EU Commission looking at practical consequences of Anthropic decision
reuters.com
reuters.com
With strong data protection, copyright and privacy laws, it would be a nightmare for any company to train models because activists lawyers would sue left and right.
Even by some miracle they come up with the model, again the hardware would be from US companies. It would take years to build a European equivalent of AWS and not to mention the talent required to do that. Given how low the wages in European countries are compared to American counterparts, and also lack of incentives from the governments I truly cannot think of a way how EU can catch up to US or China. Although I would love to be proven wrong
To build frontier models you need VC money. There’s no VC money because VC believe that there is no market for a ‘EU Champion’.
There’s no market for a EU champion because internal EU market is not big enough for VC returns. Why invest in EU champion when the US champion is guaranteed to have better returns ?
And there’s no public alternative to VC either because that’s national level and national investment in EU doesnt cross national boundaries
Mistral actions reflect this, they need returns and they target the market where they can be competitive, which is the scraps the US labs cannot address. This is not enough to fund frontier lab research
Also the legal context on regulations is quite different from the US. In the US you can have unlimited damage, that is not the case in the EU, where regulation penalty can never as a matter of principle put the existence of the company in danger, and thus the application of the regulations is always a matter of negociation with the government. You don't have to respect everything all at once, size of the company and ability to actually implement the regulations are taken into account, which means that sartups are usually excempt.
The Southern Countries are parasitically living from EU funds and EU programs, including money transfer for the budgets. The rich countries are desperately seeing China eating their lunch in Cars and all the rest.
Add to this the aging population, and now having the head under the sand on AI, and it does not look pretty...
That's just completely false but ok. There's even a EU regulation to ensure the exact opposite: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=legissum...
Here is an example of the current situation in Luxembourg for example, where the EU Court is based! They want you to clean up your debts first, well you would not go bankrupt if you could no? And if you look at the remaining conditions for the so called second chance they are impossible to achieve.
https://sstlaw.lu/obtaining-a-business-license-after-facing-...
In the Netherlands restarting after bankruptcy is possible, but not automatic. The bankruptcy trustee determines whether the business can restart, and restart may be impossible if it harms creditors...
Spain excludes or limits discharge for some public debts and certain debtors...
Ireland and Austria completely ignored the law you quoted and currently have infringement procedures...see you in a few years...
Poland did not apply at all the law you mentioned, and had been criticized by the EU but nothing was made about it until now...
There are differences between being on the field, or knowing how to do a google search...
Here is a real example: open a company, buy a small piece of land, section it in smaller pieces, promise you build houses, get people downpayments in cash, syphon all money to other companies with having contracts just a bit bigger than average market price, declare bankruptcy, then start again. You of course have smaller stakes in those other companies.
It will never happen because it's a political decision!
European politicians and bureaucrats, at any level, are idiots(in the best case scenario) or corrupted(in the worst one). Cloud computing is a thing since at least 10 years, and we still don't have a single fucking hyperscaler despite having everything already in place: Ovh, Hertzner + several other big cloud providers in all major countries, but instead of acting as a unique actor ...
Worst part is Europe was near the top of nuclear and microchips ~30 years ago, and France had bleeding-edge AI.
Boomers decided that was enough growth, it's time to cement what they got and cash out without thinking about economic growth opportunities of future generations.
>France had bleeding-edge AI
They still do, but it's all tied in stuffy bureaucratic French-speaking academia, not in monetizable products that scale internationally. Whatever they come up with, the US companies will then buy up, turn into products and sell for money.
There's only so far you can push things before you need breakthroughs that give new approaches and when that happens it is often a new playing field.
The person I was replying to was asserting the the EU could never approach China and US levels in AI even if they made a major effort to do so because by starting N years later they would always be N years behind.
But that is only true, it seems to me, for things that do not plateau. For things that plateau those who start N years late catch up to the leaders N years after the leaders hit the plateau.
ICE cars plateaued a long time ago, and so the EU, the US, and China are all about the same level. They might concentrate more on different market segments, but technologically they all pretty much equally capable.
My understanding is that Bedrock is for those who want to use existing models. It lets you access models from various companies via a unified API, helps comply with things like GDPR and HIPAA, makes it easy to switch models, and some other things.
For those developing new models what they are looking for is lots of CPU/GPU/storage. They would be fine with classic hosting services where you rented or leased a machine and all the hosting company did was manage the hardware for you.
And I have to remind myself that people writing this are having a bias: they believe that in a system with few taxes (so less public health care, public eduction, less support for unemployment ...) they are on top, they are the ones with money, they are the ones that win the game.
But when they are without money and in a precarious situation they too might vote an extremist that will promise to distribute wealth via the state => more taxes. You have a real example happening these years in a country that proudly promote itself as the best one in the world: low taxes, no healthcare, no free education, little regulations - the most amazing place to start a business.
