armcat
I keep seeing these "sovereign" LMs time and time again.
In Sweden we had GPT-SW3
(https://www.ai.se/en/project/gpt-sw3) and same story
there. Instead of burning money on "sovereign" claims,
national research labs should instead focus on building on
top of solid baselines (like Qwen/Kimi) and finetuning
frontier models with real agentic utility that can be
applied across actual use cases and can be widely used by
its people, basically for free. Nations should mirror what
Cursor has done with Composer 2.5 for example.
|
> appplication
Disagree, it's in the country's best interest to
facilitate internal expertise on the full stack and
own their "supply chain" so to speak and fight brain
drain. The outcome isn't just the model, it's the
expertise. Otherwise all their smartest folks will
depart for countries where LLM development is
strongest.
|
> > bradhe
Got it, so every country should focus on having a
mediocre-at-best AI strategy by refusing to work
together? Surely this will create a better future
instead of pooling resources.This
vaguely-nationalist world view around tech that's
emerging in Europe is dangerous, man.On the brain
drain problem in particular, one way to ensure
talent sticks around is to create a good
environment for people to do their best work. In
much of Europe, getting bureaucracy out of the way
and encouraging real investment would go a long
way. People leave because they can make more money
and they want to be surrounded by the best people.
People would trade some of that off to stick
around their home countries, however if you go to
California and talk to folks from e.g. NL or DE
working on this stuff, they have a lot to say
about innovation and working culture back home.
|
> > > Certhas
This "vaguely nationalistic world view around
tech" is a direct consequence of the US
government weaponizing its leading tech firms
reach into the EU for nationalistic
purposes.The EU was build on the principles of
collaboration, to overcome the nationalistic
impulses. Free trade and free movement of
people, no need for everyone to replicate what
everyone else is doing. Preventing individual
nation states from favoring and supporting
their home grown firms over other EU firms is
a central legal principle.But this only works
if it is reciprocal. And ideally if the
partners are roughly on the same level. When
you force developing nations in trade deals to
not protect local firms, you are also
preventing them from moving up the value chain
and locking them into the position of "raw
material providers".When trading with China we
know that China has absolutely no qualms
supporting its strategic industries with a
truck load of subsidies. And it is preventing
foreign firms from investing and selling on
the domestic market.For the longest time the
US was considered a safe partner though. Sure,
plenty of disagreements in the details, but in
principle someone whom you can rely on. That
idea has been decisevly dismantled over the
last 10ish years. The US unilaterally cut of
the EMails of EU courts. The US has
unilaterally decided that EU partners cannot
use Fable/Mythos.The only reasonable reaction
is to make sure that the EU can maintain and
create its own critical infrastructure.
|
> > > > themgt
This "vaguely nationalistic world view
around tech" is a direct consequence of
the US government ... The EU was build on
the principles of collaboration ... But
this only works if it is reciprocal.This
sounds great but doesn't really make any
sense. What skeptics are saying is there
should be a pan-EU effort to build
frontier models, rather than one-off toy
models built by each country as a
box-ticking exercise."We built the EU as a
powerful supranational organization, so
logically the EU's response to a great
power challenge in the realm that may well
define the 21st century is gonna be to
shatter its efforts into 27 useless
pieces, because Trump bad" just sounds
absolutely ridiculous and will not lead to
anything good. Be the change you want to
see, etc.
|
> > > > trhway
>This "vaguely nationalistic world view
around tech" is a direct consequence of
the US government weaponizing its leading
tech firms reach into the EU for
nationalistic purposes.And in response NL
should weaponize ASML for example. Then
both sides would naturally back down.
Specialization is the most efficient way
of developing tech civilization.Whereis
everybody building their own mediocre
versions would be repeating Russia in its
attempt to make its own national messenger
- a lot of government money sunk, yet
people are still using Telegram/etc.
|
> > > > > saidnooneever
Of NL weaponizes ASML they will just
take their IP and leave NL and then
they have nothing. They have already
pushed a lot of things out of NL and
should invest in leveraging the
position without weaponizing it.
|
> > > > > dijksterhuis
ASML wiki for those like me who were
confused
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML(des
pite the name, i am not dutch)
|
> > > > > > fransje26
> (despite the name, i am not
dutch)Some close or far ancestor
was though. :'-)
|
> > > Gud
Why would it have to be mediocre?Both
Netherlands and Sweden produce highly
competent researchers. Per capita on par with
any other location on the planet, including
California.This will be good for Europe as a
whole and also the planet.
