6 ms·

I can see that you're unfamiliar with how EU grants and how these project collections work, but I don't have much time to address this with great detail. As a

I can see that you're unfamiliar with how EU grants and how these project collections work, but I don't have much time to address this with great detail. As a person who's in this type of projects for a long time, what I can say is "it works", because people do not compete with each other, but will build it together. What I can say is, if they have came this far, there's already plans about what to do, and how to do, and none of the parties are inexperienced in these kinds of things.

ShareTheVista 2y ago
Can you tell us about a project like this that worked?
- varjag 2y ago
  The Large Hadron Collider clearly works and is infinitely more complex than yet another language model.
  - closewith 2y ago
    The LHC is comparably complex to LLMs and CERN is a cautionary tale. The web was invented there and yet the vast majority of the subsequent innovation and economic benefit coalesced in the US because the European countries were culturally unable to capitalise on it.
    - varjag 2y ago
      LLMs are not "comparably complex" to LHC, they are perhaps 0.1% of the complexity from engineering POV. By any metric, from system design to physical infrastructure to run them.
      - VagabundoP 2y ago
        Yeah the bar to entry for LLM is far far lower. CERN is a scientific marvel.
        varjag 2y ago
        They had to design a reference standard quality nanovoltmeter because HP/Agilent could not keep up with volume & cost. And it was only one among scores of side quests. https://hackaday.com/2021/02/26/homebrew-metrology-the-cern-way/ https://hackaday.com/2021/02/26/homebrew-metrology-the-cern-...
        VagabundoP 2y ago
        The fallout from CERN is incredible. It really shows what's possible with these kinds of multiple decade projects. Reminds me of the Civilisation Wonders you could build.
    - lyu07282 2y ago
      Also in Germany, their leading solar energy technology became unprofitable in the global market and was sold to China (see what happened to Q-Cells [1]). The EU can publicly finance research all they want, but if the results of which gets profited by private interests of any nationality not necessarily EU countries how does that help the EU catch up? But this does seem different since they plan on building open-source models which would benefit everyone equally (and no one in particular), it would just level the playing field more I guess? I think this and things like MCP [2] are fantastic, they would make the LLM just one interchangeable piece you can buy from anywhere or host yourself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qcells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qcells [2] https://modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction https://modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction
  - Yizahi 2y ago
    The LHC indeed works, as a device. But what was it's purpose and did it do "meaningful" stuff over its lifetime? LHC is a yet another collider which basically can be boiled to the simple idea: Some scientists invent hypotheses with no basis in reality, and say that they can be proven with a big and expensive collider. When that collider is being built and fail to find the requisite particles, those same scientists say they need a bigger and more expensive collider. GoTo 01. A lot of these scientists fail to explain what will happen when their hypotheses won't find the requisite particles, essentially generating meaningless papers which are blind stabs at reality. It's like saying that leprechauns exist, but to see them we need a 100 billion euro device. And if we do build it fail to see it, then whoops, it wasn't enough. tl;dr: LHC is not a particularly good example of proper scientific achievement. More like an achievement in PR and budget grants. Per positive scientific discovery produced there.
    - varjag 2y ago
      LHC had confirmed the existence of Higgs boson, essentially validating then-hypothetical mechanism for emergence of mass. It also had ruled out a very popular, theoretically beautiful but as it turned out invalid direction of physics studies. You can argue whether it was worth the cost but it was a genuine, significant experimental achievement. It was also certainly not a PR stunt as it was truly an insanely complex piece of engineering. It is one of humanity's largest technological undertakings ever. Projects of this scale are still beyond the means even of the world's richest oligarchs. But it is a fine example of the things you can achieve in an enormous but well functioning multi-national bureaucracy.
- sigmoid10 2y ago
  They are not hard to find: The EU literally gives you access to all their projects in the CORDIS database: https://cordis.europa.eu/ https://cordis.europa.eu/
menaerus 2y ago
I largely see this type of collaboration as a very inefficient form of a distributed company (team) where members of that team do not have other incentive but to (mostly) collect points on research papers. There is no incentive to actually build a product in such a setting and there is no incentive to remain competitive since you cannot be fired, or penalized in some other form. And generally speaking, as an individual you don't care about the industry (market) competition since you mostly care about remaining relevant within your very narrow scope of your research topic. So, this is why this doesn't work. There is no coherent mass toward the same goal. Seemingly there is but there isn't.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  You mean a good environment for doing R&D?