I am not saying everybody is like this, but it is very important to question yourself about where are you seeing yourself: as the one on top winning from the system or the one that has some needs. And second question: how many people will be on one side or the other?
Regarding birocracy: this comes exactly from the fact that EU is not a federation so each state needs to have their voice heard and so a lot of regulations/law are complex => more birocracy.
Of course EU has a lot of things to improve and a lot of regulations to rewrite and can and should do more for business. But let's not put those two in an antagonist system: you can support businesses while not punishing the people, the consumers, the users and the labor market.
What if your assumption here is incorrect and you are more likely projecting? What if there are other reasons people have?
What people are complaining about is that they visually see an increase in taxes and bureaucracy without a proportional increase in what they get back from the government. OFten the contrary. THye pay more and get less. They don't want to cancel all that, they just want their government to be less corrupt and more savvy with how its spends its taxpayers money.
>but it is very important to question yourself about where are you seeing yourself: as the one on top winning from the system or the one that has some needs.
Yes, that's important to ask yourself, But more important would be to ask yourself what happens as more and more people become parts of the "needs" group, who will be left to contribute to fund those with needs? If you compensate by increasing taxes and burden your fewer remaining productive workers to redistribute their labor to a growing pool of unproductive members with needs, your skilled people emigrate and you're left with just the people with needs. Who is then going to pay for all those needs? Raise a Berlin wall to keep them from leaving?
Caring for people in needs is nice, but this isn't' the 1960's anymore when Europe had international monopoly over entire industries and could afford generous welfare. The truth is if you run your government like a charity, you can't compete with major powers that run their country like ruthless corporations or industrial factories. Eventually they will steam roll you with their economic and military might and your former prosperity will be gone in a blink of an eye.
The problem with Europe's needs based system is that it's unsustainable within both its current domestic conditions and the international conditions eroding its wealth, but no EU citizen wants to hear that they system they paid for their whole lives is not working.
If that happens, you're doing it wrong. The point of helping people with social programs is to ensure (ideally) no one falls through the cracks and becomes an even bigger cost to society, so they can eventually contribute to society again instead of being a cost to it instead of getting trapped in poverty.
Of course, some people are not well enough they will ever be able to contribute to society, but providing them with the basics is less expensive to society than not doing so.
They already are doing it wrong and they have been since its inception, since the pay-as-you-go system is unsustainable unless population and economic output grow forever and EU has stagnated for the last 20 years and shows no signs of massive comebacks.
The Fable debacle seems destined to be the canonical reason why the EU built their own software / AI ecosystem.
I would still prefer bureacratic laws to the chaos of the White House.
You can't just legislate this into existence, you also need the money and talent to do it, not to mention the hardware.
The only problem is - when US services are available, there's no incentive to bring anything to the market.
I guess you forgot that EU's unicorn champion, Spotify, started by distributing pirated music they stole off the torrents before getting the rights to that music.
Which invalidates everything you just said.
Same thing will happen with the LLMs. Publishing companies will cut a deal with the LLM companies to get a cut off the books and IP they used for the training data.
So this is a very poor cope/excuse of why the EU doesn't have cutting edge models, because it's illegal to steal IP in Europe vs US.
Even if you overcome all of this and become successful, you'll get chased by politicians for having too much money (which is not allowed in the EU).
And even if you don't, today, it will be tomorrow.
Easier to just take a long haul flight to your favorite US coast and do it there.
It's happened once, could happen any time.
Not good for business!
The rest who are not chased are usually deeply intertwined with politicians, and are running corruption schemes along them.
I'm not one to hate rich people (I'm a capitalist myself), but if any billionaires are to be looked at with skepticism, it's EU billionaires with significant political ties.
The "strong and deep statements" they release are cheap theater.
The US is defending Europe through NATO. Until that changes, the EU will continue to be the US's slave.
The RU/UA war was entirely orchestrated by the US. The "Russia will invade the EU" propaganda was useful to scare the EU population, so they'd accept issuing 800B of debt to "rearm Europe" (buying from and enriching American war companies). Debt that will be paid using EU taxpayer money of course.
The US government is using their own taxpayer money to buy weapons for Ukraine (money++ for politicians and their war company friends), and then they forced the EU to issue 800B of debt to further enrich their war company friends.
Why would the US defend the EU from the Russian invasion, with this insane war revenue?
Anthropic has been asking for a sensible regulatory regime, as you would know if you read their suggestions. What you’re looking at is USG directly integrating with the free market based on personal dislike.
It’s purely a revenge tactic due to Anthropic’s disagreement with Hegseth’s desire to use AI for war crimes.
