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It's a tricky balance to strike. I don't want EU to fall behind further in the AI race, and I do want them to be more competitive in the tech landscape. At the

It's a tricky balance to strike. I don't want EU to fall behind further in the AI race, and I do want them to be more competitive in the tech landscape. At the moment, EU really isn't competitive in tech (and neither in tech salaries) and it leads to a certain amount of 'brain drain' as people move abroad. So while I do understand the need for regulations, they shouldn't regulate themselves into irrelevance. I don't think there's an easy solution to this.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mjburgess 1y ago
But what is 'tech'? When we say the EU isn't competitive in 'tech', what technology capacity do they lack? I think 'tech' as a category doesnt make much sense any more. It's like saying 'road-based business'. Most companies are 'tech' companies. Ignoring the technical element, what are US megacorps that account for all the GDP growth of the last while? Mostly ad market monopolies, then mostly massive-scale IP theft, etc. I think the EU is 'behind' the US only in it's inability to be well-positioned to build massive rent-seeking megacorps. I dont see where-else this gap is supposed to be. What, on 'tech' should the EU be doing differently? Just allowing megacorps to add 30% to every transaction? If this US tech bubble bursts, it's not clear that the EU won't be better positioned to pick up the pieces.
- whimsicalism 1y ago
  > Mostly ad market monopolies, then mostly massive-scale IP theft, etc. Good point. I think that the EU has an opportunity to really grow here by focusing on intellectual property enforcement, patents, copyright, and generally more strict enforcement on making sure returns for ideas go to the first person to think of them. The EU already has a pretty strong governance lead and should double down on where its strengths lie.
  - immibis 1y ago
    Definitely! Preventing as much innovation as possible is always good for an economy.
    - whimsicalism 1y ago
      Sorry, I think I saw a similar comment recently - did you pay royalties?
    - piva00 1y ago
      Define "innovation", it's such an overused umbrella term that it's lost any meaning, usually when I read it in comments like yours I simply have no idea what you mean by it.
- Muromec 1y ago
  > what technology capacity do they lack? Giving money to random tech schmoocks and seeing the valuation of their thing gettign to 1B, then lobbying for laws to make it monopoly. This kind of thing. That and selling icecream flavor preferences of 1B people to guess who is more susceptible to brainwashing, so you friends can get reelected. All very nice technology, including the one which destroys entire solar system to make a sacrifice big enough to summon Cthulhu.
logifail 1y ago
> I don't want EU to fall behind further in the AI race Unless something changes, that's going to continue :( According to Jensen Huang, "the AI race" will be determined primarily by the price of electricity.[0] Until very recently the EU stated that being carbon neutral by 2050 was of overriding importance[1]. Which is it? [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/china-is-going-to-win-the-ai-race-nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-decries-the-price-of-electricity-in-the-us-contrasts-it-with-chinas-subsidized-pricing https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell... [1] https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/climate-strategies-targets/2050-long-term-strategy_en https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/climate-strategies-ta...
- flir 1y ago
  China's target is 2060.
  - logifail 1y ago
    > China's target is 2060 "China plans to keep building coal-fired power plants through 2027 in regions where they are needed to meet peak power demand or stabilise the grid, according to government guidelines" https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-keep-building-coal-plants-through-2027-state-planner-says-2025-04-14/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-...
    - flir 1y ago
      And yet they used less coal in 2024 than they did in 2023. Maybe it's just an economic downturn. But... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-breaks-more-records-with-massive-build-up-of-wind-and-solar-power https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-breaks-m... I just don't buy that carbon neutrality necessarily results in expensive electricity.
  - philjohn 1y ago
    China doesn't have one side of the political spectrum trying to shutter any talk of renewables, they're just installing them at breakneck speed.
chronciger 1y ago
>I don't want EU to fall behind further in the AI race Buddy, EU didn’t even sign up for the race
- Insanity 1y ago
  Well there is Mistral.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  It's not a race anyway. The Americans always make things into one. But it's mainly their obsession with being "number one". Being number two or three is just fine. We will catch up. What I'm more worried about is that they'll drag us down into another financial crash like in 2007 when the AI bubble bursts and investors get pissed that they've spent trillions on hot air. I don't mean to be a dick but I'm getting a bit tired of all this constant survival of the fittest mentality and the idea that they have the best country in the world when in fact it is pretty awful if you're not rich (especially when in poor health). There's a lot of things we do a lot better in Europe and I'm glad to live here. Especially the last year. I don't want Europe to become more like the US.