|
> > > > vitalyan123
>and also the planet.What a glorious day
for Canada and, therefore, the world.
|
> > > > > Gud
I don't think it's good that the USA
has so much influence due to their
dominance in information technology.It
was only nominally democratic, now
it's a total shit show.
|
> > > > > > budsniffer952
>total shit showAre there people
legitimately brain-rotted such
that they believe stuff like
this?Outside of the constant flow
of "hey guys, look at the latest
dumb thing Trump did" coming from
entertainment outfits posing as
news, what are we even talking
about? Life goes on as normal for
the Americans. You are way too
online.
|
> > > > > > Gud
Yes, the current administration
has been in power for less than
two years so obviously the "day to
day life" hasn't changed much for
the average American (except
everything has gotten more
expensive).The US is no longer
looked at as a superpower, it just
surrendered to a regional power
and will pay $300B USD in
tribute.But for Trump and his
cronies life certainly has
improved.But the damage is done
and we are witnessing the decline
and destruction of the worlds
greatest Empire of all time.
|
> > > > > > trollbridge
Nitpick: it's 6 years.
|
> > > > > > Gud
The Republican Party looked very
different during Trumps first term
|
> > > > kortilla
Producing local researchers isn't enough.
If you want a competitive model you need
to bring the best researchers from all
over the world. That means lots of
investment that hasn't been common in
Europe.
|
> > > > colordrops
Sure, but there is still a more dense
talent pool with SV companies, and
training frontier models requires massive
amounts of capital. Are Netherlands and
Sweden prepared to invest 10s of billions?
|
> > > > > varjag
My impression is the talent pool for
core model development in SV isn't
huge and is already grabbed by the
usual suspects. Everyone else sloshing
in the vague broader AIsphere are
application bros whose value in the
supply chain is minimal.
|
> > > > > Gud
Honestly I have a strong suspicion
that "the talent pool" will shift
towards Europe and China and I believe
it's already happening.And yes, I do
believe Europe will invest in this
technology.
|
> > > > tcp_handshaker
You missed the part where they got 13
million EUR , 3 years ago! and dont have a
release yet....Definitely doing it at
European pace...they will have release two
when AGI is around...
|
> > > ltrg
> This vaguely-nationalist world view around
tech that's emerging in Europe is dangerous,
man.It's a response to the
actually-nationalist practice of the United
States. I can understand why it might feel
different from California, but things are a
bit scary over here right now.
|
> > > trollbridge
The EU should absolutely be running frontier
labs producing frontier models.The fact they
aren't points to the moribund nature of things
in the EU tech space. Both China and America
are doing this although with very different
approaches.
|
> > > torginus
wdym? it says 13.5 million euros has been
allocated to the project - you aint building a
frontier LLM with that kind of money, but its
enough to give research opportunities and
real-world experience to a handful of
researchers, and build up local
competence.These people can then fund
for-profit companies once they have a
promising approach and bring in private
investment.As for nationalism, like it or not,
this is a govt sponsored effort, and
governments and universities are funded by the
public of specific nations
|
> > > > saidnooneever
this exactly. its not nationalistic at all
to support your local development. this
project has different goals than people
perceive and their comments are all
missing the plank ;)
|
> > > olmo23
> This vaguely-nationalist world view around
tech that's emerging in Europe is dangerous,
man.It's a direct response to the MAGA /
America First attitude of the American
electorate.
|
> > > blackoil
Collectively Europe has talent and money to
support it. Whole point of sovreignity around
it is to have inhouse the talent and capacity
to have essential resources even if it can be
have for cheap from other
nations/alliances.That is why people lament at
idea of being completely dependent on Russian
gas, US tech or Chinese manufacturing.
|
> > > legacynl
Hopefully you understand that there's an
obvious selection bias you encounter when
talking to folks from NL or DE in California.
