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They allocated €37.4 million [1]. As an European, I truly don’t understand why they keep ignoring that the money required for such projects is at least an order

They allocated €37.4 million [1]. As an European, I truly don’t understand why they keep ignoring that the money required for such projects is at least an order of magnitude more. [1] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/pioneering-ai-project-awarded-opening-large-language-models-european-languages https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/pioneering-ai-...

everyone 2y ago
Not anymore, with Deepseek's stuff right? Which is open.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  DeepSeek probably spent closer to two billion on hardware. And then there’s the energy cost of numerous runs, staff costs, all of that. The 5.5m cost was basically misleading info, maybe used strategically to create doubt in the US tech industry or for DeepSeek’s parent hedge fund to make money off shorts. https://semianalysis.com/2025/01/31/deepseek-debates/ https://semianalysis.com/2025/01/31/deepseek-debates/
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- sarusso 2y ago
  DeepSeek had plenty of R&D expertise which were not included in the (declared) model training cost. Here we are talking about building something nearly from scratch, even if there is an open source starting point you still need the infrastructure, expertise and people to make it work, which with that budget are going to be hard to secure. Moreover these projects take months and months to get approved, meaning that this one was conceived long before DeepSeek, thus highlighting the original disalignment between the goal and the budget. DeepSeek might have changed the scenario (I hope so) but it would be just a lucky ex-post event… not a conscious choice behind that budget.
  - cess11 2y ago
    What do you mean, "nearly from scratch"? Aleph Alpha is a business that has been going for some time in this sector, at least a couple of years with commercial LLM products. It's likely they'll provide hardware and base models for this project.
Etheryte 2y ago
Personally I'm rather happy that the allocation was not too large at first, even that is quite a sizeable sum. The EU is great at kickstarting projects that sound like a panacea, but end up not leading to anything. Once they have something to show, by all means, throw more money at them.
- nradov 2y ago
  The trap that these EU projects typically fall into is that they burn all of the grant funding on paying politically connected consultants to write reports. No one gets around to building an MVP.
  - intelVISA 2y ago
    I thought that was the point?
esperent 2y ago
Deepseek's release has shown that there's no great risk in getting left behind. All the info is out there, people with skills are readily available, creating a model that will match whatever current model is considered frontier level is not that hard for an entity like the EU. For everyone here shouting that the EU needs to do something, be a leader, what have they lost so far by choosing to lead in legislation instead of development? They've lost nothing. They've gained a lot. They can use the same frontier level open source model as everyone else, and meanwhile, they can stay on top of harmful uses like social or credit scoring. Also speaking as a European, legislation is kind of the point of a government in the first place. I do think the EU goes too far in many cases. But I haven't seen anything that makes me think they're dealing with this particular hype train badly so far. Play the safe long game, let everyone else spend all the money, see what works, focus on legislation of potentially dangerous technology.
- tesch1 2y ago
  > lead in legislation > legislation is kind of the point of a government As an American, most of this post reads like doublespeak satire. I guess it's not, but just to put a transatlantic pov here. I'll add a sports metaphor for good measure: in order to become expert football players, we'll get tickets to watch the best teams play.
  - esperent 2y ago
    > As an American, most of this post reads like doublespeak satire Yeah, you guys have a lot of brainwashing to get over. I can imagine that you're deeply conditioned to read any outside views on politics as satire. One kind of brainwashing is the need to reframe everything political into sports metaphors. The EU is not a sports team. It's a political entity. Whatever you might have been taught, these are very different things, with different needs. You can't have meaningful conversations about a political entity via sports metaphors. Well, maybe in US politics you can. There you have two teams determined to beat the other at all costs. EU politics isn't like that. We are trying to work together, not kill each other.
    - 2y ago
riedel 2y ago
As said before in another comment. The project can likely make use of 'free' EuroHPC resources, which will also be funded simultaneously with hundreds of millions. Still not Stargate, but if they can actually innovate something beyond the obvious (like R1) I think the money is still useful.
- sarusso 2y ago
  On what basis are you are stating this? I'm asking because I have been involved in another project like these (15M budget) and the main issue was the lack of computing resources allocation, because no one thought about it (true story).
  - riedel 2y ago
    The application process IMHO is quite complex (thwy want compute estimations and CVs etc).However if you figure how ist works it is at least relatively easy to get batches of 100k GPU hours via EuroHPC. Currently few calls are open, but there is typically at least also national infrastructure. Again this is nothing compared to what OpenAI or Meta has access to. I just got 25k node hours on Meluxina for a fine-tune project. My colleague got quite some GPU compute oh Germany's Tier3 NHR Clsuter (Horeka with >700 A100/H100 GPUs).
miohtama 2y ago
Because Europe does not have enough money. This comes from taxes i.e. as an EU citizen you pay for the fun. Private sector often does not fund projects like these as they have bad return on investment.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  >Because Europe does not have enough money. They seem to have enough to send overseas and to spend on illegal economic migrants. >Private sector often does not fund projects like these as they have bad return on investment. Then why does the private sector in the US fund projects like these?
  - tmnvdb 2y ago
    Because America has the best private capital and startup ecosystem in the world it has a good chance of picking the big winners. There is no corresponding European ecosystem, only a bunch of small national ones. In fact, European investors are not betting on EU startups because they are unlikely to be able to scale to beat US and Chinese competitors due to lack of market and capital market scale.
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      Europe has lower cost of living and lower wages so EU Investors don't need US levels of money to compete.
      - tmnvdb 2y ago
        Developers are cheaper but not a lot, and regulatory costs are higher - the difference in the end in not huge. Plus: if you want to win a global market you need global talent at global wages. You need a lot of private capital and Europe does not have any.
        machiaweliczny 2y ago
        EU has enough capital it just works on US market cause there no unified capital market in EU. If Trump hits EU with tariffs I hope this changes.
egorfine 2y ago
These millions were allocated for business-class tickets and accommodations for the talking members of this task force. So, 37.4m is plenty. I have zero doubt that nothing else will come out of this. Source: have been working with major UN and international bodies on the software side.
rsynnott 2y ago
I mean, I get that the current strategy by most participants seems to be burning billions on models which are almost immediately obsoleted, but it's... unclear whether this is a _good_ strategy. _Especially_ after deepseek has just shown that there _are_ approaches other than just "throw infinite GPUs at it". Like, insofar as any of this is useful, working on, say, more techniques for reducing cost feels a lot more valuable than cranking out yet another frontier model which will be superseded within months.