  - chronciger 1y ago
    > I don't want Europe to become more like the US. Well, we will see. Seems to be happening anyway. Best of luck
    - LunaSea 1y ago
      I just hope that Europe won't have to pay for your fuckup like we did last time with your real estate bubble.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - gulfofamerica 11mo ago
    "If you're not first you're last" Ricky Bobby
l5870uoo9y 1y ago
Another factor in being competitive in artificial intelligence is the price of electricity, which is four times higher in the EU than in the US. Changing this would require a break with the “green industrial complex”, which is close to untouchable (to many EU politicians).
- xienze 1y ago
  > Changing this would require a break with the “green industrial complex”, which is close to untouchable (to many EU politicians). I’m sure like with everything “green” they can get around having to use cheaper, dirty energy by buying enough indulgences^w carbon offsets.
  - whimsicalism 1y ago
    Depending on the class of carbon offset, I think the comparison with indulgences is unnecessarily critical when it actually does net fewer emissions.
    - Muromec 1y ago
      The comparison is spot on -- if you smoke sigs and pay somebody who doesn't, you will still get cancer and the other person can get it too if you breath it out into their face. Until there is no commercial carbon capture, it's all scam and accounting tricks. Sure, paying somebody else to decarbonise instead of yourself works in decarbonisign somebody else, but the emissions should drop across the board all the way to zero.
      - whimsicalism 1y ago
        > The comparison is spot on -- if you smoke sigs and pay somebody who doesn't, you will still get cancer and the other person can get it too if you breath it out into their face. Right - carbon emissions aren't internalized in the same way as cigarettes.
- whimsicalism 1y ago
mrtksn 1y ago
I don't think its about regulation, its the mindset. Since some time there's this trend of indie European developers with some who managed to make themselves a name like Peter Levels and be hosted on big podcasters and these people keep calling their projects "startups" and making about as much as a high street kebab shop(in this community they like to boost about their revenues). Levels is famous enough to be interviewed by Lex Friedman and in this 4 hours talk they mention how an American company just took his idea and copied his ways and made 30 million dollars by making an iOS app of it and Levels talks as if it never crossed his mind to be the person who did it and make serious money. Also he constantly complains about regulations etc but some striking things come out of it from time to time. For example he complains that its hard to get access to the EU's supercomputer and compares this to US where you can just buy tens of thousands of GPUs from Nvidia and not go through the EUs bureaucracy and never occurs to him that you can do the same in EU and the the EU funded supercomputer is just an extra. Its just so weird, the mentality is very different. Maybe it works when you are working on a niche and it is a good way of making a living or even getting rich but that's not how you build empires. The regulations are just a meme at this point, no one seems to know what regulation stopped them from doing the thing they will do. IMHO the reality is that you can just built the thing in USA and access EU markets from there and there's no need for replication in EU, therefore EU has plenty of startups but very few scale ups and unicorns and that's not going to change unless EU closes its markets to USA.
- mentalgear 1y ago
  Levels is all hype, no depth. It’s absurd that he frames himself as somehow “disadvantaged” by the EU’s HPC access rules, when those systems are explicitly reserved for scientific research, not for cranking out AI avatars or the latest “AI-generated game” cash-grab. Complaining that you can’t use taxpayer-funded supercomputers for your next hype cycle isn’t a sign of innovation - it’s Levels' so often displayed self-entitlement and pseudo-intellectualism.
  - mrtksn 1y ago
    Sure but he became the poster child of a certain trend. Besides, you can see the mentality all over the place. Contrary to what the social media makes you believe, EU isn't run on tickets income for old building - the place is packed with high tech niche businesses but they don't seem to be interested much in scaling. Even the Ruby on Rails guy, David Heinemeier Hansson, never went for dominating an industry, becoming a platform with investor money and become an Unicorn. They just keep making money. It's really cool, he loves his life and He's probably much happier than Zuck or Musk but with that approach you end up staying a niche instead of a behemoth like the American companies. In USA the instinct seems to be how to make this global and take all the money. The European approach is good for society IMHO, no enshitification once you circle the market however when your market is open to people who are willing to do the put a lot of money first, kill the competition be a monopoly or duopoly and then screw everyone and and make filthy level of money then you become one of those killed.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

