7 ms·

Can the EU become another AI superpower?

36 points by PretzelFisch 8y ago

PeterStuer 8y ago
Let's say Europe against all odds succeeds in creating the seeds of some promising AI scale-ups. How will they prevent the US, Korea and China from cherry-picking and buying those out just like in all the previous IT-tech waves?
- alain94040 8y ago
  Critical mass takes a while to start, but once it starts, it won't stop. To answer your question, even if the first generation of successful AI startups get acquired by US companies, that success will create an appeal for even more European startups to be created (both because it's getting visibly successful, and because founders from the previous generation re-invest their gains in the next generation of founders). So the second wave is bigger than the first. And so on. The only problem for Europe so far, is that critical mass has not been achieved yet. Maybe it will eventually, hard to tell.
  - PeterStuer 8y ago
    So why has this pattern not worked in previous IT-tech waves? Where are the hordes of major Computer, CPU, GPU, OS, Cloud Platforms, Search Engines, Social Media Platforms, ... that are still EU companies? SAP, Nokia, ...
    - simion314 8y ago
      CPU and GPU there are pattents so you can't just create an x86cpu so you could what create alternative CPUs, there are like ARM who is in Europe. For GPU I imagine you will step on AMD and NVIDIA pattents as well. Search Engines, I don't think there is money to be made from this respecting the user privacy, we will see if DDG proves me wrong. Nokia was destroyed by Microsoft, they forced Nokia to sell only Windows Phones and then MS bought them. But there are many electronics companies in EU for other domains, not sure if there is a need to compete with cheaper Chinese firms on phones. I think it could be the culture, people may not be into get rich quick schemes and may want to work on more mingfull stuff then created a FB alternative.
      - rcarmo 8y ago
        I had a ringside seat on the Nokia “turnaround” towards oblivion. The consumer side did suffer from Elop’s strategy (he also somewhat neglected the carrier network products), but the larger issue was that some carriers were so dependent on Nokia for mid-to-high-end handsets that when cheaper alternatives emerged they switched wholesale (I was at Vodafone at the time, and work at Microsoft now). As to the rest, I don’t see Europe being a contender in chip manufacturing (even though ARM originated in our side of the Atlantic), and I don’t think patents would hold us back. What does hold us back is the lack of significant manufacturing capabilities in those domains. There are a few electronics manufacturers and small fabs, but they cater to niches.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- snaky 8y ago
  They will fix it European way. > BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government is taking steps to counter a surge in Chinese bids for stakes in German technology companies, including the creation of a billion-euro fund that could rescue such firms in financial trouble, a government source told Reuters.
  - pgtan 8y ago
    this is how they screwed the foreign companies on the insolvency of AirBerlin in favor of Lufthansa.
  - petre 8y ago
    Maybe they shouldn't have taxed the crap out of these companies in the first place? Most succesful EU companies are 100+ years old due to taxes, bureaucracy and big company bullying. I find posts about the startup scene in most if not all EU countries laughable. Western Europe is too regulated and expensive (taxes) and Eastern Europe is too corrupt and politically unstable. Southern Europe is too hot and distracting. Maybe it has mafia as well. 20% VAT? Come on, that's outright theft. Hungary as 27% VAT. Portugal has 23% VAT. France has 20% but they also tax the crap out of companies and private citizens, especially if you're well off. Germany is over regulated, even the dogs barking hours is regulated. How do you expect tech startups to survive in this environment? Oh wait there's Ireland which gets lots of rain (people are cool working indoors) and has small taxes, except for VAT which is 23%. That one could work.
    - PeterStuer 8y ago
      There is a large difference in Europe between the taxation rate and what is paid in practice by corporations. In several EU countries the 'real' taxation for industry is close to 0%. Why do you think companies like Google, Skype, Apple etc slush all their profits through EU subsidiaries?
      - pgtan 8y ago
        Finally, the new Euro-socialism "discovered" its old enemy on the other side of the ocean again. Just searching for "VW Steuern" reveals: https://www.google.com/search?q=vw+steuern&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=vw+steuern&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 "Volkswagen nutzt Luxemburg zum Steuernsparen" "VW darf Milliarden-Bußgeld teilweise von Steuer absetzen" "Der VW-Konzern nutzt ein fragwürdiges Steuersparmodell" "Grüne wollen wissen: Wo zahlt Volkswagen wie viel Steuern" "VW-Skandal: Steuern hinterzogen" "Steueroasen: Wie deutsche Großkonzerne den Steuerzahler um ..."
LeanderK 8y ago