EU will maybe never be like the US and maybe the US will be stronger and richer than the EU... But us EU people have nice weather and lots of good things like small cars and bike lanes and soccer teams and socker teams and suckerteams and lots and lots of windmills and sea windmills small tiny farms that are super cosy!!!
I think a YT Video about it would take on millions on views. Oh and the bus,no cards...debit or credit...only cash...oh wait...only coins.
German precision...the fairytale adults tell mechanics.
For example when it gets the moment to pay in German, there would be a link to pay, but it wont enable the pin machine because it says in English "pay via association". You have to be an half genius to understand they are referring in English, via a broken translation, to The Munich Transport and Tariff Association (MVV) that provides the overarching framework for local public transport in Munich, but of course you wont have their card.
Oh and despite taking the money ok, when the machine prints the ticket, the machine fails to print the bar code in 60% of the cases...
The online info says you can go to the DB counter, and request them to print you a card with the proper bar code, that the bus inspectors need to scan. After 20 minutes on the queue, the most arrogant employee there refused to do it, laughed and said it was not worth it, as the machines fail to print the bar code 50% of the time. It gets you a "Barcodedruck fehlgeschlagen" message in the ticket, so the controls at the bus are forced to ignore it ...or they can decide to give you a fine...German precision my a#%"#&
Additonally, the Chinese AI industry is shifting away from open models and to American-style commercialization as well [2].
[0] - https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3351292/...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/eu-firms-brace-more-shut...
- Monopolies and related regulation. Of course US has its own companies being treated as monopolies so they will try to save them
- Social systems including healthcare
- Russia being next door vs far away (for US)
- The whole AI buildout
- A little bit of Libre Office smattering at the government level
Whether you consider US to be guarding its national interests, or whether you consider europeans to be taking a free ride on US's defense systems, it seems like 2 partners who got together for whatever reasons, you can even justify them in history, but history has moved on. I think we are going in 2 different directions for even the next president, however big a U turn he/she makes, I do not think the situation is salvageable.
It's too late for this. The time to execute this was 20 years ago when EU had leverage (the EU stock market was bigger than the US one in 2004, now it's half). Now that leverage is gone and EU is bogged down with massive domestic issues it can't recover from (some of which you mentioned), and starting a massive tech IP/trade war now with the US over Claude as retaliation for Trump will only hurt the EU working class more, as the US has more levers to pull being a big consumer of EU exports.
Unfortunately due to decades of neglect, mismanagement and bad policies, EU has backed itself into a corner making itself an easy mark for both the US and China to take advantage of as they lack any leverage to dictate international policies on their terms so they have to fold in the end.
Also, many EU politicians have no idea how the internet works let alone what Claude is. So much talks coming from them out of the blue on this topic will be the mouthpieces of the lobbyists funding them in exchange for government money to build "EU sovereign products" which may or may not deliver which is irrelevant as the goal will be to laudner public money into private pockets for shipping a sovereignty sticker.
@snovv_crash
>You spend too much time online
How can you insult people like that?
I base my assessment on the visible decline me and everyone around me see with our own eyes over the past 10 or so years. I can see for myself how my purchasing power has dropped like rock, how brutal inflation is, how much more expensive housing is relative to wages, how much more difficult it is to get a state doctor and childcare, the waves of layoffs me and friend experienced, etc. the news didn't have to tell people that, people can see and experience that for themselves. All these are not caused by one single issue that you can easily revert, they're a cumulation of multiple issues that accumulated over decades and are impossible to reverse in the current situation the EU is in.
It's so insulting when people are trying to gaslight you that your lived expiries are just "being online". So disingenuous and bad faith.
>The EU isn't bogged down with issues
It definitely is. That's why it can't take decisive actions against foreign bullies like Trump or even Putin(he invaded Ukraine in 2014 BTW). Like the EU talks a lot about its freedom and humanitarian values and policies but sheepishly fails to impose them on its trading partners, because it would suffer retaliations its economy can not absorb. It's too dependent on energy and tech trade with the US and too dependent on manufacturing from China, so it can't piss either of them off and is forced to play ball to their tune regardless of diverging values, while also playing to the tune of Azerbaijani authoritarianism for their gas imports and to the whims of Indian nationalists for access to their market. EU is currently in no position to bargain so it folds to everyone's demands.
Would it have been better to do this 20 years ago? Sure, as with most things in hindsight. Is it a lost cause? No.
While the US builds its capital evaluation on the promise that everyone in the country has been convinced to work themselves to death for trinkets and healthcare, Europe has that as a human potential reserve that isn't tapped and frankly is actually managing to see the woods for the trees here.
Where did you get that from??
Besides, it's a bit strange to argue that it's impossible to make a change, and as proof of that take the fact that there's been a big change over the last 20 years.