mjburgess 1y ago

But what is 'tech'? When we say the EU isn't competitive in 'tech', what technology capacity do they lack? I think 'tech' as a category doesnt make much sense any more. It's like saying 'road-based business'. Most companies are 'tech' companies. Ignoring the technical element, what are US megacorps that account for all the GDP growth of the last while? Mostly ad market monopolies, then mostly massive-scale IP theft, etc. I think the EU is 'behind' the US only in it's inability to be well-positioned to build massive rent-seeking megacorps. I dont see where-else this gap is supposed to be. What, on 'tech' should the EU be doing differently? Just allowing megacorps to add 30% to every transaction? If this US tech bubble bursts, it's not clear that the EU won't be better positioned to pick up the pieces.

whimsicalism 1y ago
> Mostly ad market monopolies, then mostly massive-scale IP theft, etc. Good point. I think that the EU has an opportunity to really grow here by focusing on intellectual property enforcement, patents, copyright, and generally more strict enforcement on making sure returns for ideas go to the first person to think of them. The EU already has a pretty strong governance lead and should double down on where its strengths lie.
- immibis 1y ago
  Definitely! Preventing as much innovation as possible is always good for an economy.
  - whimsicalism 1y ago
    Sorry, I think I saw a similar comment recently - did you pay royalties?
  - piva00 1y ago
    Define "innovation", it's such an overused umbrella term that it's lost any meaning, usually when I read it in comments like yours I simply have no idea what you mean by it.
Muromec 1y ago
> what technology capacity do they lack? Giving money to random tech schmoocks and seeing the valuation of their thing gettign to 1B, then lobbying for laws to make it monopoly. This kind of thing. That and selling icecream flavor preferences of 1B people to guess who is more susceptible to brainwashing, so you friends can get reelected. All very nice technology, including the one which destroys entire solar system to make a sacrifice big enough to summon Cthulhu.

logifail 1y ago

> I don't want EU to fall behind further in the AI race Unless something changes, that's going to continue :( According to Jensen Huang, "the AI race" will be determined primarily by the price of electricity.[0] Until very recently the EU stated that being carbon neutral by 2050 was of overriding importance[1]. Which is it? [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/china-is-going-to-win-the-ai-race-nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-decries-the-price-of-electricity-in-the-us-contrasts-it-with-chinas-subsidized-pricing https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell... [1] https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/climate-strategies-targets/2050-long-term-strategy_en https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/climate-strategies-ta...

flir 1y ago
China's target is 2060.
- logifail 1y ago
  > China's target is 2060 "China plans to keep building coal-fired power plants through 2027 in regions where they are needed to meet peak power demand or stabilise the grid, according to government guidelines" https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-keep-building-coal-plants-through-2027-state-planner-says-2025-04-14/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-...
  - flir 1y ago
    And yet they used less coal in 2024 than they did in 2023. Maybe it's just an economic downturn. But... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-breaks-more-records-with-massive-build-up-of-wind-and-solar-power https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-breaks-m... I just don't buy that carbon neutrality necessarily results in expensive electricity.
- philjohn 1y ago
  China doesn't have one side of the political spectrum trying to shutter any talk of renewables, they're just installing them at breakneck speed.

chronciger 1y ago

>I don't want EU to fall behind further in the AI race Buddy, EU didn’t even sign up for the race

Insanity 1y ago
Well there is Mistral.
wkat4242 1y ago
It's not a race anyway. The Americans always make things into one. But it's mainly their obsession with being "number one". Being number two or three is just fine. We will catch up. What I'm more worried about is that they'll drag us down into another financial crash like in 2007 when the AI bubble bursts and investors get pissed that they've spent trillions on hot air. I don't mean to be a dick but I'm getting a bit tired of all this constant survival of the fittest mentality and the idea that they have the best country in the world when in fact it is pretty awful if you're not rich (especially when in poor health). There's a lot of things we do a lot better in Europe and I'm glad to live here. Especially the last year. I don't want Europe to become more like the US.
- chronciger 1y ago
  > I don't want Europe to become more like the US. Well, we will see. Seems to be happening anyway. Best of luck
  - LunaSea 1y ago
    I just hope that Europe won't have to pay for your fuckup like we did last time with your real estate bubble.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- gulfofamerica 11mo ago
  "If you're not first you're last" Ricky Bobby

l5870uoo9y 1y ago

Another factor in being competitive in artificial intelligence is the price of electricity, which is four times higher in the EU than in the US. Changing this would require a break with the “green industrial complex”, which is close to untouchable (to many EU politicians).