Ofc the people that moved will think there's a
good reason for them moving. But people who
live here have good reasons for staying here.
|
> > > woctordho
Users don't need to build wheels. Wheel
builders need to first learn to build some
mediocre wheels, then they can build better
ones.
|
> > > torginus
wdym? it says 13.5 million euros has been
allocated to the project - you aint building a
frontier LLM with that kind of money, but its
enough to give research opportunities and
real-world experience to a handful of
researchers, and build up local
competence.These people can then fund
for-profit companies once they have a
promising approach and bring in private
investment
|
> > > torginus
wdym? it says 13.5 million euros has been
allocated to the project - you aint building a
frontier LLM with that kind of money, but its
enough to give research opportunities and
real-world experience to a handful of
researchers, and build up local competence.
|
> > > notarobot123
> pooling resourcesYour argument would suggest
the EU developing a European model would be a
better direction. A heavy-weight competitor
would help advance the field after all.>
getting bureaucracy out of the way and
encouraging real investmentI don't think this
is really about regulation - it's about
network effects. The only way to compete with
strong network-effects is to create your own.>
This vaguely-nationalist world view around
techNationalism breeds nationalism and it is
the fundamental reason European states feel
the need to build their own expertise. Can you
imagine if your country was subject to the
whims of an aspiring dictator?
|
> > > hrmon
> This vaguely-nationalist world view around
tech that's emerging in Europe is dangerous,
man.Guess which country blocked access to a
SOTA model based on national security
bullshit.
|
> > > throwaway98797
if something's strategically important for
safety it's wise to have competency in it.
|
> > > expedition32
Tech sovereignty is a response to American
imperialism. It has not gone unnoticed that
the White House has summoned the tech bros and
weaponised tech.
|
> > yread
Great, now they will get expertise and then get
hired by openai and move
|
> saidnooneever
TNO doesn't serve nor represent global interest and
hence does not care about global progress. It exists
to enhance knowledge on things within Dutch society
primarily with some ripple effect outward to EU
because they have interests within the EU.Its purpose
is not to become some kind of OpenAI or global
foundation offering services/tools on that scale.There
is a lot of critisism on this project, not invalid,
but mostly based in lack of understanding of what the
goals are of the organization as well as the people
building the thing.The people building it, are well
aware of how it will be less capable than other LLMs
on a general reasoning aspect, not only due to having
actually purchased _all_ licensed data that has been
used as inputs. Not being a multi billion dollar
corporation, this means having very little data and
should be an obvious signal to observers that it has
not the goal to outdo other models.In my opinion
(personal) its a project that has a learning and
demonstration value that is not 'look how well our
model performs against others', but still offers
value.
|
> teekert
There is something to be said for this "most cheapest"
approach, there is also something to be said for
making models that are entirely ethically sourced:1.
Free of controversy like unlicensed training
materials2. Free of exploitative rlfh loops by people
in low-wages countries3. The leasons learned (and
published) from going through the entire training
process on "European" hardware: "AI factories" (the
term for Slurm HPC/HTC systems with lots of heavy GPU
nodes, heavily subsidized by our government [0])1 and
2 are strong counter-LLM arguments at the moment, and
hold back some groups of potential users. Another is
energy/water use, so going for maximum green energy
would be a nice boon as well. 3 is something I
consider to be highly useful for our European identity
and "way of the ninja" (for you Naruto fans out
there).[0 https://hpc-portal.eu/funding-opportunities]
|
> > dijksterhuis
one would also hope there'll be less pressure to
"make line go up", i.e. not having to do
attention-engineering via deliberate sycophancy to
trap individuals into using it more and more and
more and more and more and more.but in general,
yes, as someone who is vehemently anti-ai GPT-NL
has piqued my interest specifically because of the
ethical protections / measures they're talking
about. question is whether they stick to it.
|
> entropyneur
Sounds like calling those model "open source" did its
wicked job. You can not take an open weight model and
build a next-generation model using that as a
foundation. Once those companies decide it's no longer
in their interest to release new open weights
everything you've created this way becomes a pile of
rapidly deprecating legacy.
|
> > michaelscott
OP probably means using the existing open weights
as a base for further homegrown development and
research, not that the homegrown models are always
updated based on whatever US or China are doing in
the moment
|
> TJSomething
If open frontier models start closing up and states
start more export controls on AI services and
hardware, it might be good to ensure the supply chain
is there to reproduce the SotA, or even a couple
generations behind it.
|
> 627467
Do we know for sure how much national corpus of
knowledge (like dutch) goes into these "global" models
and how that affects "localized" model biases? What's
wrong with specialized models?
|
> khafra
Today, you keep seeing "sovereign" LMs that are
subject to the sovereignty of some human-led state.