Excellent article. I don't think the possibility of success is that bad, but they have to take it seriously and also seriously invest (germany doesn't...at the moment!). I think in contrast to other technologies, the EU has a few thing going for them (from a german perspective): - There are some important industries that are very much interested in AI (for example the automotive industry). So serious private-sector money could be raised. - Europe has the ability to pull of large-scale research projects and has the experience to do so. From LHC to the various institutions, like the Helmholtz-society or the DKFZ in germany (the EU also made some errors in preview large-scale research projects to learn from). - The brains are there. I see many (very!) talented and dedicated students and researchers here and the research infrastructure (universities, non-university research agencies) is also established and quite diverse. - I see that there's an understanding that entrepreneurship and non-traditional industries is an area in which the EU has been falling behind. I feel like it's improving. I also don't think we're too late yet. I see two main obstacles: - lack of serious investment from public and private (this requires realising what a significant investment looks like). This is at the moment quite obvious if you follow the bmbf (german federal research agency). It seems like they don't realise how insignificant creating a few research groups is. - no coherent strategy. Spreading everything thin without a thought where to reach critical mass is wasting time and energy. This is a problem especially in germany and, of course, the EU. We need a physical, European AI research hub with enough things like conferences and exchange to the other research-institute to get traction. EDIT: What makes me really angry and frustrated (because in the end I am more or less powerless) is the complete waste of potential in germany. We have many great universities here with a lot of great faculty. But most of the universites are seriously underfunded and not really well-maintained. Some universities are so poorly maintained that their buildings are uninhabitable because of danger of collapsing. It's crazy, it's just laying waste. I think that we in germany wouldn't be in this situation if our universities could seriously compete and could enable all their potential.
- pgtan 8y ago
  this sounds like a PRAWDA article during the Perestroyka. But of course, this socialism will be much more successful than the old one. Just need more state money and state initiatives and state regulations, and so on.
Ftuuky 8y ago
Apologies if this rant makes no sense but I'm somewhat frustrated with this AI thing. One thing I've noticed in large EU corporations (where I and friends of mine worked as data analysts/"scientists"): upper management decides to invest in AI because they don't want to miss on this, so they create a new department ("AI/Robotics" or something cooler) and fill it to the brim with smart PhDs in mathematics and physics. They're all data scientists and ML engineers now, which means all the data mining, cleaning/preparation and labeling is going to be beneath them, it's not cool or impressive in their LinkedIn profile. They all want to work with the latest thing and each one has a different opinion and held to it pretty strongly. Nobody pays attention to product/project managers, they don't want to spend time creating PowerPoint presentations and dashboards to communicate and align with stakeholder. Discussing ethics in AI is a hippy silly thing. Then you end with something similar to what happened in my company: you create a bot to parse through CVs and decide which ones are better for any given job description. It took 4x more time than planned, and it's racist and discriminatory because it mirrors what the company did until now: hiring only certain kinds of people that studied specific degrees in specific universities that learned which keywords are good on a CV even if it means nothing. Nobody noticed or discussed this beforehand despite being so obvious because everyone is busy troubleshooting Keras or complaining about their GPU cluster.
- roymurdock 8y ago
  what does your company make money on at the end of the day, a legacy software product? or is "AI" actually something customers are buying from you?
  - Ftuuky 8y ago
    It's all internal, investment banking shared services/back-office.
- gaius 8y ago
  They're all data scientists and ML engineers now, which means all the data mining, cleaning/preparation and labeling is going to be beneath them You have absolutely hit the nail on the head there and this mirrors my observations of what's happening in the wider industry. Data science and AI are super cool viewed from the outside but the reality of the work day to day is that it is not fun. Getting a result and making a meaningful impact is very satisfying, but getting there requires careful, painstaking, meticulous work, getting the data and getting it into a format you can use is the vast majority of it. It is essential of course, but noone enjoys spending weeks (or months) decoding exactly what the fields are in this big weird CSV file you got from the mainframe and how exactly they marry up with the XML you got from this other system then doing that 100 times