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    Yes, we do a great deal of R&D, too. It looks boring from outside, but it enables things for us and researchers. Oh, and we give the patches back to the tools we use.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  This is a Horizon grant, meaning: - There's continuous reporting, and money is not guaranteed. - You can be removed from the project by not meeting project goals on time. - (In this case) There are corporations which are planning to commercialize this thing. - There's a concrete and sound roadmap, and it's evaluated in a competition by an independent body and got selected. - Without a sound landscape survey, you can't get this type of grant, so free market forces are included. - ...and more (I'm trying to be concise). IOW, these kinds of projects are not parades for free money. You have to put considerable effort and brainpower to write the proposal, get selected and get the grant, and then you have to realize what you have written in your project to get that money. I'm in many European projects of this kind for close to two decades. These projects do not result in papers. They result in deliverables (documents and what you are intending to build), and they deliver. While I can't go into details, the atmosphere is never an "academic" one, but it's connected to real world. We sometimes work with commercial entities to improve their know-how and abilities, too. Many of the projects have commercial partners which commercialize these technologies, esp in earth/ecosystem observation. Sometimes we support them for free, because they need to do the research to be able to show what they are doing for an initial grant. It's not about money, fame, having a corner office with free flowing grant money or travel. People do this to improve the world around them and make an impact, and we don't fight over wins. We drink coffee and work hard to deliver what we promised. Lastly, I don't get the grant money. It's just deposited to institution account. I have no monetary or material gain from this.
closewith 2y ago
> I can see that you're unfamiliar with how EU grants and how these project collections work, but I don't have much time to address this with great detail. This is a take that can only come from someone who is dependent on Horizon, because I don't think any independent observer could look at Horizon projects and say they just work.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  > This is a take that can only come from someone who is dependent on Horizon. No, I'm not dependent on Horizon Programme. I just look at what we did, the outcomes, and talk from that point. Maybe our sphere is one of the ones which deliver. I can't see the whole thing, it's too big to observe. Even if we're in the 5% which delivers, which is same with the startup scene, which is loudly applauded because it's an incredibly well working system.
  - misiek08 2y ago
    You are maybe in 0.005%. If project has even a presentation at the end it’s already being considered successful. And I thought it’s maybe Poland only, but Germant and France is the same (I’ve seen this myself, not heard from 3rd party)
    - nomonnai 2y ago
      It's not only Poland. I've had the misfortune of suffering through a couple Horizon projects, with partners from many European countries. Same experience as you had. "These are not serious people" sums it up.
  - krallistic 2y ago
    Start-ups deliver something much more complicated/different than these research projects. If the whole research project at the end actually delivers a somewhat coherent prototype, it's seen as a huge success. Most start-ups start with a proof-of-concept prototype to transform it into an economically viable product. So, comparing these success rates does not make sense. Multiple research groups can deliver rough prototypes at the end and celebrate their "huge success". In most fields, there can be only a few economically surviving startups...
misiek08 2y ago
"It works!" is the only thing that will be visible on web page after hundreds of milions will be burned. I’m observing few of such „unprecedented” cooperation projects from EU funds. A lot of meetings, a lot of managers, plenty of very unskilled people creating mess and few names doing presentations so companies will believe everybody know what are they doing. Same from company side - they need being in those projects to comply with stupid EU rules about being eco. Ball of mud.
- varjag 2y ago
  Europe runs its space programme in this way and so far it has pretty good track record. There are more ways to build stuff than the worship of personality.
  - Kuinox 2y ago
    I don't think Ariane have a "pretty good track record". Most expensive bug of all time that crashed a whole rocket, because of outdated and wrong software engineering practice. They dont innovate, looked down on SpaceX, they have bet against Falcon, and lost the bet. Now they are betting against the Starship. > Honestly, I don’t think Starship will be a game-changer or a real competitor -- ESA chief 2024 https://spacenews.com/europe-aims-to-end-space-access-crisis-with-ariane-6s-inaugural-launch/ https://spacenews.com/europe-aims-to-end-space-access-crisis... Meanwhile EU members are now launching their public project with SpaceX instead of ESA: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/spacex-rocket-next-gen-spainsat-ng-1-satellite-launch https://www.space.com/space-exploration/spacex-rocket-next-g... https://apnews.com/article/nasa-spacex-launch-astronauts-private-d850e84f510125d62c3678093837e868 https://apnews.com/article/nasa-spacex-launch-astronauts-pri... https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/IRIDE_pathfinder_satellite_has_launched https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/IRIDE_p...
    - varjag 2y ago
      If your metric of innovation is the amount of rockets exploded at debuts you shouldn't bring up SpaceX really. The EU had committed to a number of deep space and scientific instrument programmes spanning decades and seen them through to success. It operates its own GNSS constellation. It is second only to NASA. Calling it a failure is ridiculous.