everyone 2y ago

Not anymore, with Deepseek's stuff right? Which is open.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
DeepSeek probably spent closer to two billion on hardware. And then there’s the energy cost of numerous runs, staff costs, all of that. The 5.5m cost was basically misleading info, maybe used strategically to create doubt in the US tech industry or for DeepSeek’s parent hedge fund to make money off shorts. https://semianalysis.com/2025/01/31/deepseek-debates/ https://semianalysis.com/2025/01/31/deepseek-debates/
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
sarusso 2y ago
DeepSeek had plenty of R&D expertise which were not included in the (declared) model training cost. Here we are talking about building something nearly from scratch, even if there is an open source starting point you still need the infrastructure, expertise and people to make it work, which with that budget are going to be hard to secure. Moreover these projects take months and months to get approved, meaning that this one was conceived long before DeepSeek, thus highlighting the original disalignment between the goal and the budget. DeepSeek might have changed the scenario (I hope so) but it would be just a lucky ex-post event… not a conscious choice behind that budget.
- cess11 2y ago
  What do you mean, "nearly from scratch"? Aleph Alpha is a business that has been going for some time in this sector, at least a couple of years with commercial LLM products. It's likely they'll provide hardware and base models for this project.

Etheryte 2y ago

Personally I'm rather happy that the allocation was not too large at first, even that is quite a sizeable sum. The EU is great at kickstarting projects that sound like a panacea, but end up not leading to anything. Once they have something to show, by all means, throw more money at them.

nradov 2y ago
The trap that these EU projects typically fall into is that they burn all of the grant funding on paying politically connected consultants to write reports. No one gets around to building an MVP.
- intelVISA 2y ago
  I thought that was the point?