xienze 1y ago
> Changing this would require a break with the “green industrial complex”, which is close to untouchable (to many EU politicians). I’m sure like with everything “green” they can get around having to use cheaper, dirty energy by buying enough indulgences^w carbon offsets.
- whimsicalism 1y ago
  Depending on the class of carbon offset, I think the comparison with indulgences is unnecessarily critical when it actually does net fewer emissions.
  - Muromec 1y ago
    The comparison is spot on -- if you smoke sigs and pay somebody who doesn't, you will still get cancer and the other person can get it too if you breath it out into their face. Until there is no commercial carbon capture, it's all scam and accounting tricks. Sure, paying somebody else to decarbonise instead of yourself works in decarbonisign somebody else, but the emissions should drop across the board all the way to zero.
    - whimsicalism 1y ago
      > The comparison is spot on -- if you smoke sigs and pay somebody who doesn't, you will still get cancer and the other person can get it too if you breath it out into their face. Right - carbon emissions aren't internalized in the same way as cigarettes.
whimsicalism 1y ago

mrtksn 1y ago

I don't think its about regulation, its the mindset. Since some time there's this trend of indie European developers with some who managed to make themselves a name like Peter Levels and be hosted on big podcasters and these people keep calling their projects "startups" and making about as much as a high street kebab shop(in this community they like to boost about their revenues). Levels is famous enough to be interviewed by Lex Friedman and in this 4 hours talk they mention how an American company just took his idea and copied his ways and made 30 million dollars by making an iOS app of it and Levels talks as if it never crossed his mind to be the person who did it and make serious money. Also he constantly complains about regulations etc but some striking things come out of it from time to time. For example he complains that its hard to get access to the EU's supercomputer and compares this to US where you can just buy tens of thousands of GPUs from Nvidia and not go through the EUs bureaucracy and never occurs to him that you can do the same in EU and the the EU funded supercomputer is just an extra. Its just so weird, the mentality is very different. Maybe it works when you are working on a niche and it is a good way of making a living or even getting rich but that's not how you build empires. The regulations are just a meme at this point, no one seems to know what regulation stopped them from doing the thing they will do. IMHO the reality is that you can just built the thing in USA and access EU markets from there and there's no need for replication in EU, therefore EU has plenty of startups but very few scale ups and unicorns and that's not going to change unless EU closes its markets to USA.

mentalgear 1y ago
Levels is all hype, no depth. It’s absurd that he frames himself as somehow “disadvantaged” by the EU’s HPC access rules, when those systems are explicitly reserved for scientific research, not for cranking out AI avatars or the latest “AI-generated game” cash-grab. Complaining that you can’t use taxpayer-funded supercomputers for your next hype cycle isn’t a sign of innovation - it’s Levels' so often displayed self-entitlement and pseudo-intellectualism.
- mrtksn 1y ago
  Sure but he became the poster child of a certain trend. Besides, you can see the mentality all over the place. Contrary to what the social media makes you believe, EU isn't run on tickets income for old building - the place is packed with high tech niche businesses but they don't seem to be interested much in scaling. Even the Ruby on Rails guy, David Heinemeier Hansson, never went for dominating an industry, becoming a platform with investor money and become an Unicorn. They just keep making money. It's really cool, he loves his life and He's probably much happier than Zuck or Musk but with that approach you end up staying a niche instead of a behemoth like the American companies. In USA the instinct seems to be how to make this global and take all the money. The European approach is good for society IMHO, no enshitification once you circle the market however when your market is open to people who are willing to do the put a lot of money first, kill the competition be a monopoly or duopoly and then screw everyone and and make filthy level of money then you become one of those killed.