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The UK and Europe welcome the US Footgun Operation. Plenty of opportunities for those top researchers and engineers over here. The EU (which is not the same as

The UK and Europe welcome the US Footgun Operation. Plenty of opportunities for those top researchers and engineers over here. The EU (which is not the same as Europe), is also looking a bit sharper on AI regulation at the moment (for now… not perfect but sharper etc etc).

thimabi 7mo ago
I agree. And even if those workers stay in the U.S., there’s absolutely no guarantee that they’ll do their best to favor the government’s interests — quite the opposite, if anything. At the end of the day it’s a matter of incentives, and good knowledge work can’t simply be forced out of people that are unwilling to cooperate.
piskov 7mo ago
Do UK and Europe have hardware manufacturing for those researches to work with once US imposes GPU export restrictions to them at the first whiff of competition/threat?
- BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
  Yes. And the US can’t realistically stop our well-funded homegrown AI Hardware startups from manufacturing with TSMC. This is part of why there’s funding from the EU to develop Sovereign AI capabilities, currently focused on designing our own hardware. We’re nothing like as far behind as you might expect in terms of tech, just in terms of scale. Also, while US export restrictions might make things awkward for a short while, it wouldn’t stop European innovation. The chips still flow, our own hardware companies would scale faster due to demand increase, and there’s the adage about adversity being the parent of all innovation (or however it goes).
  - piskov 7mo ago
    > And the US can’t realistically stop our well-funded homegrown AI Hardware startups from manufacturing with TSMC See what happened to Russian Baikal production on TSMC
    - BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
      You mean because of the international sanctions that needed Taiwanese, British and Dutch support to be effective? Or because of the revoked processor design licenses from the British company Arm (which is still UK headquartered… despite being NASDAQ listed and largely owned by Japanese firm SoftBank)? Or perhaps you think the US could stop us using the 12nm fabs being built by TSMC on European soil? Or could stop us manufacturing RISC-V-based chips (Swiss-headquartered technology)? The US is weak in digital-logic silicon fabrication and it knows it. That’s why it’s been so panicked about Intel and been trying to get TSMC to build fabs on US soil. They’re pouring tens of billions of dollars into trying to claw back ownership and control of it, but it’s not like Europe or China or others are standing still on it either.
      - piskov 7mo ago
        > Or perhaps you think the US could stop us using the 12nm fabs being built by TSMC on European soil? Being built as in not operating yet? 12 nm gpu is what? Nvidia 1080/2060 level? Those top researchers mentioned would love to train on that. Also how many gpus would be made annually? Also what about CPU? You gonna use risc-v? With what toolchain? Chinese could pull it off in a few years, yeah. EU? Nah. Started thinking about sovereignty too late compared to China
        geysersam 7mo ago
        Things can change quickly. Give it a decade.
        BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
        Nvidia uses RISC-V as the main controller cores in its GPUs. They’re also exploring replacing their Arm CPU with RISC-V I hear. Meta recently bought Rivos in a huge show of confidence for RISC-V across processor types for server class. As for fabrication, the poster above has a lot to learn about both the US’ current weak at-home capabilities (and everything they’re building relies on European suppliers for all the key technology and machines etc.) and about the scaling properties of sub-14nm nodes. Any export controls or sanctions to prevent Europe using American-designed Taiwan-manufactured chips would result in American being cutoff from everything they need to build fabs on US soil. It would backfire massively. Lastly, the UK and EU already have cutting edge AI Inference chips, and the ones for training are coming this year. Full stack integration (server box, racks, etc) is also being developed this year. We’re not a decade away from doing this - we’re 18 months away. Deployment at scale will take longer - not having Nvidia as competition would be a huge boon for that haha!
