The UK will spend £100M to develop its own 'sovereign' AI
engadget.com
engadget.com
As a Kiwi living in the UK for like 6 years now, the Brits' worst enemies are themselves; they're afraid of change, want everything to stay the same like the good old days and so vote for the same old idiots but complain when the leopards eat their face. Over and over again.
History runs deep here and people hold onto things for far too long. Then again, I did come to Europe for the rich history, I just didn't think its inhabitants would be so bound by it.
It's an endless struggle at the moment between love of our life in London and feeling of the creeping death of the UK at its own hands.
But visiting back today, the decline in the country in just a span of a few years, it's simply unbearable to watch. The country is simply on a decline, in spite of some of the brightest minds in the EU and the world studying and working there.
And London was supposed to be the city that dominated New York around 10-20 years ago.
Europe is run as a continent-sized retirement home, by incompetent, hereditary elites who are utterly incapable of grappling with the fact that having a history is not a substitute for having an economy.
I feel for the people of Europe; they deserve better. So many of the smart, lovely people you meet here are stuck on absurdly low salaries in countries without any obvious future other than managed decline. Instead of being offered a future, they're offered endless relitigation of the past.
I’m still going back.
Also, absurds costs of things in the US makes giant salary not that giant as soon as you get kids and plan to provide them with an educations.
Regarding future, my very personal take is that European population will be vastly more resilient to what is coming. (TM)
I’m concerned about the fabric of society itself in the US. You mention future, it’s unclear what’s in it for the USA. Europeans societies have been thought shit not that long ago and survived somewhat united.
The US last crisis was at home was idk? the civil war?
But i’m sure I’m being dramatic. None the less, it’s jarring. I don’t want to grow old here and have my kids growing up in a Us culture first.
Again; my personal take. My goal was to shine some lights on the other side POV.
The Vietnam War was a domestic crisis that involved thousands of domestic terror bombings all across the country, for example.
And just looking at any US city outskirts is telling.
Also, let’s remember the position of the US in both early WW1 and Ww2. Faschism & racism are not new additions.
But is it getting better? How is the trend in regard metrics like Gini coefficient and wealth repartition?
What is better before ? Yes, until the 80s, the IRS and middle class were still a thing.
I wonders what will happen to channel future discontentments. What would be the outlets.
My concern is that once it’s become absolutely clear that upward mobility is broken for most, what will be the recourse of the folks left over in the dust?
The memory-holing of these bombings fascinates me.
IRA of course, but also ETA or the Brigatte rosse in France, Spain and Italy.
What does not fit the narrative ? I see that narrative popping back in French news today with protests against specific water collection stategies ( not the retirement stuff, other protests ) being labeled as “eco-terrorism”.
It looks that any resistance to the capitalism model of land & resource management will be labeled that way going forward ( in France. in the US I’m waiting to see what happen with cop city near Atlanta. As of now nobody heard of it )
Then, they were the independentist group like ETA ( basque people ) and FLN ( Corsica )
Same modus operandis, but geared toward having France and Spain out of their places.
Thanks for the name, I will look those group up.
No right wing group in the US ?
We had some in France. For instance in 62 the “quarteron Francais” try to top De Gaule after he decided to let go of Algeria.
Could be, considering how much the US pays in military protection for Europe (money I'd be happy to stop spending)
Even in the current geopolitical context I would preferred the US to get out of our hairs. That would probably smack some sense into EU in regards to a shared defense.
Weirdly enough, none of our politicians, or yours except trump, seems to be super into the idea. I guess NATO yield some dividends, too?
But I was more thinking at resilient community of civilians. Living in village / small town that are livable without that much inputs from the “grid” and without driving miles and miles( because they were build before that support system even existed )
Also, communities where living together is seen as normal, not some hippie or comunist idea.
As a result, elder citizen can lives longer there without need for adhoc care. It’s cheaper to raise kids. Food is cheaper and of better quality. ( farmer markets are where poor people buy food, for instance, not a fancy place for organic ware )
My observations are of rural US and rural France. Of course I’m biased.
It's part buying military assets, but it's also the protection that comes with it.
A woman, and obtuse immigration laws. She was not able to stay longer in France. And long distance sucks.
Those exists of course, just further far and between.
It’s counter intuitive because folk from the US are incredibly friendly and open. Super easy to talk to.
Yup, thanks to the US and UK who saved our asses in WW2 but were then forced to give up Eastern and a large part of Central Europe to the USSR. Fortunately it's also the US who made the USSR bankrupt themselves and let those people mind their own business. And now it's also the usual suspects pumping cash and weapons into Ukraine. At least France has got nukes and a well equipped standing army, which I could not say about other EU states with the possible exception of Poland and maybe the Scandinavians.
Just the fact that Germany had to handle two fronts, one of them exclusively fought by USSR should be an indicator of that.
Recent unwrapping of historical communication also show that the US army decide to use nuclear weapon on Japan to end the war; not that much because dragging war is bad for civilian. But also because the red army was starting to pivot to the Asian front. Being done with Europe.
Also, I was mainly talking about village / neighborhood knowing each other and not being as divided as here. But that’s still an interesting point.
Let me tell you about third world countries...
That's funny, because I feel similar for people in the US.
Sure, people in tech have high salaries, but then you have to deal with the insane health care, idiotic prison system and half the country supporting an openly fascist and lying president (among other things).
Oh, have Georgia Meloni, Victor Orban and Recep Erdogan hopped over from Europe? Must have missed that.
HN Americans like to talk about the tech salaries in CA, WA, and maybe NY and conveniently forget the problems in MS, LA, WV.