Tomorrow, the "sovereign" LMs will be called that for
a completely different reason.
|
> thevinter
And what happens once the "solid baselines" become
unavailable for a reason or the other?
|
> > zozbot234
You keep building on the last available version?
Fine tuning is a whole lot cheaper, easier and
more useful than pretraining a model from scratch.
It's a complete no brainer.
|
> > > rapidfl
> You keep building on the last available
version?yes but a sovereign can allocate some
resources and a few people to stay in the loop
from a first principles level. No need to wait
for a rug pull.Of course, it can not compete
with the frontier labs. But good to have
researchers and professors "in-house". LLMs
are here for the long-term.
|
> > > > GTP
> But good to have researchers and
professors "in-house".I'm not in this
field, but I think we already have them.
Probably the main difference is that we
have most or all of them in academia and
next to none insode private companies. But
we do have them, and they could start
working for private companies if the
market moves in that direction in the EU
as well
|
> > > > michaelscott
Unfortunately in this game first
principles requires massive resources, not
"some". Building in-house on top of
existing open weights is a good way to
bootstrap this process, especially since
there's nothing inherently magical or
particularly expertise-heavy when it comes
to weights themselves
|
> > ozim
Seems like you don't understand.You take current
version and build on top of it. You have the
weights.You might not get some n+1 version at some
point but the n version you will have will be
still most likely much better than whatever you
come up with burning good will money of people
believing in „sovereignty".You are not getting
ahead in this game by being „true to your local
values" capital expenditure is insane in this
game.
|
> Scarblac
Their legality is very questionable given all the
likely copyright infringement going on, and a state
can't really ignore that.
|
> > vintermann
States are the things which can ignore that, and
I'm pretty sure US and China already do. No state
is going to respect copyright if they think its
future is at stake, and apparently even
Netherlands thinks the future is at stake.(Of
course states can ignore copyright in a legally
polite manner, such as asserting that training on
all published material in the National Library is
fair game)
|
> mschuster91
Kimi and Qwen come out of China, which means that
their training material may be biased e.g. relating to
Taiwan [1]. In addition, there is no way to determine
what input went into the training, if it was properly
licensed, if it was legal (e.g. not contaminated by
CSAM), or how the human component of RLHF was sourced
- in US models, for example, stories about
exploitation like [2] have been floating for
years.Assuming us Europeans finally get our act
together, I think it is better for our long-term
future (and the ethical problems) if we manage to get
a baseline of training input and data ourselves, from
scratch, with everything being ethically sourced.Oh
and, while we're at it, the EU has 24 official
languages plus a host of minority languages. Most LLMs
focus on the English, German, French and Chinese
languages, but everything else is... left behind at
best. An European model with actual funding and proper
data sources might be able to significantly reduce
that.[1] https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/6245677[2]
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/16/tec
hscape...
|
> > vintermann
The Chinese models are almost certainly taught to
comply with "Chinese values" in the RLHF step, not
from filtering the training data. There may be a
few things which are too radioactive to be allowed
even in the training material - but that's more
likely to be things like child abuse images for a
visual model, things non-Chinese values also have
an issue with.I'm pretty sure no county taking a
stab at making their own model for sovereignty
purposes will let "proper licensing" stand in
their way.
|
> > jampekka
> Most LLMs focus on the English, German, French
and Chinese languages, but everything else is...
left behind at bestCurrent frontier models (closed
and open) are already really good at small
languages too. I use them in Finnish sometimes,
and the language is immaculate. They underestand
even somewhat obscure dialects. Multilinguality
seems to be a mostly solved problem.
|
> > KronisLV
This already exists https://eurollm.io/How do
people not know about it and keep making stuff
from scratch?
|
> > > Alexander-Barth
I did not know about EuroLLM. I had a look to
the paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05879)
describing it:Specifically, we discard
documents shorter than 200 characters (Xue
et al., 2021a), and any page containing the
phrase "lorem ipsum," the word "javascript,"
or curly brackets (Raffel et al., 2023)....It
is quite surprising/funny to see all documents
with javascript removed.
|
> > altmanaltman
It really doesn't matter if the model sucks and
doesn't perform well. Given the funding amount and
their lofty ambitions, it seems very unlikely they
will be able to pull it off properly.Yeah China
and US models have baises but so will any model.