to mash up all your data sources, there's no documentation and the people who programmed it originally are long gone and get something that you can finally feed into your ML step. And then you come up with some recommendations which are immediately shot down because they are actually illegal and noone in the business can believe you even suggested it because that gets taught in Compliance 101 (I have really seen this happen). Someone with the patience and the good attitude to do the data prep, and who has a bit of basic domain knowledge, armed with even the most rudimentary ML techniques will in any practical sense run rings around any rockstar researcher who just jumps in straight away with the AI. You would hope that PhDs who spend literally years doing research before writing up would understand this but it seems to be the first thing they forget!
singularity2001 8y ago
Related rant: That is the third time I hear Merkel utter this disgusting sentiment: “In the US, control over personal data is privatised to a large extent. In China the opposite is true: the state has mounted a takeover,” she said, adding that it is between these two poles that Europe will have to find its place. It might not be that clear from above statement but a similar one left no doubt that some leaders have told her: For AI we need data and for data we need tracking/surveillance. So please look at ways to abolish privacy in the EU. It's not lack of data which hinders business in the EU, it's overtaxing small businesses, cronyism, top-down-approaches, Google or something else which is hard to grasp. Lack of ambition? Lack of youth? Foreign espionage/sabotage? Negativity? Angela, (if you read this, which I'm sure you do), you did a fantastic job protecting us from Cheneys torture doctrine, and much else afterwards. Erosion of privacy leads to erosion of societies. Don't mess it up in your last months.
- ppod 8y ago
  Unlike in the US, we do not take it for granted that being surveilled by corporations is preferable to being surveilled by a democratically elected government. >It's not lack of data which hinders business in the EU, it's overtaxing small businesses, cronyism, top-down-approaches, Google or something else which is hard to grasp. Lack of ambition? Lack of youth? Foreign espionage/sabotage? Negativity? Different values.
  - jstanley 8y ago
    You still seem to be taking it for granted that being surveilled is inevitable.
    - prestigious 8y ago
      How does it work without being surveilled? Most common AI use cases require data. A voice assistant needs to know my voice to work, a health assistant would need health data (weight, heart rate, etc), a scheduling assistant would need my schedule, etc etc. Or perhaps I’m misunderstanding your point?
light_hue_1 8y ago
I'm a European AI researcher in the US. I've seen both sides of the pond. The EU needs serious reforms if it wants to be competitive in AI. Academia in Europe is far behind academia in the US on average. And will be far behind China in a decade or so. European academics generally don't adapt to new technology. They have no reason to with fairly few links to industry, a funding that's based on personal relationships and politics rather than research, and an academic environment that doesn't really emphasize novel research. The same people, do the same things, for decades on end, with little to no progress or change. European academics don't put in much effort to get industry funding since your students are funded by the university much of the time. Faculty hiring is very local and incestuous. German universities hire Germans, and only from a few places. English universities hire the British. French universities hire the French. etc. There are exceptions but it's rare. The European PhD needs to be fixed. 3-4 years isn't nearly enough. It's hurting everyone. The moment someone gets productive they graduate. It's a total waste of time. They need to move to an American-Canadian style 5-6 year PhD. The fact that students are generally not funded by projects and researchers, but departments, also puts a big damper on people's motivation to hustle and publish. Funding for startups in Europe is a disaster. It's really hard compared to the US and Canada, raising multiple rounds is harder, there's little infrastructure for doing it, and universities are little to no help. Rich people just don't have an appetite for risk, better to sit on your old money. This should be fixed by tax laws. Pay is terrible in academia in Europe. Around half of what it is in the US and Canada at many ranks. When you can't live well, why would you stay in academia? The tenure system is a disaster in many places in Europe and drives anyone good away to the UK, Canada, or the US. You have a lot of unpleasant steps where you aren't autonomous. European research is also very closed. Europeans cite europeans, who go to european conferences, and do research with europeans. There are a lot of communities like this that are very closed and 2nd tier compared to international ones. I could go on. Nothing will change any time soon unless governments take action to revamp the university system, university funding, and the tax code to encourage investment/risk. The next century won't be Europe's sadly.
