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It would be a political catastrophe right now if the EU blocked US companies due to them needing to comply with temporary US court orders. My guess is this'll b

by a2128 1y ago

It would be a political catastrophe right now if the EU blocked US companies due to them needing to comply with temporary US court orders. My guess is this'll be swept under the rug and permitted under the basis of a legal obligation

yatopifo 1y ago
Ultimately, American companies will be pushed out of the EU market. It’s not going to happen overnight, but the outcome is unavoidable in light of the ongoing system collapse in the US.
- rafaelmn 1y ago
  EU software scene would take a decade to catch up. Only alternative being if AI really delivers on being a force multiplier - but even then EU would not have access to SOTA internally.
  - blagund 1y ago
    What does the EU lack? Is it the big corp infra? Or something more fundamental?
    - KoolKat23 1y ago
      Big corpo cash and big risk appetite.
    - inglor_cz 1y ago
      In my opinion, we lack two things: a) highly qualified people, even European natives move to Silicon Valley. There is a famous photo of the OpenAI core team with 6 Polish engineers and only 5 American ones; b) culture of calculated risk when it comes to investment. Here, bankruptcy is an albatross around your neck, both legally and culturally, and is considered a sign of you being fundamentally inept instead of maybe just a misalignment with the market or even bad luck. You'd better succeed on your first try, or your options for funding will evaporate.
      - dukeyukey 1y ago
        Worth pointing out that DeepMind was founded in London, the HQ is still here, and so is the founder and CEO. I've lived in North London for 8 years now, there are _loads_ of current-and-former DeepMind AI people here. Now that OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral have offices here the talent density is just going up. On risk, we're hardly the Valley, but a failed startup isn't a black mark at all. It's a big plus in most tech circles.
        inglor_cz 1y ago
        The UK is a bit different in this regard, same as Scandinavia. But in many continental countries, bankruptcy is a serious legal stigma. You will end up on public "insolvency lists" for years, which means that no bank will touch you with a 5 m pole and few people will even be willing to rent you or your new startup office space. You may even struggle to get banal contracts such as "five SIMs with data" from mobile phone operators. There seems to be an underlying assumption that people who go bankrupt are either fatally inept or fraudsters, and need to be kept apart from the "healthy" economy in order not to endanger it.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    Given what happened with DeepSeek, "not state of the art" can still be simultaneously really close to the top, very sudden, very cheap, and from one small private firm.
    - rafaelmn 1y ago
      Not really with the EU data sources disclosure mindset, GDPR and all that. China has a leg up in the data game because they care about copyright/privacy and IP even less than US companies. EU is supposedly booting US companies because of this.
      - ben_w 1y ago
        The data sources is kinda what this court case is about, and even here on HN a lot of people get very annoyed by the application of the "open source" label to model weights that don't have the source disclosure the EU calls for. GDPR is about personally identifiable humans. I'm not sure how critical that information really is to these models, though given the difficulty of deleting it from a trained model when found, yes I agree it poses a huge practical problem.
        rafaelmn 1y ago
        > and even here on HN a lot of people get very annoyed by the application of the "open source" label to model weights that don't have the source disclosure the EU calls for. That's because they are obviously trained on copyrighted content but nobody wants to admit it openly because that opens them to even more legal trouble. Meanwhile China has no problem violating copyright or IP so they will gladly gobble up whatever they can. I don't think you can really compete in this space with the EU mindset, US is playing it smart and leaving this to play out before regulating. This is why EU is not the place for these kinds of innovations, the bureaucrats and the people aren't willing to tolerate disruption.
selcuka 1y ago
What about the other way around? Why don't we see a US court order that is in conflict with EU privacy laws as a political catastrophe, too?
- philipov 1y ago
  Because courts are (wrongly) viewed as not being political, and public opinion hasn't caught up with reality yet.
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    The court system as a whole is more beholden to laws as written than politics. And that's a key institution in a democracy, given the frequency with which either the executive or legislative branches try to do illegal things (defined by constitutions and/or previously passed laws).
    - philipov 1y ago
      Yes, courts ought to be apolitical. Just that recently, especially the supreme court has not been meeting that expectation.
      - StanislavPetrov 1y ago
        Courts have always been political, which is why "jurisdiction shopping" has been a thing for decades. The Supreme Court, especially, has always been political, which is why one of the biggest issues in political campaigns is who is going to be able to nominate new justices. Most people of all political persuasions view courts as apolitical when those courts issue rulings in that affirm their beliefs, and political when they rule against them. You're right though, in a perfect world courts would be apolitical.
        intended 1y ago
        The American Supreme Court could have been balanced though. Sadly, one team plays to win, the other team wants to be in a democracy. The issue is not the politics of the court, but the enforced Partisanship which took hold of the Republican Party post watergate. All systems can be bent, broken, or subverted. Still, we need to make systems which do the best within the bounds of reality.
DocTomoe 1y ago
Without trying to become too political, but thanks to recent trade developments, right now the US is under special scrutiny to begin with, and goodwill towards US companies - or courts - has virtually evaporated. I can see that factoring in in a decision to penalise an US company when it breaks EU law, US court order or not.
romanovcode 1y ago
Why? I would see it 2 years ago but now every other platform has completely catched-up to ChatGPT. The LeChat or whatever the French alternative is just as good.