The biases do not get in the way of the product
though. You don't open those models just to ask
for what happened in Taianaman square or if Taiwan
is a state. You dont ask ChatGPT to generate CASM.
But they are very good at the tasks you actually
expect from a LLM. If you fail at that, nobody
will use your model no matter how "ethically
sourced" a colonizer-based entity like Europe made
it.
|
> > > edg5000
> no matter how "ethically sourced" a
colonizer-based entity like Europe made itThe
attempt is laughable, buy every country should
at least try to keep up with frontier
technology, even if they fail massively or are
massively underfunded.On the other hand, it's
arguably wasteful for an incompetent govt to
do something like this, since the money will
almost certainly not be well spent. It will
just go to people good with MS Word. That's
the likely failure mode for such NL innovation
projects. The actual solution is a culture
shift, but that is much harder if not
impossible to pull off and requires decades.
But we (NL people and govt) should work
towards that. Most likely all these govt led
innovation attempts are a sad waste of tax
money.
|
> > > > bigfudge
The culture shift that has generated this
is the same one that causes the other
story on HN this morning about xAIs gas
generators being a national security
issue. Ie one towards corruption graft and
the public ill.I don't want Europe to
model itself on the US, whatever the
economic gain. Hopefully we are large
enough to find a third way between China
and the US.
|
> > gnerd00
> Most LLMs focus on the English, German, French
and Chinese languages, but everything else is...
left behind at best.that is not true, so please
read before make an opinion. The French Mistral
project shipped seven+ years ago with 140
languages for example.. language translation was
the first LLM task from 2015
|
> > > selcuka
One example is not the same as "most LLMs". My
experience is the same with most LLMs.
Especially the smaller ones are English
oriented (probably makes sense given the size
constraints).
|
> > dr_dshiv
There is something north of 8% OCR error rates..
that will hurt model quality!
|
> > siva7
Uh, some would say it's easy to determine what
input went into the training for kimi and qwen..
since they were caught stealing it from American
labs. Some cultural cliches may never change.
|
> > > janc_
It's well-known that all commercial models are
based on stolen content. That doesn't mean
there is no filtering/censoring, just that the
censoring likely depends on where it's
happening...
|
> > > > selcuka
> It's well-known that all commercial
models are based on stolen content.Does
that mean that Chinese models are the
"Robin Hood"s of the AI era?
|
> > > ignoramous
> since they were caught stealing it from
American labs. Some cultural cliches may never
change.Has a formal lawsuit been brought to
bear? Given, Anthropic & OpenAI are being
dragged through courts for copyright violation
(or stealing, as you'd call it, if the
companies involved were culturally Chinese) by
newspapers, publishing houses etc; one'd think
they'd pass on some of that medicine to
Alibaba, which does have business entities
registered in the US.
|
> > > kouteiheika
> since they were caught stealing it from
American labs...and "good guys" the American
labs were caught stealing from authors all
over the world[1].[1]:
www.npr.org/2025/09/05/g-s1-87367/anthropic-au
thors-settlement-pirated-chatbot-training-mate
rial
|
> > > > j_french
.... Anthropic began buying books in bulk,
tearing off the bindings and scanning each
page before feeding the digitized versions
into its AI model, according to court
documents.Wow. This image of Anthropic
employees ripping books apart to use them
to train models is a powerful one, seems
like an inflection point in the history of
information.
|
> > > basisword
>> Some cultural cliches may never
change.Let's just gloss over the monstrous
amount of copyrighted and pirated material the
American labs trained on. China bad. American
good. Some cultural cliches never change.
|
> > > > mschuster91
How about, both China and the US bad,
Europe at least somewhat decent because we
lack the financial incentives to behave
like utter arseholes?
|
sublimefire
It is crazy that anything Europe gets so much hate. IMO it
is important to build models within the boundaries of
smaller nations, using their own language. Research has to
continue even if it is outside of US and China.
|
> jampekka
I was somewhat excited about these "sovereign" open
models in the beginning, but it became soon apparent
that they're not gonna be anything but toys compared
to SOTA.The problem is that there are a lot, at least
30, of these small projects scattered around, funded
for a few years as some ad-hoc temporary coalition of
universities and businesses. Those simply cannot
compete with businesses spending tens of billions on
developing these. Especially when you have to bring a
spoon to a gunfight restricting to "clean"
data.Multilinguality is essentially a solved problem,
and restricting too much on one language with more
limited resources is gonna make the model worse in
that language too.