- bad_good_guy 8y ago
  I just want to point out you are wrong on one point: UK universities have an extremely diverse faculty of researchers, with researchers from both various European and Asian countries common
m00dy 8y ago
As a turk, migrated to EU 5 years ago, I put my bet on EU politicians. I hope they are going to find a sweet-spot in this at-least two poles world.
Barrin92 8y ago
"Yet look beyond machine learning and consumer services, and the picture for Europe is less dire. A self-driving car cannot run on data alone but needs other AI techniques, such as machine reasoning, which is done by algorithms that are coded rather than trained—an area in which Europe has some strength. Germany has as many international patents for autonomous vehicles as America and China combined, and not only because it has a big car industry." Important point. Not only see I more hope for deep innovation in the manufacturing sector than in selling people the most targetted ads, this also has the potential to create much more equitable outcomes for everyone in the economy. I don't really understand the concept of a 'AI superower' at all. Superpower at what, warfare? Concentration of wealth as AI returns flow to only a handful of people? Have Americans and the Chinese pondered whether there is some higher goal to the development of AI or just competition for competition's sake? As a European(and German) citizen, I am much less concerned about taking the slow and steady route here. I have no interest in seeing Europe destroy its privacy or using AI to malevolent ends just to stay ahead in some fictional horse race. People told us in the 80s that if we didn't move ahead with the service economy we'd be stuck in an archaic industrial society, and Thatcher was hailed as the reformer. I see parallels here to the AI debate. Now, where has this gotten the UK outside of London? For me, AI looks more and more like the hype around finance and services around that time. I'm okay with being a somewhat slow and bureaucratic grumpy German, if we get to be the guys who put advanced technologies into boring machines without much fanfare that's fine, people seem to keep buying them.
- spiritcat 8y ago
  > I don't really understand the concept of a 'AI superower' at all. Superpower at what, warfare? Concentration of wealth as AI returns flow to only a handful of people? Yes and yes? > Have Americans and the Chinese pondered whether there is some higher goal to the development of AI or just competition for competition's sake? If they develop AI driven warfare techniques and we don't, they'll beat us. We must close the AI gap! (fwiw this terrifies me)
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    I'm not terrified at all. If you leave the word AI out of the discussion this has already been the case for the last 70 years. The US squarely has us beat in warfare techniques. Europe already has not been a superpower in a long time, and this hasn't been to the detriment of the European people. This whole debate reminds me also of the Japanese developments in the 80s. Everybody thought we'd be lost as they jump into the next superhuman age, funnily enough also involving grandiose computing projects. I have the feeling this happens every generation and that the only thing that changes is the location.
novaRom 8y ago
I lived and worked in different places of the world (Bay area, MA, middle east, Japan). For me, Europe is simply the best environment if you have a family and you care about your freedom, privacy, and comfort. Decisions made by EU authorities have significant implications on everything, but the way it works it's really democratic process, with long term implications and with significant transparency. In some regard living in Germany is similar to Bay Area, but with much more emphasis on social well being of the whole society which in fact affects your everyday live, your safety, your comfort, your family.
baxtr 8y ago
Thanks HN for all the rants and the honesty about this topic (and in general). Contrary, whenever I open LinkedIn people seem to be naively super excited about Europe becoming an AI superpower (whatever that means). While I’m not against excitement, I can’t support it because it seems so detached from any real problem that we want to solve. And ultimately, that should be the driver for AI. Of course we can still engage in basic research, but we won’t become a AI superpower just because we want it.
rcarmo 8y ago
I see this as unlikely in the same way that having the next Facebook in the EU is unlikely. Companies in Europe tend to bet more on B2B instead of B2C, which leads to a lot of data siloing and many attempts at building ML models with tightly focused legacy data within a specific domain. The article doesn’t make a very clear distinction between academic and business AI, but I can’t see any inherent advantages for the EU in an academic perspective either-there are fields of AI that are under-represented in current consumer tech, but... I’m skeptical. (I live in the EU and work in AI and ML-there is so much low-hanging fruit in terms of just making companies aware of what they can do that I seldom have deep enough engagements to step outside prepackaged approaches)