Where did I talk about it being "progres"? I said the value of the stock market represents economic leverage which the EU lost and is now at the mercy of foreign bullies with stronger economies(US and CHina). If you want your trading partners to respect you and your values and not back-stab you the moment you turn around, you need leverage over them(economic and/or military), otherwise everyone will walk all over you and take advantage of you and your citizens will lose prosperity proportional to your nation's loss of share in the global economy.
>The US stock market is incredibly inflated.
Doesn't matter in this particular point. If the US stock market pops, the EU's economy will suffer just as much or even more, just like post 2008.
The point was that EU is far too economically dependent to US and other major nations they hate but has no muscle and no leverage to do anything against them except post stern words on X while quietly folding like a deckchair to their demands.
It's true the US economy has grown faster than the European in the last two decades, for sure, I agree with you. It's just that the apparent magnitude of the difference depends on what metric you choose, and I just mean that the value of the stock market seems like a poor metric.
It absolutely is. If my assets are worth twice as much as yours, I have more options to mess with you, and you have less resources to fight me back.
It's how rich people can bully poor people in court. It's how rich countries can bully poorer countries.
I feel this is mostly to do with the EU having more companies that stay private for longer and partly to do with the USA's currency manipulation which maintains the dollar value artificially high.
Thank god for that. Enjoy it while it lasts.
>do due to Europe being so afraid to federate
Why would they be afraid? Yugoslavia, USSR and any other time in history where you force similar but not really cultures under one central leadership, it ended up great in the end, they didn't fight or break up at all. So what's to be afraid of?
Yeah, why bother with that pesky democracy, freedom of speech and what each country wants when we can have a German like Ursula v.d Leyen be the supreme chancellor over the European Federal Reich and all of EU's problems will be gone, we'll have our own SV, our own SpaceX, it will be amazing, right? It will be uncle Adolf's dream come true.
The EU is both weak, powerless, and also that powerful tyrannical entity according to your various comments. You really might want to check your sources of information
You have it backwards. I trust my local government because I can vote for it, and if they fail to deliver they can have rioters in from of their house, I don't trust EU leadership because I can't vote for it and we can't all travel to Brussels to riot while still making it to work after.
>The EU is both weak, powerless, and also that powerful tyrannical entity according to your various comments.
Why argue in bad faith pretending you can't distinguish what I meant? Eu IS powerless versus China and the US, but it can also act tyrannical over its members who don't play ball on unpopular topics like open borders illegal mass migration with illegal migrants and fake refugees. So it's both weak versus stronger actors and a bully versus weaker actors.
>You really might want to check your sources of information
Please give us your 100% truthful and unbiased sources of information. Or you might want to invest in a brain if you don't see the things I'm talking about happen in real life. Maybe you work in Brussels and your lifestyle depends on getting people to parrot the party line and silence the dissidents.
- Commissioner for Digital and Frontier: Henna Virkkunen (JOURNALIST, experience PR) [1]
- Executive Vice-President for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy: Stéphane Séjourné (LAWYER, politics, but hey, his mom was a telephone switch operator!) [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henna_Virkkunen
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A9phane_S%C3%A9journ%C3%...
inb4 Sacks is MD/lawyer... but he is a Stanford econ graduate, was PayPal COO, is tech VC, etc.
Does "Europe" need a leading-edge model? Yeah, most likely, but chasing the "SpaceX-buys-all-the-Nvida-chips-then-rents-them-out" model is pointless, and the "China distills it all" market seems to be rather saturated as well. So, another vote for "meh", I guess?
Yeah, but isn't the "common knowledge" that the EU can't produce software anyway, annoying outliers like SAP nothwithstanding?
And: "Fable" being 10x (or even 2x, or even 1.1x) better than Opus 4.x is not agreed-upon fact, right?
That's a strong statement, isn't it? But so far it seems true. They lower barrier to entry but they don't enable experts to get more things done better. Studies like the METR report show they make experts less productive but with the feeling of being more productive.
Practically this means Europe has a short window in which to catch up, while the US hobbles its own progress.
You don't really have a choice if the government decides to play hardball
The most egregious example: the core OpenAI team is like forty per cent Polish...?
Jared Kushner will get a sweet package of private Anthropic shares and everything will be forgotten.
Yes, I know Mistral exists but they're into the b-2-b sovereign enterprise/government niche, not winning the consumer space. And if history taught us anything from the Blackberry vs iPhone wars is that products winning over the consumer preference end up dominating the market over those dominating enterprise. Simple as.
Not many consumers and small-medium businesses will prefer to buy an inferior but domestic products for the sake of sovereignty, if the foreign imports can deliver better faster/results for cheaper. Same how Chinese car brands are now easting European ones on the European market. The free market is brutal and merciless when it gets to be actually free.