|
> sinuhe69
This platform is running from the US and frequently
accessed by US people. What else would you expect?
|
> > andy12_
I'm from Spain and I also hate these projects with
passion. Creating models that speak multiple
languages is a solved problem. Having each
European Nation train its own useless "sovereign
model" in its own language is a total waste of
time and resources when we could pool resources
and give it a try to training SOTA models that
speak in all European languages.I'd rather have
smaller european labs try to give it a go at
distributed training. If multiple countries got
together and said, "look, we tried training a
distributed model that speaks in all of our local
languages and that is comparable to 1-year-old
Chinese open-source models", that, at least, I
would find interesting.
|
> > > Zambyte
Excuse my ignorance if by "distributed
training" you mean a specific process, but
couldn't this be considered a step toward
distributed training? If nations train models
independently and then later distill them into
a single model, all the work (both the compute
and the research processes) are distributed
for the initial training phase.
|
> > > > andy12_
I mean it as in, train a model across
different clusters instead of a
centralized cluster. It's been shown that
it's possible to train 10B models this
way. If more research effort was put into
this, that would be greatI don't think
your approach would work because you can't
create a strong model from distilling
several weak
models.https://www.primeintellect.ai/blog/
intellect-1https://www.primeintellect.ai/b
log/intellect-2-release
|
> transcriptase
It's not that it gets hate so much as it's akin to
watching them make announcements that they're going to
make a European google/facebook/tiktok.Sure... they
can, except at the end of the day it's a bit late,
regulatory burden will make it comparatively useless,
and because of that nobody will ever use it. It will
be spending a bunch of taxpayer dollars for press
releases.The running joke is that when these
"sovereign" EU models launch, they're going to refuse
to answer anything that might involve personal
information such as Elon Musk's birthday.
|
> > arrrg
At least with social networks the network effect
is a powerful force. Foregrounding regulatory
burden in that context is nonsensical. (That does
not apply in the same way to models.)
|
> > SiempreViernes
I guess if you are strict about it, making
derogatory comments like yours is indeed not hate.
But I'm sure you are aware that "getting hate"
frequently used in a more extensive meaning
online, especially in the context of replies to a
post and I don't see the much point in insisting
on the stricter definition here.
|
> > data-ottawa
That's on Wikipedia, it's not PII, it's also not
going to be relevant to any meaningful IRL work.I
challenge the assumption you can do meaningful
work in this field without blatant disregard for
intellectual property.The idea that it's all down
to training size is clearly incorrect, as every
expert human learned their craft without nearly
the sum total information of the internet. Clearly
there are architectural wins to be found.Besides
that, why would everyone just be fine with Opus
level AI at best, as that's all the US is willing
to export, and I doubt China will share beyond
that.Sovereign AI is more important than ever
after Friday.
|
> > Lucasoato
I kinda agree, the best use of taxpayer money
should be in reducing taxes to corporation that
would like to compete in the market vs US and
China, rather than making governments playing the
game (since they very obviously can't).
|
> mholm
If a teenager on your street said he was going to
spend $1,000 to customize his Honda Civic for his
needs, you'd believe him. If he says he's going to
build a brand new car, better than a Honda civic, for
$10,000, you'd laugh and say good luck.
|
> > bigfudge
But if a teenager says he's going to spend 50k
going to university to study engineering you might
support then.I agree there is likely some hubris
in this sort of announcement, but investing in
European expertise and industrial base in this
area is important.
|
WarmWash
If Europe is serious about getting home grown AI fast,
three simple steps:1. Huge tax incentives, let the
companies get grossly wealthy while paying minimal taxes.
Minimum 10 years with clauses protecting "retribution"
taxes there after.2. Tax incentives for the
founders/shareholders, just like above.3. Drop worker
protections to a minimum, make it easy to fire people. You
only want serious/dedicated employees anyway.Within 2-3
years there will be at least a trillion dollars looking to
get in.Don't worry though if reading that made you mad.
Its absolutely not going to happen. I can think of few
things more antithetical to the European ethos than smart
skilled people working 80-100hrs weeks with almost no
vacation to gas their founders net worth by tens,
hundreds, of billions.
|
> dminik
Some additional points to consider:1. Pay the workers
in company scrip and relocate the workers to a company
town. That way, all workers are fully dedicated to the
company.2. Start importing slaves from Africa again.
