Hacker News Reader

Comment by asdfasgasdgasdg | Hacker News Reader

I doubt it’s the end of AI access in Europe. Even if they do fine them 3% of global turnover, that’s probably a small enough fraction of their European revenue that it’s worth the risk. After all if they drop European traffic it’s not like it’ll change their fixed costs, and the marginal cost to serve Europe is probably relatively small compared to their fixed costs.

I do think it’s most likely that they will end up fining the AI companies quite a bit under this act. It seems like a bit of a pattern with European legislation that disproportionately impacts American tech companies.

View on HN

I really oppose the notion that “European legislation … disproportionately impacts American tech companies”. US tech has a profound impact on the lives of everyday Europeans while the US has almost no checks and balances in place for the tech industry. Europeans are ought to be able decide how they want to live their lives and build a society. This must include deciding how much influence American tech companies shall be allowed to have by passing laws for Europe.

The whole premise ignores how much the same companies are fined and settling for in the US, for many of the same reasons: privacy abuse, market abuse, societal abuse, worker abuse, etc. Pound for pound the recent Meta settlement has certainly skewed the numbers much higher for the US too.

Also, most US citizens want the same regulations as EU citizens, but only one of them have a functioning government.

No they don't.

Roughly half of American states have passed extensive internet regulation in the last few years to the point of entire businesses exciting their states, and that's the conservative parts of America.

The American public, of various creeds and political orientations is as, if honestly not more skeptical of US tech companies. They simply have no control over their government, which is captured by tech CEOs.

The recent anti datacenter activism extends to IIRC over 40 states now and has roughly 70% largely bipartisan support.

Sure, and fair.

But that only explains that Americans want regulation, not that they want EU regulation.

Americans put innovation and result ahead while Europe prefers precaution/fairness first.

There are real costs for Europe in terms of productivity because of this. Take a look at the Draghi report.

Also see European founders relocating and citing regulation as a problem when it comes to access to capital.

Isn't part of " Europeans are ought to be able to decide how they want to live their lives" that they have the choice of using products of US tech companies?

If my manager's manager's manager decides, for any number of reasons, to buy a product which is using US-based technology, then I don't reasonably have the option to "vote with my feet", but I do have a fallback called Regulation, which works its way all the way up the chain automatically.

Why would you ever expect that you would have a choice of what products you use at work? You are being paid to work there. And yes, if you feel that strongly, you absolutely do have the option to vote with your feet at any time.

> Why would you ever expect that you would have a choice of what products you use at work?

Similar arguments were made to defend Harvey Weinstein.

> And yes, if you feel that strongly, you absolutely do have the option to vote with your feet at any time.

People shouldn’t have to switch jobs because they don’t want to provide Bill Gates with their phone number.

> Similar arguments were made to defend Harvey Weinstein.

We're now comparing a SaaS product versus people you work with? I don't think ChatGPT will ever physically assault you.

> People shouldn’t have to switch jobs because they don’t want to provide Bill Gates with their phone number.

This is why the EU has very strong employee protection laws; in most countries here there are government agencies that will help you, you're not at the mercy of the HR department.

>Why would you ever expect that you would have a choice of what products you use at work?

Umm Because of worker protection laws? For example the Betriebsrat has the right to have a say in this. Second what if the product is very much inferior and the whole company would be more productive with another product?

> You are being paid to work there.

Yes and that means if I see an improvement opportunity or if I have concerns I will voice them. I'm being paid to improve the company, not be a cog in the machine.

Perhaps the fines themselves act as a de facto AI tax that some people have been trying to promote in the political sphere, and we'll see how successful it is.

Fines escalate when there is no compliance.

Then they'll just pull out eventually and save everyone the trouble.

Like how Apple famously pulled out of the EU?

They did with some services. Not sure if there is a list. For one I am missing phone mirroring to my mac which they disabled because they do not want to give api access.

Poor American companies, who thinks of them when Chinese government does similar actions, and they play ball, regardless of the government actions.

It's a (successful?) lobbying attempt by Mistral. They are falling behind on tech and they want to win on another stupid EU law. You know what will happen next? There will be an exception carved in for "developing countries" ... like China.

Why would they, both the EU and Mistral specifically, want Chinese models? Isn't the (de facto, underlying) point of the act to raise up homegrown companies like Mistral?

"Why would they, both the EU and Mistral specifically, want Chinese models?" Multiple reasons. US behaving like aholes and forcing EU to make trade with China - in any case it's better tnan war. Cheaper inference HW from China to replace overpriced Nvidia crap. Open models so Mistral and Qwen / GLM may cross–distill. (Hint: why libraries and museums exchange books and arts?) Geopolitics, sanctions, digital EUR – I can't even explain to you all of it in one post which will be downvoted to grey again. And you probably have lost ability to think*. You believe only in what Opus or ChatGPT "summarises" for you. (This is another reason btw). Good luck.

It’s how conspiracy theories work: find out who could theoretically profit, blame them and spread it as fact. It doesn’t have to stand up to scrutiny, if it sounds plausible “you told them like it is”.

That doesn't make any sense because Mistral wouldn't profit if Chinese models are allowed so not sure why the person above thinks the EU would add a China exemption.

Hence the “It doesn’t have to stand up to scrutiny“

Mistral is serving GLM in addition to their own models.

But conspiracy theory don't have to make sense in the first place.

"Mistral is serving GLM " ... "But conspiracy theory don't have to make sense". To me this looks like an example of broken logical thinking, no? :-)

https://docs.mistral.ai/models/zai-glm-5-2

The Chinese models are open weights, so they can host & finetune them in the EU. Mistral is calling them "European Compute Units". Mistral has pivoted to become a hosting provider of open weight LLMs.

"Mistral’s platform will support third-party open models, starting with Z.ai’s GLM-5.2. This and future open models will run on the same infrastructure, regional controls, and service commitments as Mistral models, so customers can broaden model choice without fragmenting where their AI runs."

"European Compute Units, or ECUs, convert those commitments into access to Mistral-built infrastructure over multiple years."

https://mistral.ai/news/regional-inference-open-models-new-c...

Giving open weight models more leeway “feels” right, but it’s a massive self-pwn based on the mother of all back doors.

It’s a little bit like saying “sysadmins need work visas and vetting, but this guy works for free, so just give him root and don’t think too hard about it”.

For Europe the choices are, foreign actor A or foreign actor B.

I don't think the current US administration has shown themselves to be less hostile than China...

I'm not saying the scrutiny on US models is unwarranted. I'm saying that open-weight models are the perfect trojan horse, so giving those models a pass on that same level of scrutiny (irrespective of provenance) is just begging to be pwned.

This makes much more sense, if they're a hosting provider.

... downvoting this account to the oblivion may feel good but it doesn't turn reality into "conspiracy theory" LOL. I am glad you are feeling better.

Writing good arguments will prevent you from looking like a conspiracy nut.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com