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Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

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Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#301
post #31

Absolutely not, even if Europe was given all of the compute in the world. The issues are much much worse. Starting at "data privacy", continuing with the "EU AI Act" and just an overall mindset of regulation and German angst. Many structures in the EU actively prevent and fight against innovation. Oftentimes more subtle but the consequences stay the same. If you ever had to use one of the "sovereign" AI provides such…

If your product can't function in a way that respects humans' right to privacy, your product is the problem, not the humans' rights.

Dont make the assumption that the laws and regulations in place respect human rights and are a 100% good. They also entrench EU bureaucratic power (and thus the power of the ministers) without regards to future technology.

State regs often fail to grapple with the future, and at best slow it down and at worst smother it.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#302
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs conduct strikes on children which a human may not have done. so wow, you got a frontier model but you lost something there in the process.

Why are we missing the point here: LLMs are of major geopolitical significance. Autonomous drones kill children, now what? Would you rather have a home grown frontier model capability to defend yourself? Or would you prefer to rely on the good graces of tech CEOs?

I think the EU would prefer wars not happen and that they never have to think about defending their borders or themselves. This is fantasy land, but the cafes and museums and old city squares are gorgeous.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#303

Forget regulations, would it make sense for Europe to train a frontier model of it's own? Would it be sufficiently better than fine tuning a Chinese model? Would it actually be competitive with US frontier models? Would enough people pay to use it even within Europe to pay for the training costs? Do we have enough inference capacity that enough people /could/ use it? Would being "European" allow any governments in Eu…

So your ideas of having AI sovereign is to turn to Chinese models? Do you know what their intention will be and where will they go? You don't like US models because their values don't align with yours, but then you turn to Chinese models? See how hypocrite that is?

I was suggesting US models are very good, and would probably be preferable to a less capable sovereign AI. My point was that this makes building European sovereign AI unappealing.

Similarly I was not suggesting Chinese models are an alternative to sovereign AI. An alternative which might be able to fulfil some of the objectives of a real sovereign AI while being far cheaper.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLM’s are nice. But if push came to shove, we could very easily continue on without them, or without them involved in every aspect. Being able to write cutesy SaaS apps faster is neat, but not like, essential, the way water is.

If that's all you're using LLMs for, you've definitely fallen behind.

I like how “you’ve fallen behind” is the ai version of “you’re not gonna make it” from the crypto-bro days.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#305
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EU legislature is, at least in spirit, trying to protect human rights. What does it say about progress that the same laws that protect human rights also stifle innovation? As you said, in spirit. In fact the EU’s AI Act is not really human rights legislation. (It exempts military and national-security uses.) Where it comes close, e.g. in seeking to ban facial recognition or social scoring, it does so clumsily. So i…

I don't think you're able to understand what the alternative looks like. There is no way I want America's future.

Please explain. Thanks isn't as self evident as your statement assumes.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#306
post #31

Absolutely not, even if Europe was given all of the compute in the world. The issues are much much worse. Starting at "data privacy", continuing with the "EU AI Act" and just an overall mindset of regulation and German angst. Many structures in the EU actively prevent and fight against innovation. Oftentimes more subtle but the consequences stay the same. If you ever had to use one of the "sovereign" AI provides such…

Did you read the AI Act?

AI Act regulates high risk AI systems and banns AI systems like social scoring. Most of the AI applications are not regulated.

Did you read the GDPR and follow court rulings regarding AI training. OLG Köln saw no violation in Meta‘s training of user data in Insta and FB.

It is obvious that you don’t know what you are taking about.

I’am tired of unfounded EU bashing. The guardrails in place are not hindering

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#307
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're able to understand what the alternative looks like. There is no way I want America's future.

Please explain. Thanks isn't as self evident as your statement assumes.

No thanks. If you can't see it for yourself, that's on you.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>250 years is not a particularly impressive amount of time for a country to not fall apart. 250 years is older than almost every country in Europe (by that I mean current borders and form of government, not the ancient historical ones). Most were monarchies or various forms of dictatorship till only a few decades ago and finally settled on their current borders only after WW2 or the fall of the USSR or the Yugoslav w…

> conflict free stability is super impressive by that standard. Not much happened between 1861 and 1865?

Not to mention if “borders” is part of the continuity definition the US is younger than my parents.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As per your points, Europe really can't compete, particularly when power is considered. However, frontier models that require city-sized data centres might not be all they are cracked up to be. In China they seem to be nonchalantly doing a lot with AI for specific rather than 'ask me anything' tasks. To them, they are quite used to everyday applications that work well within limited domains, no vast data centre neede…

> all we got in the UK was the BBC Micro, way back in the early 1980s, and since then tech has been culturally uncool. Off the top of my head, ARM is from Cambridge.

Pre-iphone no tech was cool, not even ARM. Source: me, out drinking.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#310
No. Computers are made in the USA or China, OSs are made in the USA (Linux, Windows, Mac).

I'm still waiting for the European computer but all microcontrollers (no processors yet) made in EU have an ARM (British-American) Cortex and the RAM is made elsewhere.

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