It worked to build up massive wealth. Should do the
trick for AI as well.3. Abolish the 8 hour work day.
No comment needed.With these 3 simple tricks, you too
can get 6-7 bazillion euro AI mammoths.
|
> TalkingCodeMonk
This "greed is good, and should be rewarded"
philosophy is one I see all too often on HN, and the
entire reason why Americas political, regulatory, and
business leadership have been overrun by the countries
most criminally corrupt narcissists and psychopaths;
why its democracy has collapsed.When you reward the
most selfish, corrupt, and antisocial behaviours with
wealth and power, you're guaranteed to create a
selfish, corrupt, and antisocial society. IMHO it's
indicative of what I have dubbed Americas "mental
illness epidemic"; specifically cluster B personality
disorders [0] which are characterised by
socially-destructive and self-destructive
behaviours.If that's the world you want for you and
your loved ones, congratulations. You've earned it![0]
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_personali
ty_dis...
|
> > user43928
If tax incentives to attract companies and at-will
employment are already viewed as a destructive
collapse of democracy, it's no wonder we are not
getting anything done here in Europe.
|
> > > TalkingCodeMonk
I suggest you take the time to read
independent analysis on the benefits of
corporate subsidies in America.I know I've
read of many cases where they cost cities and
communities far more than the economic
activity they promise to generate (eg Amazon
warehouses and sportsball stadiums).Subsidies
could make strategic sense in the case of AI,
but it's terrible economics to encourage
businesses that take more from communities
than they give back, especially those that
don't employ many people.
|
> > YetAnotherNick
3 Times As Many Europeans Move to the US, than the
Other Way Around.[1]:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/3-times-many-european
s-move-us-...
|
> > > jiggunjer
In 2017. Wonder what it's like today.
|
> > > > TalkingCodeMonk
"US, for 1st time in 50 years, experienced
negative net migration in 2025" [0]Curious
how they jumped for nearly decade old
stats, huh?[0]
https://abcnews.com/US/us-1st-time-50-year
s-experienced-nega...
|
> lpapez
Butcher worker protections and quality of life across
all industries to (hypothethically) benefit a single
one?No thanks.Why do you feel grinding insane hours
would be beneficial to AI progress?
|
> yanis_t
Exactly this. You can't have a competitive industry
while at the same time heavily redistributing wealth
to the point where people don't have any incentives at
all.
|
> Cthulhu_
They can be serious about home-grown AI without
needing to become a libertarian capitalist hellscape.
I prefer happiness, safety and privacy over competing
with the US / China.
|
siva7
> GPT‑NL is developed within the Netherlands and Europe.
This gives us full control over the model, the data and
the choices we make. We avoid dependency on non‑European
providers and invest in a sustainable AI ecosystem aligned
with our laws, values and societal goals.I love it! So
this is our answer to America and China denying foreigners
access to their frontier models.. a massive 13,5M€
founding to develop souvereign european ai, trained
exclusively on legally obtained documents and highest
moral standards as defined in EU AI Act.
|
> jbverschoor
NL could simply say: no more ASML machines, and no
more ASM wafers.
|
> > rmccue
ASML's EUV technology is partially based on US
research and so Congress has a degree of control
over it, so it's not that simple:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230116222847/https:/
/www.nytim...
|
> > > jbverschoor
The US can only block exports. They cannot
force exports. The NL-US relationship is quite
toxic, for example the "Dutch America
Friendship Treaty". Everything is very
one-sided.
|
> > asdfasgasdgasdg
Any move like this would be simply by murdering
the golden goose. ASMLs stuff is good no doubt but
you don't want to give the world the incentive to
develop an alternative. If it was done once it can
be done again and once it has been done again say
good bye to all those returns on monopoly.
|
> > > jbverschoor
What makes you think they're not trying? The
incentive has always been there. They simply
fail to succeed.
|
> > siva7
You don't wanna find out how fast american troops
would land there..
|
> > > Muromec
Faster than in Iran?
|
matheusmoreira
So good to see these developments. Every country should do
this. I'd even say every person should gave their own
personalized AI running on their own computers. If only
the costs involved were not so astronomical.
