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Switching search engines to what? AI-powered search also created by American companies? America's image is toxic to everyone right now (including its own citiz

Switching search engines to what? AI-powered search also created by American companies? America's image is toxic to everyone right now (including its own citizens). But I don't really see that many valid alternatives. It's not like Europe has done much to cultivate any kind of relevant software industry.

VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
Maybe this will galvanize EU into actually creating something instead of just importing and regulating American tech. Doubt it though
redserk 2y ago
I don’t understand this notion suggesting Americans are the only people on earth capable of software development. This comes up in various threads about China, too. For independent indexes, Brave’s search came from a German company and Yandex certainly isn’t American.
- whynotminot 2y ago
  There's a certain irony in switching to a Russian search engine... because America aligned itself more closely with Russia.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    It would indeed be ironic, even though it also serves as an existence proof.
Kudos 2y ago
As a European, completely eliminating corporate US tech doesn't have to be an all or nothing goal. Switching from Google to DDG or Kagi is an improvement even if they're just a frontend for Bing. It's a massive opportunity for European-based companies to compete. I expect a lot more funding to start materialising here as a result.
antirez 2y ago
LLMs are something everybody can reproduce with enough money, as shown by Musk itself recently: in one year they have Grok3 which is a SOTA model, without having particular talents or innovations, just following the recipe everybody else is using (and this is why you see new companies competing with established companies: all are training transformers with a lot of tokens, basically). So Europe can have their LLMs as well: the important thing is to relax this stupid AI act, that the biggest countries in Europe didn't want (Germany, France, Italy) but that somewhat passed (and it is not impossible that there are external influences and corruptions). About the search engine: Google at this point is almost a joke, to the point it is simpler to redo it right than trying to fix it from the internal. Remember that a lot of key technologies are created by europeans: from Python to Linux, to MySQL and so on. Europe has all the potential needed if the right choices are made to do everything needed.
- whynotminot 2y ago
  > So Europe can have their LLMs as well: the important thing is to relax this stupid AI act But you're kind of showing here why Europe doesn't have the software innovation America does. Americans are not inherently smarter or more capable of doing innovative things than Europeans. It's just that whenever a European wants to do something interesting, there's a handy European regulation making it harder or less profitable to do it. If this American administration is the impetus for that to change, that would be good! But I doubt it.
  - antirez 2y ago
    I believe that certain drives for certain regulations that are clearly shooting themselves in the feet were approved with less clear processes than needed (remember corruption cases of certain European politicians recently for the Olympics? If it happens for minor stuff like that... go figure). This was acceptable even if many countries were unhappy as long as the US were believed to be a strong partner. Now this changed, and it is likely that certain regulations will be relaxed.
  - weddpros 2y ago
    It's more likely that Europe will double down on its politics as they always do. If it doesn't work, try harder with more of it: more rules, more laws, more exceptions to rules, more special cases, more Switch and If/Then/Else. Think technical debt with 0 refactoring ever, because you can't break the existing system, only grow it. A refactoring, that's how I see what the government is currently doing in the USA. (I'm French, living in Asia)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
svara 2y ago
You're right, but cooperation and centralization emerge under external pressures. It's almost like a natural law of social systems. (I could say more but don't want to digress, let me know if you'd like some pointers.) In other words, Europe's weakness and dividedness is a consequence of the soft power the US used to have. The EU has the capital (human and economic) to be a world power in principle, but never needed to. This has all changed very suddenly. Whether Europe can rise to the challenge I don't know, but it's the first time in a very long time that there is a possibility of it happening. I find the game theoretic view quite interesting here. Even if we interpret Trump's action in the best possible light, that he knows what he's doing and playing the madman strategy to get others to comply, the destruction of trust that this strategy causes makes it impossible in the long term to build mutually beneficial cooperative structures.
nec4b 2y ago
>> America's image is toxic to everyone right now (including its own citizens). That is evidently not true. You being unhappy, doesn't make the whole world unhappy too.

VWWHFSfQ 2y ago

Maybe this will galvanize EU into actually creating something instead of just importing and regulating American tech. Doubt it though

redserk 2y ago

I don’t understand this notion suggesting Americans are the only people on earth capable of software development. This comes up in various threads about China, too. For independent indexes, Brave’s search came from a German company and Yandex certainly isn’t American.

whynotminot 2y ago
There's a certain irony in switching to a Russian search engine... because America aligned itself more closely with Russia.
- ben_w 2y ago
  It would indeed be ironic, even though it also serves as an existence proof.

Kudos 2y ago

As a European, completely eliminating corporate US tech doesn't have to be an all or nothing goal. Switching from Google to DDG or Kagi is an improvement even if they're just a frontend for Bing. It's a massive opportunity for European-based companies to compete. I expect a lot more funding to start materialising here as a result.

antirez 2y ago

LLMs are something everybody can reproduce with enough money, as shown by Musk itself recently: in one year they have Grok3 which is a SOTA model, without having particular talents or innovations, just following the recipe everybody else is using (and this is why you see new companies competing with established companies: all are training transformers with a lot of tokens, basically). So Europe can have their LLMs as well: the important thing is to relax this stupid AI act, that the biggest countries in Europe didn't want (Germany, France, Italy) but that somewhat passed (and it is not impossible that there are external influences and corruptions). About the search engine: Google at this point is almost a joke, to the point it is simpler to redo it right than trying to fix it from the internal. Remember that a lot of key technologies are created by europeans: from Python to Linux, to MySQL and so on. Europe has all the potential needed if the right choices are made to do everything needed.

whynotminot 2y ago
> So Europe can have their LLMs as well: the important thing is to relax this stupid AI act But you're kind of showing here why Europe doesn't have the software innovation America does. Americans are not inherently smarter or more capable of doing innovative things than Europeans. It's just that whenever a European wants to do something interesting, there's a handy European regulation making it harder or less profitable to do it. If this American administration is the impetus for that to change, that would be good! But I doubt it.
- antirez 2y ago
  I believe that certain drives for certain regulations that are clearly shooting themselves in the feet were approved with less clear processes than needed (remember corruption cases of certain European politicians recently for the Olympics? If it happens for minor stuff like that... go figure). This was acceptable even if many countries were unhappy as long as the US were believed to be a strong partner. Now this changed, and it is likely that certain regulations will be relaxed.
- weddpros 2y ago
  It's more likely that Europe will double down on its politics as they always do. If it doesn't work, try harder with more of it: more rules, more laws, more exceptions to rules, more special cases, more Switch and If/Then/Else. Think technical debt with 0 refactoring ever, because you can't break the existing system, only grow it. A refactoring, that's how I see what the government is currently doing in the USA. (I'm French, living in Asia)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

svara 2y ago

You're right, but cooperation and centralization emerge under external pressures. It's almost like a natural law of social systems. (I could say more but don't want to digress, let me know if you'd like some pointers.) In other words, Europe's weakness and dividedness is a consequence of the soft power the US used to have. The EU has the capital (human and economic) to be a world power in principle, but never needed to. This has all changed very suddenly. Whether Europe can rise to the challenge I don't know, but it's the first time in a very long time that there is a possibility of it happening. I find the game theoretic view quite interesting here. Even if we interpret Trump's action in the best possible light, that he knows what he's doing and playing the madman strategy to get others to comply, the destruction of trust that this strategy causes makes it impossible in the long term to build mutually beneficial cooperative structures.

nec4b 2y ago

>> America's image is toxic to everyone right now (including its own citizens). That is evidently not true. You being unhappy, doesn't make the whole world unhappy too.