- sho_hn 7mo ago
  The EUV and other factory equipment everyone's using is predominantly European. High-end testing tools used in R&D are largely European. The fabs aren't, and that is no small thing. The tech stack is there though. It's pretty tiresome that the HN audience keeps assuming Europe doesn't have "tech" because it doesn't have Facebook. Where do you think all the wealth comes from? Europe is all over everyone's R&D and supply chain.
  - BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
    I sometimes wonder whether people realise which country ASML is based in, and which country their major suppliers are in (e.g. optics: Germany)
- axus 7mo ago
  The GPUs and AIUs aren't being manufactured in the US.
SauntSolaire 7mo ago
To make 1/10th the salary they're making now?
- BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
  You seem to have a very ill-informed view of UK/EU salaries in this particular sector; And also: yeah, people take salary hits to go do things they believe in (this is like, the entire premise of the underpaid American startup founder model) - it should come as no surprise that people are willing to forgo pay for reasons other than just building their own business / making themselves personally wealthy.
  - SauntSolaire 7mo ago
    We're talking about the "brightest scientist and engineers" in the AI sector, you may be underestimating US salaries for the people that's referring to. And no, working remotely for US companies doesn't count.
- readthenotes1 7mo ago
  That much?
  - ambicapter 7mo ago
    No, of course not.
    - SauntSolaire 7mo ago
      For the "brightest scientist and engineers" in the AI sector? I wouldn't be so sure.
- lemontheme 7mo ago
  First, the difference isn’t that big in the economically stronger EU countries. Second, you need to factor in cost of living, which by most accounts is lower. Third, meaningful labor laws and a shared appreciation for work-life balance. And finally, to continue the sweeping generalizations, while we celebrate business acumen, we don’t fetishize wealth. People who flaunt money get made fun of, as do sigma grindset hustle bros. I’ll take a pay cut any day for the ethos of the EU.
dmix 7mo ago
The EU and UK is a long way from attracting top AI talent purely from opportunity and monetary terms. Not to mention UK is arguably further down the mass surveillance pipeline than the US. They’ve always had more aggressive domestic intelligence surveillance laws which was made clear during the Snowden years, they’ve had flock style cameras forever, and they have an anti encryption law pitched seemingly yearly. I’d imagine most top engineers would rather try to push back on the US executive branch overreach than move. At least for the time being.
- BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
  For sure we’re not currently attracting the talent. There’s more to that than just money, but money is significant factor. When it comes to compensation, AI is too broad a category to have a meaningful debate. Hardware or software or mathematics or what kind of person? Etc. I’m not gonna dispute the UK being further down some parts of the road. Not sure what you’d count as top engineers, but I know enough that have been asking about and moving to the UK/EU that it’s been a noticeable reversal of the historic trends. Also, a major slowdown of these kinds of people in the UK/EU wanting to move to the US.
- reaperducer 7mo ago
  The EU and UK is a long way from attracting top AI talent purely from opportunity and monetary terms. Which is why people are talking about this -- it's about ideology now. You may personally be motivated solely by money. Not everybody is you.
  - dmix 7mo ago
    I’m not an AI engineer but it’s not hard to imagine why some bright talent would want to work at the most exciting AI companies in the US while also making 3-10x what they’d make in Europe. Ideology is easy to throw around for internet comments but working on the cutting edge stuff next to the brightest minds in the space will always be a major personal draw. Just look at the Manhattan project, I doubt the primary draw for all of those academics was getting to work on a bomb. It was the science, huge funding, and interpersonal company.

