> Cédric O: Former French Secretary of State for Digital Affairs
That explains a lot actually, France is the epitome of crony capitalism, and having a former minister (from the current ruling party) is going to help a lot here…
Cédric O is part of the wave of businessmen who went into politics recently to follow Macron. He's however a typical French industry guy : went to one of a handful of elite highschools, then went to a business school that is part of the French equivalent of the Ivy league, then went to work for former state-owned entreprises and conglomerates, and major suppliers of the French government...
In short, even before he went into politics, he was well-introduced in every clique of the French political-industrial milieu.
And (un)surprisingly he's one of the more modern industry guys.
Recently? He's been doing politics since at least 2006 (campaigning for Dominic Strauss Khan, a famous French politician better known abroad for his rape of a maid in a hotel in NY in 2011).
> He's however a typical French industry guy : went to one of a handful of elite highschools, then went to a business school that is part of the French equivalent of the Ivy league, then went to work for former state-owned entreprises and conglomerates, and major suppliers of the French government
That's true, but you're missing the key part here, which is what makes France special in that regard: he did that in parallel (and with the help) of his political career. He joined Safran thanks to his former MP Pierre Moscovici (Cedric O was his legislative assistant) who had become minister of the Economy in 2012 after Hollande's election (And Cedric O was the deputy director of François Hollande's victorious presidential campaign).
This is very typical of the French Elite, were people involved in political parties often go back and forth between the public and private (or semi-private) sector with the help of their political network. The current prime minister has the same kind of background for instance. And there's even a word for that in French, it's called pantouflage.
I find it very funny when Americans say things like that (not that France is not like described) without even pausing to realize we are a country that legalized and institutionalized lobbying.
Salut, I'm definitely French ;)
(Even if they don't get government funding, it looks like they've already positioned themselves to get a ton of support from the EU and from European national governments, who want local champions to compete with the American capitalists.)
My thoughts:
- it's a fairly well-written memo: clear, concise, and relatively well-structured. It's a refreshing alternative to the endless series of pitch decks which mainly induce groupthink.
- the insights aren't that original. I would guess that they are strongest on the technical level. Their product and industry insights are less original or penetrating (pushing open-source and the European angle may give them some advantages -- it almost certainly will not give them an edge over OpenAI, who seem to have a relentless focus on iterating their product, a "live player" CEO in sama, and a strong dose of healthy scrappiness and creativity.)
- my prediction: they will stick around for a time, build something impressive with their technical team, raise more funding, hire a large and strong technical team (with their enormous warchest, status as the European champion, and appeal to the open-source community), and basically become a solid "fast follower". However, I think it's less certain whether they'll be able to do anything really creative or innovative.
Their overwhelmingly strongest market is going to be large European enterprises (or maybe governments), who will have lots of specific niche problems. The downside of that is their org then moulds itself to fit the needs of enterprise customers.
More speculative: the only way they can really become dangerous will be by attracting a bunch of young top-notch 18-25-year-old devs, ML people, or other builders (basically, people with creative energy and without commitment to the "established ways of doing things"), throwing them in a room together, and giving them a remit to come up with the most crazy, ambitious, unexpected applications of AI that they can. A universal translation app customised for the needs of ERASMUS students. Some weird generative music app for Berlin nightclubs. The actual ideas don't matter, what matters is having 50-100 hyperactive GenZ builders energetically exploring the space of combinations of technology, product and market to identify the genuinely novel applications of AI.
But I predict that they will not do that. You cannot cultivate that kind of free-spirited entrepreneurial DNA while simultaneously seeking deep connections with the European political establishment.
So, my overall prediction: they will focus on the underlying technology and on connections with governments/large enterprises, and deemphasise product innovation. Basically, building an AI-powered French IBM, rather than Google+++++. (Google+++++ will be built by one or two lone young researchers following their noses and working on weird esoteric ideas.) If I am right, and product innovation is the key to harnessing the power of generative models, then these guys in Paris will be formidable but not dangerous.
Should be interesting to watch it play out!
"We will distribute tools to leverage the power of these white box models, and create a developer community around our trademark. This approach is an ideological differentiator from OpenAI; it is a very strong point argument for hiring highly coveted top researchers, and a strong accelerator for development, as it will open the doors for many downstream applications from motivated hackers."
So they're trying to build a community of inventive 3rd party developers, however:
"Business development will start in parallel to the first model family development, using the following strategy
- Focus on exploring needs with a large industrial actors, accompanied by third-party integrators that will be given full access to our best (non-open source) model"
Suggests they be will sucked into the enterprise market as I said above. Still, the last line:
"Co-design of products with a few small emerging partners that focuses on generative-AI products."
Suggests a wildcard: one of these "small emerging partners" might come up with the $trillion black-swan application of AI.
[I'm going to bookmark this comment and reread it 2 years from now to see how wrong I was]