|
> mediaman
Why? That doesn't make any sense.The government would
be far better off figuring out how to take commodity
models and applying them to government functions where
they can, with deterministic scaffolding and
guardrails, to make government more efficient,
optionally using RL on traces from their use to
improve their performance.Imagine taking models and
fine-tuning them / doing RL rollouts to help automate
permit application approvals, as applied specifically
to Dutch permit processes. That would be a real help
to Dutch businesses!That type of applied AI is more
interesting and effective now than just trying to make
another foundational model that isn't going to work
well or do anything of economic value.
|
> > edg5000
Another thing they could do is try to attack the
the suppply chain issues. Try to form an alliance
to block RAM deals or something, or to get fabs on
EU soil, making HBM for the people. We have some
bargaining chips, especially when banding together
with a few large EU states. Not as EU, just a few
specic countries. No bureaucracy, just elite trade
diplimacy. Probably best done in secret so the big
labs don't catch wind of this. Any
NL/DE/UK/FR/CH/PL/IT govt people reading this?
|
> > matheusmoreira
> Why?Because then the USA can't just turn it off.
|
> nathanielsimard
I think it will be cost effective at some point.
Computers were limited to research institutes before
the personal computer arrived.
|
> > matheusmoreira
I hope you're right. I really don't want a future
where only corporations and governments have
computers.
|
> jstummbillig
"Champions of a European AI model should ask
themselves if a European effort would be more
effective than Meta, which this year will spend more
on chips ($125 billion) than Germany spends on defense
($114 billion) and offer salaries of over $100 million
to attract the best researchers, and is still failing
to catch up. Elon Musk tried and failed to build a
good AI
model."https://www.siliconcontinent.com/p/nineteen-tho
ughts-on-ai-a...
|
> 14u2c
Nvidia will certainly be pleased.
|
rollulus
Interesting that this got posted now: the project is
receiving increasingly more skepticism lately in the Dutch
tech scene [0], and I think that's fully justified.[0]:
https://www.quotenet.nl/zakelijk/a71588202/techondernemers
-m...
|
> embedding-shape
What is the exact skepticism? The only thing I could
get from that was from some "tech entrepreneur":>
GPT-NL was never built to compete with Claude or
ChatGPT. It was trained exclusively on licensed data,
and is intended more for governments and companies
where privacy and compliance matter more than raw
performance."That's it? That it didn't aim to compete
with SOTA models? Maybe this is something you have to
start with something, then ramp up, rather do what
only a select few labs been able to do, start with
really big models. Especially if you're resource
constrained, which since this is a government project,
I really hope for the sake of the tax payers it was.
|
> > barrenko
I mean if you are wasting funds kind of knowing
it's nowhere near remote competitive, then it's
kind of a fraud.
|
> > > athrowaway3z
TNO is something like semi-DARPA. It gets a
lot of stuff tax free and a lot of gov
funding, but a lot of their budget is from
getting businesses to hire their R&D
teams.They do really good R&D on a lot of
stuff. This is just their attempt at public
credibility/internal skill building to enter
the LLM business.Doubt its going to be
successful, but they "waste" a lot more money
on other things that you never heard of. Its
not fraud, its just R&D dressed up a little
too much too early.
|
> > > InsideOutSanta
Targeting a niche audience with specific
requirements is not fraud.
|
> > > embedding-shape
But why is "competing against remote SOTA
models on quality" the only thing that matters
here?
|
> > > > barrenko
What the hell else is there? All the other
stuff can be done by an intern with an 8
euro HF Pro subscription.Other than actual
research, which is in a different camp.
|
> > > > > embedding-shape
Common approach I've seen is having
workflows with paid/larger/hosted
models for some workflow where you
don't quite know exactly how it'll be
when you first put it together, then
with time you've locked down how
things more or less work yet you still
need free-form text parsing of some
kind, so you end up replacing the
bigger models with carefully
post-trained small models.Besides
that, there is a ton of use cases for
smaller models for a bunch of
different things. We'll be unlikely to
be able to run LLMs (actually Large)
on smartphones for a while, while the
smaller LLMs seem to run already
on-device in experiments.
|
> > > > > cowboy_henk
TNO literally stands for "Dutch
Organisation for Applied Scientific
Research" (Nederlandse Organisatie
voor Toegepast
Natuurwetenschappelijk).
|