lifty 2y ago
Can you tell me please what you worked on and where I can see the output? I’ve been adjacent to these kind of efforts and the only thing I can say is that I’m highly skeptical of your claims.
jansan 2y ago
In the case of Quaero [1] "it did not work". Sure, all involved parties were praising the project and by constantly shifting goalposts they could label it a success, but in the end it was a huge waste of money, sucked in by the usual suspects. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero
- lyu07282 2y ago
  > it was a huge waste of money, sucked in by the usual suspects other example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia-X
CrimsonRain 2y ago
All talk. No show. That's EU. I'll believe it works after they finally have one success
- input_sh 2y ago
  Would you consider for example Firefox' completely-local translations a success? Directly funded by Horizon, made by a consortium of 4 European universities, now a part of Firefox?
  - murderfs 2y ago
    They paid three million euros to integrate existing open source software into Firefox?!
    - bayindirh 2y ago
      No, EU funded Bergamot and HPLT projects. Integration came much later, but again as a part of Bergamot project. [0]: https://browser.mt/ https://browser.mt/ [1]: https://hplt-project.org/ https://hplt-project.org/ [2]: https://github.com/mozilla/translations?tab=readme-ov-file#acknowledgements https://github.com/mozilla/translations?tab=readme-ov-file#a...
      - shinryuu 2y ago
        Very grateful for those translations. Use them a lot!
  - closewith 2y ago
    7 languages and a feature nobody to a rounding error uses? No, I don't consider that to be a research, economic, or technical success. Honestly, I'm not sure if you posted this is support of Horizon or against? The Horizon budget for 2021-2027 is €95.5 billion or ~€15 billion per annum. If a headline "success" is an unfinished implementation of translation in Firefox of a translation engine (Marian) built by the Microsoft Translator team, then it's safe to say Horizon is an unqualified failure.
hedgew 2y ago
My experience from these projects is the opposite. The projects are always secondary priorities for participants, and the difficulty of coordinating some dozen entirely separate organisations towards something actually productive is immense. In practice each participant independently spends the money they get on something lightly relevant, and the occasional coordination meetings are spent on planning how to fulfill the reporting requirements of the grant. Business and research are difficult enough even when done by tightly knit teams and constantly tested against real world systems and customer feedback. The idea that a hodgepodge of organisations can achieve poorly defined yet aspirational goals on a low budget is massively misguided.
ngcazz 2y ago
Having worked on an FP7 programme myself and having a family member involved in project audits, I’d say some skepticism is warranted—particularly regarding the incentives that attract private sector partners and the talent they actually allocate once funds are secured. Funding is tied to employee qualifications and effectively subsidises salaries, which creates room for misalignment. No-shows of allocated employees were not uncommon, since a company willing to accept lower-quality deliverables can assign junior employees to do the work at a fraction of the cost, while the salary difference for their PhDs simply becomes added margin.
Maken 2y ago
While I do think EU grants are a good thing, I'm sceptic about these too-big-to-fail multi-national projects. I still remember the Human Brain Project.
badlogic 2y ago
As someone who has lived through Eurostar and Horizon 2020, and who has participated as both a researcher and corporate partner, I can say: it does not work. Unless by work you mean "successfully passed the post-project review by non-experts based on a bunch of slides" Point at a single project of this sort that had any tangible output that's still in use.
- rickdeckard 2y ago
  > Point at a single project of this sort that had any tangible output that's still in use. Not sure what is your limiting factor (just universities + industry consortiums or explicit IT projects?). Graphene Flagship might be an example, with their research on Graphene they contributed to the foundation of more efficient batteries and solar panels, innovation in automotive and commercial products and so on. Clean Sky Joint Undertaking (CSJU) also had quite some impact on the industry (I think it was part of EU's Horizon 2020). They worked on technologies to reduce CO2 emissions and noise of Aircrafts and contributed quite a bit to the European industry (Rotor engine innovations, advanced greener materials, etc.) And I think the discovery of the Higgs boson was also the result of a European Research consortium with CERN... So yeah, Europe is surely not the center of all innovation and economic efficiency, but I wouldn't demonize every attempt to change that...
  - closewith 2y ago
    Graphene Flagship was an irredeemable disaster. €1 B pumped into research and commercialisation and the result is a DOA graphene industry in the EU, left in the dust by China and the US. Clean Sky Joint Undertaking was also a disaster that missed all its targets. As stated elsewhere, CERN is a cautionary tale - the LHC is a vestige of a time when Europe was an economic and scientific powerhouse. If the last 15-20 years we have become an also-ran to the US and China. There's an endless list of these soft failed Horizon projects: * Human Brain Project * European Processor Initiative * Innovative Medicines Initiative * LIGHTest * The Once-Only Principle Project * OpenAIRE * Quantum Flagship And on and on. No results. No ROI.
    - 2y ago
DocTomoe 2y ago
When has it ever worked? Remember the EU Search Engine project, Quaero, and its equally failed successor, Theseus? No? I thought so.