Either way it's a slightly lopsided comparison, because Europeans see their nation as a bit more sovereign than the average American sees their state. Except maybe Texans.
Especially with the language barriers a lot of Europeans never consider moving "states". If I move from Germany to Switzerland I might face racism. If an Oregonian moves to California they probably won't.
GP comment ("You don’t really think Turkey or Hungary when you think of Europe") is ignoring the reality even today. And also shows a lack of geographical /cultural knowledge, that they deny Hungary being a part of Europe.
Maybe you think that's unfair, but that's also what the commenter I responded to did.
Sweden somehow had an even worse policy than the US for dealing with COVID. Scandinavia is home to some of the largest white nationalist movements in the world.
Let's not pretend it's all roses here in Europe. Britain keeps electing Tories and effectively elected Boris Johnson. France damn near elected Marine le Pen. Nationalists control Hungary and Poland. About a quarter of Italy's parliament is far-right.
Don't get me wrong, I emigrated from the US in large part because of the political landscape, but Europe is not immune, or even close. And, really, the US is also "very diverse" -- plenty of states are generally well-governed.
Most of the Europeans I know leave the US as soon as they have kids. Everyone seems to prefer managed decline rather than having their kids attend lessons on what to do if a man with a gun comes into school.
Every discussion on the gun problem leads to vague mentions of better mental health or going back to communal communities. Country’s with far cheaper healthcare can’t solve the mental illness problem, only our lunatics have can’t walk into a store and buy a firearm.
Do you have a link handy?
The UK is also third for tech VC investment, but sometimes even overtakes china: https://dealroom.co/guides/united-kingdom
https://technation.io/news/uk-tech-q1-2022-investment-update...
From a strategy perspective, I don't think it makes sense for countries generally to waste time on their own foundation models. There are lots of open source options, and almost no chance of a government version besting the state of the art. And there's not the barriers of say semiconductors or other manufacturing.
This is in some ways the classic trap of focusing on "AI" instead of an actual application. This is what many businesses wasted money on in 2016-2020, maybe now governments are doing the same?
“I am firmly convinced that Spain is the strongest country of the world. Century after century trying to destroy herself and still no success.”
On the other hand it will be the only possible source for answering prompts such as:
1) I am in Devon but am having tea and scones with a friend from Cornwall. I want to be polite. Should I put jam on first or cream on first?
2) Rewrite the Joe Pesci "How am I funny?" speech from Goodfellas in the style of Brian Aldridge from "The Archers"
3) Explain general relativity to me in the style of a boilermaker from Glasgow.
4) Calculate the cosine distance between the following Welsh phrases after lemmatization
5) Write 500 words on the topic "Grant Shaps. Why (oh why oh why)?"
etc.
On balance it's 100m well spent.
Cheers for the inspiration, an that now I crave scones...
"The UK government won't make an NFT after all"
you just described most of the western world :)
democratic governments are perfectly capable of developing new technologies and do so all the time. the issue is the level of investment and public interest, not anything else
democratic governments are much slower of developing anything because of their bottom-up nature. of course china will build the fastest, most developed railway system in the world when their process is top-down. compare that with california's infamous projects, or even london's crossrail which took 12 years to complete. there is no solution to this problem.
perhaps you’re very experienced in working on public projects, but if you aren’t, your experience is likely reading the news or talking to people who’ve read the news. even ignoring the fact that most major news outlets are owned by right-wing corporatists who benefit from this kind of ideology, reporting on the myriad successful public projects that exist just isn’t attention-grabbing profitable news
For instance check out the precision and work required to pass (and link to) Tottenham court road.
As a counterpoint look at the “new” underground Muni line in San Francisco that is a tiny fraction of the length of the cross rail project and hindered traffic and other infrastructure development for 15 years
You make it sound like the attempt is valiantly made, but "red tape" is the sole reason that holds it back.
More often with this government, the announcement is the whole thing, there's no desire to follow though or take action, just get good headlines. And the mythical "red tape" is a scapegoat. Standards, i.e. "more red tape" would e.g. have saved lives in Grenfell tower.
in reality UK GDP is about 6% higher than in Q2 16.
i don’t know why they do this kind of sloppy reporting, but they do have form. another priceless article about Germany itself: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inflation-bankr...
this is your issue right here. it doesn't work that way.
which economy are you referring to? as not even singapore imports everything.
if we use USD then most of western europe is either below 2007 (france, spain, italy) or a tiny bit above 2007 (netherlands, belgium). same thing further afield, canada, australia etc. pretty incredible right?
if we use USD then most of the western world has not come back from the GFC.
France GDP in USD 2007 - 2,660bn ... 2023 - 2,957bn
< same thing further afield, canada, australia etc. pretty incredible right?
Australia GDP in USD 2007 - 854bn ... 2023 - 1,552bn
Pretty incredible?
use the last numbers available on the world bank site, which are from 2021. and then you'll notice something incredible.
here's a helpful link:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...
i'm bowing out now, cause it seems this thread leads nowhere. good luck in your future comments!
All that says is the UK is less prone to such events - extrapolating from that you will be safer, and “better off financially” in the UK, according to your own metrics
Give it a few weeks and we'll find out which one I imagine
Training will take approximately 3 nano seconds but probably still cost most of the £100 mil which will be spent only at companies owned by Tory MPs friends and with no prior experience in AI.
(Sorry, just trying to cheer myself up. It’s a hard time to be British at the moment)
It's going to suck for the world in general if AI models destroy a lot of jobs but the productivity gains are all paid to overseas companies like OpenAI and Microsoft.
Hope the weather's better wherever we're going to. Probably much, much hotter and sulphurous... :(