth. That's how redistribution works, the top 10% of income earners end up with less (even after accounting for healthcare and education; they get back less then they put i…

Could these software engineers be bankrupt if they are hit by a serious illness? Say progressive MS or a cancer, which will require extensive sick days? It is there protection? (this is an actual question, not an ironic one)

The exact outcome depends on the country's specific laws, but generally speaking, there is protection.

In the Netherlands you get up two years paid sick leave, before your employer can fire you. If you are sick enough to not be able to work again, you'll get 75% of your last earned wage from the government.

The tricky situation is when you are considered partially unable to work. You'll get time to find a suitable job, but your benefits drop over time. Finding a job in that situation is sometimes very difficult. It's possible to fall between the cracks.

In any case, the intent is to make sure people do not get unfairly hurt by life events outside their control.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#172

Post by tensor »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #96
amunozo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always the same ridiculous statement.

I mean we are still waiting for the European Apple or Microsoft or Google or anything of that scale aren't we? China has it's own version of all this stuff, where is Europe's?

It's probably better not to repeat the same mistakes that the US made and not have monopolies. Building a diverse ecosystem with strong competition would result in a world leading economy. Essentially there needs to be 10x more Mistrals.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#174

Post by classified »

marcuschong wrote: post #152
poisonborz wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pervasive misconception in the industry, and a very dull trope on HN. Your income tax makes it possible to create a livable society in the EU. You get much more free time and are protected from a lot of random life events, even if you work in a McDonalds counter and not as a software engineer. You have rent, healthcare, protection from landlords. Not perfect, but at least the direction is there. Solely prof…

Plus, even if you do prefer the American way (and I could see why), it seems fanatic for people to not recognize the clear benefits of the European model.

> ...it seems fanatic...

More like brainwashed. The propaganda for the American Way of Life™ is relentless.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#175

Post by Gud »

tmikaeld wrote: post #164
no-name-here wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective tax rates for European ultra rich seem to be ~50x that from my googling. Is there a source for the “well under 0.5% effective”? Perhaps you’re thinking of wealth taxes rather than effective tax rates? https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/effectivetaxrate.asp

He is, the rich pay normal tax and in Sweden (~52-55% effective), includes extra tax on high income. Even dividend tax is 30%

Rich don’t have income, they have wealth.

And the oligarchs in Sweden pay very little taxes.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#176

Post by BrandoElFollito »

jochem9 wrote: post #171
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could these software engineers be bankrupt if they are hit by a serious illness? Say progressive MS or a cancer, which will require extensive sick days? It is there protection? (this is an actual question, not an ironic one)

The exact outcome depends on the country's specific laws, but generally speaking, there is protection. In the Netherlands you get up two years paid sick leave, before your employer can fire you. If you are sick enough to not be able to work again, you'll get 75% of your last earned wage from the government. The tricky situation is when you are considered partially unable to work. You'll get time to find a suitable jo…

Sorry for not haveing been clear (and thanks for the replay) -- I was asking about the US, I am French and have a reasonable idea about the general European systems.

My main point was to undersatnd when (and if) the "in the US we get enough money to pay the insurance" breaks.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#177

Post by DiabloD3 »

sometimelurker wrote: post #157
DiabloD3 wrote: post #35

This is mostly a performance by the Mistral CEO. He is trying to justify the continued existence of the AI bubble in his country, claiming that, somehow, us Americans have figured it out and made LLMs work. We haven't, nobody has. LLMs don't work. They cannot think. They do not understand what you are asking them to do. They statistically reproduce text written by other people, and they cannot do so well. They are no…

> They statistically reproduce text written by other people explain why they can do multiplication problems they've never seen before? I can give them two 50 digit numbers right now and they'll multiply them. its because they generalize from previous data.

That's called a calculator, we already have those.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#178

Post by DiabloD3 »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #83
DiabloD3 wrote: post #35

This is mostly a performance by the Mistral CEO. He is trying to justify the continued existence of the AI bubble in his country, claiming that, somehow, us Americans have figured it out and made LLMs work. We haven't, nobody has. LLMs don't work. They cannot think. They do not understand what you are asking them to do. They statistically reproduce text written by other people, and they cannot do so well. They are no…

[flagged]

Yes, this is what I keep telling people.

There are two kinds of programmers I've met: those who think they became 10x devs because of AI, and those who AI is slowing them down.

The people who think they became 10x devs? They were missing crucial skills that allow them to be productive devs, and the AI is filling the gaps... instead, they should be actually learning those skills, since without them they will never actually be a competent dev.

The people who think AI slows them down? Having to constantly cajole the AI into producing the relevant slop takes more time than just writing the thing in the first place.

Re: Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'

#180

Post by DiabloD3 »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #53
DiabloD3 wrote: post #35

This is mostly a performance by the Mistral CEO. He is trying to justify the continued existence of the AI bubble in his country, claiming that, somehow, us Americans have figured it out and made LLMs work. We haven't, nobody has. LLMs don't work. They cannot think. They do not understand what you are asking them to do. They statistically reproduce text written by other people, and they cannot do so well. They are no…

You just need to work on your agent design and prompting skills, modern LLMs are crazy good at all the things you listed with the right context and tools.

Technically yes, but this has nothing to do with LLMs.

You need to be able to write a good spec period, and this has been true as long as programming has existed. The problem is, LLMs cannot write them themselves, and have trouble reasoning out the unstated parts of complex problems if the spec doesn't spell it out.

Developers familiar with the problem space being worked on, however, can reason out the unstated parts, because the unstated parts are usually the bread and butter of the problem space.

Side note: this is often why LLMs trained on synthetic text perform weirdly or badly... the synthetic text is written by people not familiar with the thousands of individual problem spaces that exist out there, and miss important facts or nuance.

LLMs trained on real text, however, is often done without proper license, and are essentially lossy compressed piracy archives. You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.

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