ShareTheVista 2y ago

Can you tell us about a project like this that worked?

varjag 2y ago
The Large Hadron Collider clearly works and is infinitely more complex than yet another language model.
- closewith 2y ago
  The LHC is comparably complex to LLMs and CERN is a cautionary tale. The web was invented there and yet the vast majority of the subsequent innovation and economic benefit coalesced in the US because the European countries were culturally unable to capitalise on it.
  - varjag 2y ago
    LLMs are not "comparably complex" to LHC, they are perhaps 0.1% of the complexity from engineering POV. By any metric, from system design to physical infrastructure to run them.
    - VagabundoP 2y ago
      Yeah the bar to entry for LLM is far far lower. CERN is a scientific marvel.
      - varjag 2y ago
        They had to design a reference standard quality nanovoltmeter because HP/Agilent could not keep up with volume & cost. And it was only one among scores of side quests. https://hackaday.com/2021/02/26/homebrew-metrology-the-cern-way/ https://hackaday.com/2021/02/26/homebrew-metrology-the-cern-...
        VagabundoP 2y ago
        The fallout from CERN is incredible. It really shows what's possible with these kinds of multiple decade projects. Reminds me of the Civilisation Wonders you could build.
  - lyu07282 2y ago
    Also in Germany, their leading solar energy technology became unprofitable in the global market and was sold to China (see what happened to Q-Cells [1]). The EU can publicly finance research all they want, but if the results of which gets profited by private interests of any nationality not necessarily EU countries how does that help the EU catch up? But this does seem different since they plan on building open-source models which would benefit everyone equally (and no one in particular), it would just level the playing field more I guess? I think this and things like MCP [2] are fantastic, they would make the LLM just one interchangeable piece you can buy from anywhere or host yourself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qcells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qcells [2] https://modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction https://modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction
- Yizahi 2y ago
  The LHC indeed works, as a device. But what was it's purpose and did it do "meaningful" stuff over its lifetime? LHC is a yet another collider which basically can be boiled to the simple idea: Some scientists invent hypotheses with no basis in reality, and say that they can be proven with a big and expensive collider. When that collider is being built and fail to find the requisite particles, those same scientists say they need a bigger and more expensive collider. GoTo 01. A lot of these scientists fail to explain what will happen when their hypotheses won't find the requisite particles, essentially generating meaningless papers which are blind stabs at reality. It's like saying that leprechauns exist, but to see them we need a 100 billion euro device. And if we do build it fail to see it, then whoops, it wasn't enough. tl;dr: LHC is not a particularly good example of proper scientific achievement. More like an achievement in PR and budget grants. Per positive scientific discovery produced there.
  - varjag 2y ago
    LHC had confirmed the existence of Higgs boson, essentially validating then-hypothetical mechanism for emergence of mass. It also had ruled out a very popular, theoretically beautiful but as it turned out invalid direction of physics studies. You can argue whether it was worth the cost but it was a genuine, significant experimental achievement. It was also certainly not a PR stunt as it was truly an insanely complex piece of engineering. It is one of humanity's largest technological undertakings ever. Projects of this scale are still beyond the means even of the world's richest oligarchs. But it is a fine example of the things you can achieve in an enormous but well functioning multi-national bureaucracy.
sigmoid10 2y ago
They are not hard to find: The EU literally gives you access to all their projects in the CORDIS database: https://cordis.europa.eu/ https://cordis.europa.eu/