by a2128 1y ago

yatopifo 1y ago

Ultimately, American companies will be pushed out of the EU market. It’s not going to happen overnight, but the outcome is unavoidable in light of the ongoing system collapse in the US.

rafaelmn 1y ago
EU software scene would take a decade to catch up. Only alternative being if AI really delivers on being a force multiplier - but even then EU would not have access to SOTA internally.
- blagund 1y ago
  What does the EU lack? Is it the big corp infra? Or something more fundamental?
  - KoolKat23 1y ago
    Big corpo cash and big risk appetite.
  - inglor_cz 1y ago
    In my opinion, we lack two things: a) highly qualified people, even European natives move to Silicon Valley. There is a famous photo of the OpenAI core team with 6 Polish engineers and only 5 American ones; b) culture of calculated risk when it comes to investment. Here, bankruptcy is an albatross around your neck, both legally and culturally, and is considered a sign of you being fundamentally inept instead of maybe just a misalignment with the market or even bad luck. You'd better succeed on your first try, or your options for funding will evaporate.
    - dukeyukey 1y ago
      Worth pointing out that DeepMind was founded in London, the HQ is still here, and so is the founder and CEO. I've lived in North London for 8 years now, there are _loads_ of current-and-former DeepMind AI people here. Now that OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral have offices here the talent density is just going up. On risk, we're hardly the Valley, but a failed startup isn't a black mark at all. It's a big plus in most tech circles.
      - inglor_cz 1y ago
        The UK is a bit different in this regard, same as Scandinavia. But in many continental countries, bankruptcy is a serious legal stigma. You will end up on public "insolvency lists" for years, which means that no bank will touch you with a 5 m pole and few people will even be willing to rent you or your new startup office space. You may even struggle to get banal contracts such as "five SIMs with data" from mobile phone operators. There seems to be an underlying assumption that people who go bankrupt are either fatally inept or fraudsters, and need to be kept apart from the "healthy" economy in order not to endanger it.
- ben_w 1y ago
  Given what happened with DeepSeek, "not state of the art" can still be simultaneously really close to the top, very sudden, very cheap, and from one small private firm.
  - rafaelmn 1y ago
    Not really with the EU data sources disclosure mindset, GDPR and all that. China has a leg up in the data game because they care about copyright/privacy and IP even less than US companies. EU is supposedly booting US companies because of this.
    - ben_w 1y ago
      The data sources is kinda what this court case is about, and even here on HN a lot of people get very annoyed by the application of the "open source" label to model weights that don't have the source disclosure the EU calls for. GDPR is about personally identifiable humans. I'm not sure how critical that information really is to these models, though given the difficulty of deleting it from a trained model when found, yes I agree it poses a huge practical problem.
      - rafaelmn 1y ago
        > and even here on HN a lot of people get very annoyed by the application of the "open source" label to model weights that don't have the source disclosure the EU calls for. That's because they are obviously trained on copyrighted content but nobody wants to admit it openly because that opens them to even more legal trouble. Meanwhile China has no problem violating copyright or IP so they will gladly gobble up whatever they can. I don't think you can really compete in this space with the EU mindset, US is playing it smart and leaving this to play out before regulating. This is why EU is not the place for these kinds of innovations, the bureaucrats and the people aren't willing to tolerate disruption.

selcuka 1y ago

What about the other way around? Why don't we see a US court order that is in conflict with EU privacy laws as a political catastrophe, too?

philipov 1y ago
Because courts are (wrongly) viewed as not being political, and public opinion hasn't caught up with reality yet.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  The court system as a whole is more beholden to laws as written than politics. And that's a key institution in a democracy, given the frequency with which either the executive or legislative branches try to do illegal things (defined by constitutions and/or previously passed laws).
  - philipov 1y ago
    Yes, courts ought to be apolitical. Just that recently, especially the supreme court has not been meeting that expectation.
    - StanislavPetrov 1y ago
      Courts have always been political, which is why "jurisdiction shopping" has been a thing for decades. The Supreme Court, especially, has always been political, which is why one of the biggest issues in political campaigns is who is going to be able to nominate new justices. Most people of all political persuasions view courts as apolitical when those courts issue rulings in that affirm their beliefs, and political when they rule against them. You're right though, in a perfect world courts would be apolitical.
      - intended 1y ago
        The American Supreme Court could have been balanced though. Sadly, one team plays to win, the other team wants to be in a democracy. The issue is not the politics of the court, but the enforced Partisanship which took hold of the Republican Party post watergate. All systems can be bent, broken, or subverted. Still, we need to make systems which do the best within the bounds of reality.

DocTomoe 1y ago

Without trying to become too political, but thanks to recent trade developments, right now the US is under special scrutiny to begin with, and goodwill towards US companies - or courts - has virtually evaporated. I can see that factoring in in a decision to penalise an US company when it breaks EU law, US court order or not.

romanovcode 1y ago

Why? I would see it 2 years ago but now every other platform has completely catched-up to ChatGPT. The LeChat or whatever the French alternative is just as good.