esperent 2y ago

Deepseek's release has shown that there's no great risk in getting left behind. All the info is out there, people with skills are readily available, creating a model that will match whatever current model is considered frontier level is not that hard for an entity like the EU. For everyone here shouting that the EU needs to do something, be a leader, what have they lost so far by choosing to lead in legislation instead of development? They've lost nothing. They've gained a lot. They can use the same frontier level open source model as everyone else, and meanwhile, they can stay on top of harmful uses like social or credit scoring. Also speaking as a European, legislation is kind of the point of a government in the first place. I do think the EU goes too far in many cases. But I haven't seen anything that makes me think they're dealing with this particular hype train badly so far. Play the safe long game, let everyone else spend all the money, see what works, focus on legislation of potentially dangerous technology.

tesch1 2y ago
> lead in legislation > legislation is kind of the point of a government As an American, most of this post reads like doublespeak satire. I guess it's not, but just to put a transatlantic pov here. I'll add a sports metaphor for good measure: in order to become expert football players, we'll get tickets to watch the best teams play.
- esperent 2y ago
  > As an American, most of this post reads like doublespeak satire Yeah, you guys have a lot of brainwashing to get over. I can imagine that you're deeply conditioned to read any outside views on politics as satire. One kind of brainwashing is the need to reframe everything political into sports metaphors. The EU is not a sports team. It's a political entity. Whatever you might have been taught, these are very different things, with different needs. You can't have meaningful conversations about a political entity via sports metaphors. Well, maybe in US politics you can. There you have two teams determined to beat the other at all costs. EU politics isn't like that. We are trying to work together, not kill each other.
  - 2y ago

riedel 2y ago

As said before in another comment. The project can likely make use of 'free' EuroHPC resources, which will also be funded simultaneously with hundreds of millions. Still not Stargate, but if they can actually innovate something beyond the obvious (like R1) I think the money is still useful.

sarusso 2y ago
On what basis are you are stating this? I'm asking because I have been involved in another project like these (15M budget) and the main issue was the lack of computing resources allocation, because no one thought about it (true story).
- riedel 2y ago
  The application process IMHO is quite complex (thwy want compute estimations and CVs etc).However if you figure how ist works it is at least relatively easy to get batches of 100k GPU hours via EuroHPC. Currently few calls are open, but there is typically at least also national infrastructure. Again this is nothing compared to what OpenAI or Meta has access to. I just got 25k node hours on Meluxina for a fine-tune project. My colleague got quite some GPU compute oh Germany's Tier3 NHR Clsuter (Horeka with >700 A100/H100 GPUs).

miohtama 2y ago

Because Europe does not have enough money. This comes from taxes i.e. as an EU citizen you pay for the fun. Private sector often does not fund projects like these as they have bad return on investment.

Cumpiler69 2y ago
>Because Europe does not have enough money. They seem to have enough to send overseas and to spend on illegal economic migrants. >Private sector often does not fund projects like these as they have bad return on investment. Then why does the private sector in the US fund projects like these?
- tmnvdb 2y ago
  Because America has the best private capital and startup ecosystem in the world it has a good chance of picking the big winners. There is no corresponding European ecosystem, only a bunch of small national ones. In fact, European investors are not betting on EU startups because they are unlikely to be able to scale to beat US and Chinese competitors due to lack of market and capital market scale.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    Europe has lower cost of living and lower wages so EU Investors don't need US levels of money to compete.
    - tmnvdb 2y ago
      Developers are cheaper but not a lot, and regulatory costs are higher - the difference in the end in not huge. Plus: if you want to win a global market you need global talent at global wages. You need a lot of private capital and Europe does not have any.
      - machiaweliczny 2y ago
        EU has enough capital it just works on US market cause there no unified capital market in EU. If Trump hits EU with tariffs I hope this changes.

egorfine 2y ago

These millions were allocated for business-class tickets and accommodations for the talking members of this task force. So, 37.4m is plenty. I have zero doubt that nothing else will come out of this. Source: have been working with major UN and international bodies on the software side.

rsynnott 2y ago

I mean, I get that the current strategy by most participants seems to be burning billions on models which are almost immediately obsoleted, but it's... unclear whether this is a _good_ strategy. _Especially_ after deepseek has just shown that there _are_ approaches other than just "throw infinite GPUs at it". Like, insofar as any of this is useful, working on, say, more techniques for reducing cost feels a lot more valuable than cranking out yet another frontier model which will be superseded within months.