menaerus 2y ago

I largely see this type of collaboration as a very inefficient form of a distributed company (team) where members of that team do not have other incentive but to (mostly) collect points on research papers. There is no incentive to actually build a product in such a setting and there is no incentive to remain competitive since you cannot be fired, or penalized in some other form. And generally speaking, as an individual you don't care about the industry (market) competition since you mostly care about remaining relevant within your very narrow scope of your research topic. So, this is why this doesn't work. There is no coherent mass toward the same goal. Seemingly there is but there isn't.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
You mean a good environment for doing R&D?
- bayindirh 2y ago
  Yes, we do a great deal of R&D, too. It looks boring from outside, but it enables things for us and researchers. Oh, and we give the patches back to the tools we use.
bayindirh 2y ago
This is a Horizon grant, meaning: - There's continuous reporting, and money is not guaranteed. - You can be removed from the project by not meeting project goals on time. - (In this case) There are corporations which are planning to commercialize this thing. - There's a concrete and sound roadmap, and it's evaluated in a competition by an independent body and got selected. - Without a sound landscape survey, you can't get this type of grant, so free market forces are included. - ...and more (I'm trying to be concise). IOW, these kinds of projects are not parades for free money. You have to put considerable effort and brainpower to write the proposal, get selected and get the grant, and then you have to realize what you have written in your project to get that money. I'm in many European projects of this kind for close to two decades. These projects do not result in papers. They result in deliverables (documents and what you are intending to build), and they deliver. While I can't go into details, the atmosphere is never an "academic" one, but it's connected to real world. We sometimes work with commercial entities to improve their know-how and abilities, too. Many of the projects have commercial partners which commercialize these technologies, esp in earth/ecosystem observation. Sometimes we support them for free, because they need to do the research to be able to show what they are doing for an initial grant. It's not about money, fame, having a corner office with free flowing grant money or travel. People do this to improve the world around them and make an impact, and we don't fight over wins. We drink coffee and work hard to deliver what we promised. Lastly, I don't get the grant money. It's just deposited to institution account. I have no monetary or material gain from this.

closewith 2y ago

> I can see that you're unfamiliar with how EU grants and how these project collections work, but I don't have much time to address this with great detail. This is a take that can only come from someone who is dependent on Horizon, because I don't think any independent observer could look at Horizon projects and say they just work.

