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Notes from the Mistral AI Now Summit

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Re: Notes from the Mistral AI Now Summit

#181

Post by throw-the-towel »

darkamaul wrote: post #77
b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence_Act#Pe... Europe shot itself in the dick with this hastily implemented at the height of mass hysteria bullshit and now no sane company will build anything there. an AI startup in the US or China can be a boy and his computer. in Europe, the boy needs a dozen lawyers. Mistral's sinking into irrelevancy despite the head start they had, the very promising early model…

Well , there isn’t also the opposite take from TechCrunch where they say: Why Paris may be the most important AI city outside Silicon Valley. [0] While the EU loves its regulation, I still feel it’s too early to write it down in the AI race. It will not replace Anthropic or OpenAI any time soon, but even Google and Meta fail to do that. If AI continue to grow and expand, there is enough space for many more unicorns.…

As someone who has actually experienced the hiring market in Paris, I have a hard time believing this. The salaries are, unfortunately, pathetic.

Re: Notes from the Mistral AI Now Summit

#182

Post by throw-the-towel »

flawn wrote: post #106
crimsoneer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what? Is there any evidence of risk at all?

The issue is that you wouldn't be able to even transparently get to any evidence, as these models are blackboxes. They might start scheming behind employees backs as soon as they realize they are being used in critical infrastructure of adversaries. And nobody would know until it's too late.

Aren't all LLMs just as blackboxey?

Re: Notes from the Mistral AI Now Summit

#183

Post by miki123211 »

ar0 wrote: post #40
trouve_search wrote: post #9

OK, I'm 100% rooting for both Mistral and task focused small models. But Mistral has fall really far behind since 2025Q3. It seems they can't get good reasoning models working at even medium context sizes, which is necessary to be at the table right now. Gemma4 and Qwen3.6 are currently best in the small size; Mistral's "small" model has ~4x the parameter count at 120B and isn't even competing with models a quarter i…

I agree. I am a paying Le Chat Pro user, really rooting for a European alternative. But the quality difference between Mistral and the frontier labs is growing too big to ignore. It’s worrying to me that they didn’t talk much about new models at the conference, because that is really where their focus should be IMHO. I am wondering what is keeping them back, though: Money? Compute? Skills? Training data? My fear is t…

Should it, though?

I think an European company, taking Chinese models, perhaps doing its own post-training on them and training the Chinese-ness out, with a great chat service, enterprise API and coding agent, could be pretty valuable in itself.

Re: Notes from the Mistral AI Now Summit

#184

Post by flawn »

throw-the-towel wrote: post #182
flawn wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that you wouldn't be able to even transparently get to any evidence, as these models are blackboxes. They might start scheming behind employees backs as soon as they realize they are being used in critical infrastructure of adversaries. And nobody would know until it's too late.

Aren't all LLMs just as blackboxey?

If you sell a blackbox that you constructed yourself, then you are also liable for anything that happens.

If you sell a blackbox from a third-party (e.g. from China), you are liable for somebody else's decisions that you cannot scrutinize.

So, that's kind of the argumentation that underlies sovereignty and why Chinese Models are not being used in critical infrastructure.

Re: Notes from the Mistral AI Now Summit

#186

Post by cm2012 »

gspr wrote: post #132
cm2012 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is almost a meaningless sentence. Cats and traffic lights both manipulate human behavior.

You know exactly what the intent of the lawmakers was.

No, I definitely dont. And neither do they, its hundreds of law makers. Meaning is usually sussed out through case law.

Re: Notes from the Mistral AI Now Summit

#187

Post by jononor »

Matl wrote: post #167
taneq wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it's a 'problem' or not is viewpoint-dependent but it's against the OpenAI ToU: > You may not use our Services for any illegal, harmful, or abusive activity. For example, you may not: > [...] > * Use Output to develop models that compete with OpenAI. Source: https://openai.com/policies/row-terms-of-use/ (I'm also curious whether they consider developing a competing model to be illegal, or harmful, or abusive.…

> it's against the OpenAI ToU Given that OpenAI doesn't care about training on copyrighted data, why is suddenly their ToU something anyone should care about?

That OpenAI was in the wrong when they ignored everyone copyright, does not make it right to ignore their ToU. If a one wants IP and rule of law (incl contracts) to be respected, one should not violate others rights when it is convenient.

On a more risk-strategy level there is the size of their legal team, general endowment, and supplier and political connections to consider.

Everyone is free to ignore their ToU, but I can understand why a company would avoid it...

Re: Notes from the Mistral AI Now Summit

#188

Post by nibbleyou »

jononor wrote: post #187
Matl wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's against the OpenAI ToU Given that OpenAI doesn't care about training on copyrighted data, why is suddenly their ToU something anyone should care about?

That OpenAI was in the wrong when they ignored everyone copyright, does not make it right to ignore their ToU. If a one wants IP and rule of law (incl contracts) to be respected, one should not violate others rights when it is convenient. On a more risk-strategy level there is the size of their legal team, general endowment, and supplier and political connections to consider. Everyone is free to ignore their ToU, but…

> If a one wants IP and rule of law (incl contracts) to be respected, one should not violate others rights when it is convenient.

Yes that's what should be said to OpenAI. Now they should not cry about their T&Cs not being respected when they never cared about others' copyrights.

Re: Notes from the Mistral AI Now Summit

#189

Post by WhyComboNadir »

pembrook wrote: post #101
ar0 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I am a paying Le Chat Pro user, really rooting for a European alternative. But the quality difference between Mistral and the frontier labs is growing too big to ignore. It’s worrying to me that they didn’t talk much about new models at the conference, because that is really where their focus should be IMHO. I am wondering what is keeping them back, though: Money? Compute? Skills? Training data? My fear is t…

> what is keeping them back, though: Money? Compute? Skills? Training data? All of the above and more. Everything holding Mistral back is the same thing that has held Europe back from competing in the entire digital revolution. See this 1991 article lamenting the loss of any viable European PC manufacturer: https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/22/business/europe-stumbles-... Mistral being in Europe is disadvantaged with:…

re: #4 Maybe it’s easier if you grow up in the system and know how to navigate the written and unwritten rules, but as a dual Canadian-American who recently gained Austrian citizenship, the regulatory friction is absolutely real. I decided to launch a new venture through an Austrian GmbH.

There are supposedly streamlined paths for local residents, but I had to go through the standard corporate pipeline. I spent three months fighting a bizarre catch-22 between my notary (who cost €3k+) and the bank. To open the account, I had to prove I deposited €10k in capital. But I couldn't make the deposit without an active bank account. On top of that, the bank's compliance team kept arbitrarily canceling my application due to "incorrect answers"... refusing to tell me what the errors actually were and forcing me to restart the entire process ab initio.

I finally just gave up. I wrote off the €3,000 notary fee and €1,000 in registered office costs as a sunk cost, and incorporated a US LLC instead. It took under 10 minutes, no notary, fees of $25 since I did it myself, plus another 20 minutes to open the business bank account.

There was no commercial reason to choose Austria; it was purely sentimental. My ancestors were entrepreneurs in Linz and Vienna, and I loved the idea of renewing that legacy. But the sheer weight of the bureaucracy managed to kill about 99% of the early-stage startup enthusiasm you normally rely on to get a new project off the ground.

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