36 points by PretzelFisch 8y ago

Let's say Europe against all odds succeeds in creating the seeds of some promising AI scale-ups. How will they prevent the US, Korea and China from cherry-picking and buying those out just like in all the previous IT-tech waves?

alain94040 8y ago
Critical mass takes a while to start, but once it starts, it won't stop. To answer your question, even if the first generation of successful AI startups get acquired by US companies, that success will create an appeal for even more European startups to be created (both because it's getting visibly successful, and because founders from the previous generation re-invest their gains in the next generation of founders). So the second wave is bigger than the first. And so on. The only problem for Europe so far, is that critical mass has not been achieved yet. Maybe it will eventually, hard to tell.
- PeterStuer 8y ago
  So why has this pattern not worked in previous IT-tech waves? Where are the hordes of major Computer, CPU, GPU, OS, Cloud Platforms, Search Engines, Social Media Platforms, ... that are still EU companies? SAP, Nokia, ...
  - simion314 8y ago
    CPU and GPU there are pattents so you can't just create an x86cpu so you could what create alternative CPUs, there are like ARM who is in Europe. For GPU I imagine you will step on AMD and NVIDIA pattents as well. Search Engines, I don't think there is money to be made from this respecting the user privacy, we will see if DDG proves me wrong. Nokia was destroyed by Microsoft, they forced Nokia to sell only Windows Phones and then MS bought them. But there are many electronics companies in EU for other domains, not sure if there is a need to compete with cheaper Chinese firms on phones. I think it could be the culture, people may not be into get rich quick schemes and may want to work on more mingfull stuff then created a FB alternative.
    - rcarmo 8y ago
      I had a ringside seat on the Nokia “turnaround” towards oblivion. The consumer side did suffer from Elop’s strategy (he also somewhat neglected the carrier network products), but the larger issue was that some carriers were so dependent on Nokia for mid-to-high-end handsets that when cheaper alternatives emerged they switched wholesale (I was at Vodafone at the time, and work at Microsoft now). As to the rest, I don’t see Europe being a contender in chip manufacturing (even though ARM originated in our side of the Atlantic), and I don’t think patents would hold us back. What does hold us back is the lack of significant manufacturing capabilities in those domains. There are a few electronics manufacturers and small fabs, but they cater to niches.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
snaky 8y ago
They will fix it European way. > BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government is taking steps to counter a surge in Chinese bids for stakes in German technology companies, including the creation of a billion-euro fund that could rescue such firms in financial trouble, a government source told Reuters.
- pgtan 8y ago
  this is how they screwed the foreign companies on the insolvency of AirBerlin in favor of Lufthansa.
- petre 8y ago
  Maybe they shouldn't have taxed the crap out of these companies in the first place? Most succesful EU companies are 100+ years old due to taxes, bureaucracy and big company bullying. I find posts about the startup scene in most if not all EU countries laughable. Western Europe is too regulated and expensive (taxes) and Eastern Europe is too corrupt and politically unstable. Southern Europe is too hot and distracting. Maybe it has mafia as well. 20% VAT? Come on, that's outright theft. Hungary as 27% VAT. Portugal has 23% VAT. France has 20% but they also tax the crap out of companies and private citizens, especially if you're well off. Germany is over regulated, even the dogs barking hours is regulated. How do you expect tech startups to survive in this environment? Oh wait there's Ireland which gets lots of rain (people are cool working indoors) and has small taxes, except for VAT which is 23%. That one could work.
  - PeterStuer 8y ago
    There is a large difference in Europe between the taxation rate and what is paid in practice by corporations. In several EU countries the 'real' taxation for industry is close to 0%. Why do you think companies like Google, Skype, Apple etc slush all their profits through EU subsidiaries?
    - pgtan 8y ago
      Finally, the new Euro-socialism "discovered" its old enemy on the other side of the ocean again. Just searching for "VW Steuern" reveals: https://www.google.com/search?q=vw+steuern&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=vw+steuern&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 "Volkswagen nutzt Luxemburg zum Steuernsparen" "VW darf Milliarden-Bußgeld teilweise von Steuer absetzen" "Der VW-Konzern nutzt ein fragwürdiges Steuersparmodell" "Grüne wollen wissen: Wo zahlt Volkswagen wie viel Steuern" "VW-Skandal: Steuern hinterzogen" "Steueroasen: Wie deutsche Großkonzerne den Steuerzahler um ..."