bayindirh 2y ago
> This is a take that can only come from someone who is dependent on Horizon. No, I'm not dependent on Horizon Programme. I just look at what we did, the outcomes, and talk from that point. Maybe our sphere is one of the ones which deliver. I can't see the whole thing, it's too big to observe. Even if we're in the 5% which delivers, which is same with the startup scene, which is loudly applauded because it's an incredibly well working system.
- misiek08 2y ago
  You are maybe in 0.005%. If project has even a presentation at the end it’s already being considered successful. And I thought it’s maybe Poland only, but Germant and France is the same (I’ve seen this myself, not heard from 3rd party)
  - nomonnai 2y ago
    It's not only Poland. I've had the misfortune of suffering through a couple Horizon projects, with partners from many European countries. Same experience as you had. "These are not serious people" sums it up.
- krallistic 2y ago
  Start-ups deliver something much more complicated/different than these research projects. If the whole research project at the end actually delivers a somewhat coherent prototype, it's seen as a huge success. Most start-ups start with a proof-of-concept prototype to transform it into an economically viable product. So, comparing these success rates does not make sense. Multiple research groups can deliver rough prototypes at the end and celebrate their "huge success". In most fields, there can be only a few economically surviving startups...

misiek08 2y ago

"It works!" is the only thing that will be visible on web page after hundreds of milions will be burned. I’m observing few of such „unprecedented” cooperation projects from EU funds. A lot of meetings, a lot of managers, plenty of very unskilled people creating mess and few names doing presentations so companies will believe everybody know what are they doing. Same from company side - they need being in those projects to comply with stupid EU rules about being eco. Ball of mud.

varjag 2y ago
Europe runs its space programme in this way and so far it has pretty good track record. There are more ways to build stuff than the worship of personality.
- Kuinox 2y ago
  I don't think Ariane have a "pretty good track record". Most expensive bug of all time that crashed a whole rocket, because of outdated and wrong software engineering practice. They dont innovate, looked down on SpaceX, they have bet against Falcon, and lost the bet. Now they are betting against the Starship. > Honestly, I don’t think Starship will be a game-changer or a real competitor -- ESA chief 2024 https://spacenews.com/europe-aims-to-end-space-access-crisis-with-ariane-6s-inaugural-launch/ https://spacenews.com/europe-aims-to-end-space-access-crisis... Meanwhile EU members are now launching their public project with SpaceX instead of ESA: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/spacex-rocket-next-gen-spainsat-ng-1-satellite-launch https://www.space.com/space-exploration/spacex-rocket-next-g... https://apnews.com/article/nasa-spacex-launch-astronauts-private-d850e84f510125d62c3678093837e868 https://apnews.com/article/nasa-spacex-launch-astronauts-pri... https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/IRIDE_pathfinder_satellite_has_launched https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/IRIDE_p...
  - varjag 2y ago
    If your metric of innovation is the amount of rockets exploded at debuts you shouldn't bring up SpaceX really. The EU had committed to a number of deep space and scientific instrument programmes spanning decades and seen them through to success. It operates its own GNSS constellation. It is second only to NASA. Calling it a failure is ridiculous.

lifty 2y ago

Can you tell me please what you worked on and where I can see the output? I’ve been adjacent to these kind of efforts and the only thing I can say is that I’m highly skeptical of your claims.

jansan 2y ago

In the case of Quaero [1] "it did not work". Sure, all involved parties were praising the project and by constantly shifting goalposts they could label it a success, but in the end it was a huge waste of money, sucked in by the usual suspects. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero

lyu07282 2y ago
> it was a huge waste of money, sucked in by the usual suspects other example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia-X