LeanderK 8y ago

Excellent article. I don't think the possibility of success is that bad, but they have to take it seriously and also seriously invest (germany doesn't...at the moment!). I think in contrast to other technologies, the EU has a few thing going for them (from a german perspective): - There are some important industries that are very much interested in AI (for example the automotive industry). So serious private-sector money could be raised. - Europe has the ability to pull of large-scale research projects and has the experience to do so. From LHC to the various institutions, like the Helmholtz-society or the DKFZ in germany (the EU also made some errors in preview large-scale research projects to learn from). - The brains are there. I see many (very!) talented and dedicated students and researchers here and the research infrastructure (universities, non-university research agencies) is also established and quite diverse. - I see that there's an understanding that entrepreneurship and non-traditional industries is an area in which the EU has been falling behind. I feel like it's improving. I also don't think we're too late yet. I see two main obstacles: - lack of serious investment from public and private (this requires realising what a significant investment looks like). This is at the moment quite obvious if you follow the bmbf (german federal research agency). It seems like they don't realise how insignificant creating a few research groups is. - no coherent strategy. Spreading everything thin without a thought where to reach critical mass is wasting time and energy. This is a problem especially in germany and, of course, the EU. We need a physical, European AI research hub with enough things like conferences and exchange to the other research-institute to get traction. EDIT: What makes me really angry and frustrated (because in the end I am more or less powerless) is the complete waste of potential in germany. We have many great universities here with a lot of great faculty. But most of the universites are seriously underfunded and not really well-maintained. Some universities are so poorly maintained that their buildings are uninhabitable because of danger of collapsing. It's crazy, it's just laying waste. I think that we in germany wouldn't be in this situation if our universities could seriously compete and could enable all their potential.

pgtan 8y ago
this sounds like a PRAWDA article during the Perestroyka. But of course, this socialism will be much more successful than the old one. Just need more state money and state initiatives and state regulations, and so on.

Ftuuky 8y ago

Apologies if this rant makes no sense but I'm somewhat frustrated with this AI thing. One thing I've noticed in large EU corporations (where I and friends of mine worked as data analysts/"scientists"): upper management decides to invest in AI because they don't want to miss on this, so they create a new department ("AI/Robotics" or something cooler) and fill it to the brim with smart PhDs in mathematics and physics. They're all data scientists and ML engineers now, which means all the data mining, cleaning/preparation and labeling is going to be beneath them, it's not cool or impressive in their LinkedIn profile. They all want to work with the latest thing and each one has a different opinion and held to it pretty strongly. Nobody pays attention to product/project managers, they don't want to spend time creating PowerPoint presentations and dashboards to communicate and align with stakeholder. Discussing ethics in AI is a hippy silly thing. Then you end with something similar to what happened in my company: you create a bot to parse through CVs and decide which ones are better for any given job description. It took 4x more time than planned, and it's racist and discriminatory because it mirrors what the company did until now: hiring only certain kinds of people that studied specific degrees in specific universities that learned which keywords are good on a CV even if it means nothing. Nobody noticed or discussed this beforehand despite being so obvious because everyone is busy troubleshooting Keras or complaining about their GPU cluster.

roymurdock 8y ago
what does your company make money on at the end of the day, a legacy software product? or is "AI" actually something customers are buying from you?
- Ftuuky 8y ago
  It's all internal, investment banking shared services/back-office.
gaius 8y ago
They're all data scientists and ML engineers now, which means all the data mining, cleaning/preparation and labeling is going to be beneath them You have absolutely hit the nail on the head there and this mirrors my observations of what's happening in the wider industry. Data science and AI are super cool viewed from the outside but the reality of the work day to day is that it is not fun. Getting a result and making a meaningful impact is very satisfying, but getting there requires careful, painstaking, meticulous work, getting the data and getting it into a format you can use is the vast majority of it. It is essential of course, but noone enjoys spending weeks (or months) decoding exactly what the fields are in this big weird CSV file you got from the mainframe and how exactly they marry up with the XML you got from this other system then doing that 100 times to mash up all your data sources, there's no documentation and the people who programmed it originally are long gone and get something that you can finally feed into your ML step. And then you come up with some recommendations which are immediately shot down because they are actually illegal and noone in the business can believe you even suggested it because that gets taught in Compliance 101 (I have really seen this happen). Someone with the patience and the good attitude to do the data prep, and who has a bit of basic domain knowledge, armed with even the most rudimentary ML techniques will in any practical sense run rings around any rockstar researcher who just jumps in straight away with the AI. You would hope that PhDs who spend literally years doing research before writing up would understand this but it seems to be the first thing they forget!

singularity2001 8y ago

Related rant: That is the third time I hear Merkel utter this disgusting sentiment: “In the US, control over personal data is privatised to a large extent. In China the opposite is true: the state has mounted a takeover,” she said, adding that it is between these two poles that Europe will have to find its place. It might not be that clear from above statement but a similar one left no doubt that some leaders have told her: For AI we need data and for data we need tracking/surveillance. So please look at ways to abolish privacy in the EU. It's not lack of data which hinders business in the EU, it's overtaxing small businesses, cronyism, top-down-approaches, Google or something else which is hard to grasp. Lack of ambition? Lack of youth? Foreign espionage/sabotage? Negativity? Angela, (if you read this, which I'm sure you do), you did a fantastic job protecting us from Cheneys torture doctrine, and much else afterwards. Erosion of privacy leads to erosion of societies. Don't mess it up in your last months.

ppod 8y ago
Unlike in the US, we do not take it for granted that being surveilled by corporations is preferable to being surveilled by a democratically elected government. >It's not lack of data which hinders business in the EU, it's overtaxing small businesses, cronyism, top-down-approaches, Google or something else which is hard to grasp. Lack of ambition? Lack of youth? Foreign espionage/sabotage? Negativity? Different values.
- jstanley 8y ago
  You still seem to be taking it for granted that being surveilled is inevitable.
  - prestigious 8y ago
    How does it work without being surveilled? Most common AI use cases require data. A voice assistant needs to know my voice to work, a health assistant would need health data (weight, heart rate, etc), a scheduling assistant would need my schedule, etc etc. Or perhaps I’m misunderstanding your point?

light_hue_1 8y ago

I'm a European AI researcher in the US. I've seen both sides of the pond. The EU needs serious reforms if it wants to be competitive in AI. Academia in Europe is far behind academia in the US on average. And will be far behind China in a decade or so. European academics generally don't adapt to new technology. They have no reason to with fairly few links to industry, a funding that's based on personal relationships and politics rather than research, and an academic environment that doesn't really emphasize novel research. The same people, do the same things, for decades on end, with little to no progress or change. European academics don't put in much effort to get industry funding since your students are funded by the university much of the time. Faculty hiring is very local and incestuous. German universities hire Germans, and only from a few places. English universities hire the British. French universities hire the French. etc. There are exceptions but it's rare. The European PhD needs to be fixed. 3-4 years isn't nearly enough. It's hurting everyone. The moment someone gets productive they graduate. It's a total waste of time. They need to move to an American-Canadian style 5-6 year PhD. The fact that students are generally not funded by projects and researchers, but departments, also puts a big damper on people's motivation to hustle and publish. Funding for startups in Europe is a disaster. It's really hard compared to the US and Canada, raising multiple rounds is harder, there's little infrastructure for doing it, and universities are little to no help. Rich people just don't have an appetite for risk, better to sit on your old money. This should be fixed by tax laws. Pay is terrible in academia in Europe. Around half of what it is in the US and Canada at many ranks. When you can't live well, why would you stay in academia? The tenure system is a disaster in many places in Europe and drives anyone good away to the UK, Canada, or the US. You have a lot of unpleasant steps where you aren't autonomous. European research is also very closed. Europeans cite europeans, who go to european conferences, and do research with europeans. There are a lot of communities like this that are very closed and 2nd tier compared to international ones. I could go on. Nothing will change any time soon unless governments take action to revamp the university system, university funding, and the tax code to encourage investment/risk. The next century won't be Europe's sadly.

bad_good_guy 8y ago
I just want to point out you are wrong on one point: UK universities have an extremely diverse faculty of researchers, with researchers from both various European and Asian countries common

m00dy 8y ago

As a turk, migrated to EU 5 years ago, I put my bet on EU politicians. I hope they are going to find a sweet-spot in this at-least two poles world.