CrimsonRain 2y ago

All talk. No show. That's EU. I'll believe it works after they finally have one success

input_sh 2y ago
Would you consider for example Firefox' completely-local translations a success? Directly funded by Horizon, made by a consortium of 4 European universities, now a part of Firefox?
- murderfs 2y ago
  They paid three million euros to integrate existing open source software into Firefox?!
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    No, EU funded Bergamot and HPLT projects. Integration came much later, but again as a part of Bergamot project. [0]: https://browser.mt/ https://browser.mt/ [1]: https://hplt-project.org/ https://hplt-project.org/ [2]: https://github.com/mozilla/translations?tab=readme-ov-file#acknowledgements https://github.com/mozilla/translations?tab=readme-ov-file#a...
    - shinryuu 2y ago
      Very grateful for those translations. Use them a lot!
- closewith 2y ago
  7 languages and a feature nobody to a rounding error uses? No, I don't consider that to be a research, economic, or technical success. Honestly, I'm not sure if you posted this is support of Horizon or against? The Horizon budget for 2021-2027 is €95.5 billion or ~€15 billion per annum. If a headline "success" is an unfinished implementation of translation in Firefox of a translation engine (Marian) built by the Microsoft Translator team, then it's safe to say Horizon is an unqualified failure.

hedgew 2y ago

My experience from these projects is the opposite. The projects are always secondary priorities for participants, and the difficulty of coordinating some dozen entirely separate organisations towards something actually productive is immense. In practice each participant independently spends the money they get on something lightly relevant, and the occasional coordination meetings are spent on planning how to fulfill the reporting requirements of the grant. Business and research are difficult enough even when done by tightly knit teams and constantly tested against real world systems and customer feedback. The idea that a hodgepodge of organisations can achieve poorly defined yet aspirational goals on a low budget is massively misguided.

ngcazz 2y ago

Having worked on an FP7 programme myself and having a family member involved in project audits, I’d say some skepticism is warranted—particularly regarding the incentives that attract private sector partners and the talent they actually allocate once funds are secured. Funding is tied to employee qualifications and effectively subsidises salaries, which creates room for misalignment. No-shows of allocated employees were not uncommon, since a company willing to accept lower-quality deliverables can assign junior employees to do the work at a fraction of the cost, while the salary difference for their PhDs simply becomes added margin.

Maken 2y ago

While I do think EU grants are a good thing, I'm sceptic about these too-big-to-fail multi-national projects. I still remember the Human Brain Project.

badlogic 2y ago

As someone who has lived through Eurostar and Horizon 2020, and who has participated as both a researcher and corporate partner, I can say: it does not work. Unless by work you mean "successfully passed the post-project review by non-experts based on a bunch of slides" Point at a single project of this sort that had any tangible output that's still in use.

rickdeckard 2y ago
> Point at a single project of this sort that had any tangible output that's still in use. Not sure what is your limiting factor (just universities + industry consortiums or explicit IT projects?). Graphene Flagship might be an example, with their research on Graphene they contributed to the foundation of more efficient batteries and solar panels, innovation in automotive and commercial products and so on. Clean Sky Joint Undertaking (CSJU) also had quite some impact on the industry (I think it was part of EU's Horizon 2020). They worked on technologies to reduce CO2 emissions and noise of Aircrafts and contributed quite a bit to the European industry (Rotor engine innovations, advanced greener materials, etc.) And I think the discovery of the Higgs boson was also the result of a European Research consortium with CERN... So yeah, Europe is surely not the center of all innovation and economic efficiency, but I wouldn't demonize every attempt to change that...
- closewith 2y ago
  Graphene Flagship was an irredeemable disaster. €1 B pumped into research and commercialisation and the result is a DOA graphene industry in the EU, left in the dust by China and the US. Clean Sky Joint Undertaking was also a disaster that missed all its targets. As stated elsewhere, CERN is a cautionary tale - the LHC is a vestige of a time when Europe was an economic and scientific powerhouse. If the last 15-20 years we have become an also-ran to the US and China. There's an endless list of these soft failed Horizon projects: * Human Brain Project * European Processor Initiative * Innovative Medicines Initiative * LIGHTest * The Once-Only Principle Project * OpenAIRE * Quantum Flagship And on and on. No results. No ROI.
  - 2y ago

DocTomoe 2y ago

When has it ever worked? Remember the EU Search Engine project, Quaero, and its equally failed successor, Theseus? No? I thought so.