Barrin92 8y ago

"Yet look beyond machine learning and consumer services, and the picture for Europe is less dire. A self-driving car cannot run on data alone but needs other AI techniques, such as machine reasoning, which is done by algorithms that are coded rather than trained—an area in which Europe has some strength. Germany has as many international patents for autonomous vehicles as America and China combined, and not only because it has a big car industry." Important point. Not only see I more hope for deep innovation in the manufacturing sector than in selling people the most targetted ads, this also has the potential to create much more equitable outcomes for everyone in the economy. I don't really understand the concept of a 'AI superower' at all. Superpower at what, warfare? Concentration of wealth as AI returns flow to only a handful of people? Have Americans and the Chinese pondered whether there is some higher goal to the development of AI or just competition for competition's sake? As a European(and German) citizen, I am much less concerned about taking the slow and steady route here. I have no interest in seeing Europe destroy its privacy or using AI to malevolent ends just to stay ahead in some fictional horse race. People told us in the 80s that if we didn't move ahead with the service economy we'd be stuck in an archaic industrial society, and Thatcher was hailed as the reformer. I see parallels here to the AI debate. Now, where has this gotten the UK outside of London? For me, AI looks more and more like the hype around finance and services around that time. I'm okay with being a somewhat slow and bureaucratic grumpy German, if we get to be the guys who put advanced technologies into boring machines without much fanfare that's fine, people seem to keep buying them.

spiritcat 8y ago
> I don't really understand the concept of a 'AI superower' at all. Superpower at what, warfare? Concentration of wealth as AI returns flow to only a handful of people? Yes and yes? > Have Americans and the Chinese pondered whether there is some higher goal to the development of AI or just competition for competition's sake? If they develop AI driven warfare techniques and we don't, they'll beat us. We must close the AI gap! (fwiw this terrifies me)
- Barrin92 8y ago
  I'm not terrified at all. If you leave the word AI out of the discussion this has already been the case for the last 70 years. The US squarely has us beat in warfare techniques. Europe already has not been a superpower in a long time, and this hasn't been to the detriment of the European people. This whole debate reminds me also of the Japanese developments in the 80s. Everybody thought we'd be lost as they jump into the next superhuman age, funnily enough also involving grandiose computing projects. I have the feeling this happens every generation and that the only thing that changes is the location.

novaRom 8y ago

I lived and worked in different places of the world (Bay area, MA, middle east, Japan). For me, Europe is simply the best environment if you have a family and you care about your freedom, privacy, and comfort. Decisions made by EU authorities have significant implications on everything, but the way it works it's really democratic process, with long term implications and with significant transparency. In some regard living in Germany is similar to Bay Area, but with much more emphasis on social well being of the whole society which in fact affects your everyday live, your safety, your comfort, your family.

baxtr 8y ago

Thanks HN for all the rants and the honesty about this topic (and in general). Contrary, whenever I open LinkedIn people seem to be naively super excited about Europe becoming an AI superpower (whatever that means). While I’m not against excitement, I can’t support it because it seems so detached from any real problem that we want to solve. And ultimately, that should be the driver for AI. Of course we can still engage in basic research, but we won’t become a AI superpower just because we want it.

rcarmo 8y ago

I see this as unlikely in the same way that having the next Facebook in the EU is unlikely. Companies in Europe tend to bet more on B2B instead of B2C, which leads to a lot of data siloing and many attempts at building ML models with tightly focused legacy data within a specific domain. The article doesn’t make a very clear distinction between academic and business AI, but I can’t see any inherent advantages for the EU in an academic perspective either-there are fields of AI that are under-represented in current consumer tech, but... I’m skeptical. (I live in the EU and work in AI and ML-there is so much low-hanging fruit in terms of just making companies aware of what they can do that I seldom have deep enough engagements to step outside prepackaged approaches)