thimabi 7mo ago

I agree. And even if those workers stay in the U.S., there’s absolutely no guarantee that they’ll do their best to favor the government’s interests — quite the opposite, if anything. At the end of the day it’s a matter of incentives, and good knowledge work can’t simply be forced out of people that are unwilling to cooperate.

piskov 7mo ago

Do UK and Europe have hardware manufacturing for those researches to work with once US imposes GPU export restrictions to them at the first whiff of competition/threat?

BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
Yes. And the US can’t realistically stop our well-funded homegrown AI Hardware startups from manufacturing with TSMC. This is part of why there’s funding from the EU to develop Sovereign AI capabilities, currently focused on designing our own hardware. We’re nothing like as far behind as you might expect in terms of tech, just in terms of scale. Also, while US export restrictions might make things awkward for a short while, it wouldn’t stop European innovation. The chips still flow, our own hardware companies would scale faster due to demand increase, and there’s the adage about adversity being the parent of all innovation (or however it goes).
- piskov 7mo ago
  > And the US can’t realistically stop our well-funded homegrown AI Hardware startups from manufacturing with TSMC See what happened to Russian Baikal production on TSMC
  - BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
    You mean because of the international sanctions that needed Taiwanese, British and Dutch support to be effective? Or because of the revoked processor design licenses from the British company Arm (which is still UK headquartered… despite being NASDAQ listed and largely owned by Japanese firm SoftBank)? Or perhaps you think the US could stop us using the 12nm fabs being built by TSMC on European soil? Or could stop us manufacturing RISC-V-based chips (Swiss-headquartered technology)? The US is weak in digital-logic silicon fabrication and it knows it. That’s why it’s been so panicked about Intel and been trying to get TSMC to build fabs on US soil. They’re pouring tens of billions of dollars into trying to claw back ownership and control of it, but it’s not like Europe or China or others are standing still on it either.
    - piskov 7mo ago
      > Or perhaps you think the US could stop us using the 12nm fabs being built by TSMC on European soil? Being built as in not operating yet? 12 nm gpu is what? Nvidia 1080/2060 level? Those top researchers mentioned would love to train on that. Also how many gpus would be made annually? Also what about CPU? You gonna use risc-v? With what toolchain? Chinese could pull it off in a few years, yeah. EU? Nah. Started thinking about sovereignty too late compared to China
      - geysersam 7mo ago
        Things can change quickly. Give it a decade.
        BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
        Nvidia uses RISC-V as the main controller cores in its GPUs. They’re also exploring replacing their Arm CPU with RISC-V I hear. Meta recently bought Rivos in a huge show of confidence for RISC-V across processor types for server class. As for fabrication, the poster above has a lot to learn about both the US’ current weak at-home capabilities (and everything they’re building relies on European suppliers for all the key technology and machines etc.) and about the scaling properties of sub-14nm nodes. Any export controls or sanctions to prevent Europe using American-designed Taiwan-manufactured chips would result in American being cutoff from everything they need to build fabs on US soil. It would backfire massively. Lastly, the UK and EU already have cutting edge AI Inference chips, and the ones for training are coming this year. Full stack integration (server box, racks, etc) is also being developed this year. We’re not a decade away from doing this - we’re 18 months away. Deployment at scale will take longer - not having Nvidia as competition would be a huge boon for that haha!
sho_hn 7mo ago
The EUV and other factory equipment everyone's using is predominantly European. High-end testing tools used in R&D are largely European. The fabs aren't, and that is no small thing. The tech stack is there though. It's pretty tiresome that the HN audience keeps assuming Europe doesn't have "tech" because it doesn't have Facebook. Where do you think all the wealth comes from? Europe is all over everyone's R&D and supply chain.
- BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
  I sometimes wonder whether people realise which country ASML is based in, and which country their major suppliers are in (e.g. optics: Germany)
axus 7mo ago
The GPUs and AIUs aren't being manufactured in the US.

SauntSolaire 7mo ago

To make 1/10th the salary they're making now?

BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
You seem to have a very ill-informed view of UK/EU salaries in this particular sector; And also: yeah, people take salary hits to go do things they believe in (this is like, the entire premise of the underpaid American startup founder model) - it should come as no surprise that people are willing to forgo pay for reasons other than just building their own business / making themselves personally wealthy.
- SauntSolaire 7mo ago
  We're talking about the "brightest scientist and engineers" in the AI sector, you may be underestimating US salaries for the people that's referring to. And no, working remotely for US companies doesn't count.
readthenotes1 7mo ago
That much?
- ambicapter 7mo ago
  No, of course not.
  - SauntSolaire 7mo ago
    For the "brightest scientist and engineers" in the AI sector? I wouldn't be so sure.
lemontheme 7mo ago
First, the difference isn’t that big in the economically stronger EU countries. Second, you need to factor in cost of living, which by most accounts is lower. Third, meaningful labor laws and a shared appreciation for work-life balance. And finally, to continue the sweeping generalizations, while we celebrate business acumen, we don’t fetishize wealth. People who flaunt money get made fun of, as do sigma grindset hustle bros. I’ll take a pay cut any day for the ethos of the EU.

dmix 7mo ago

The EU and UK is a long way from attracting top AI talent purely from opportunity and monetary terms. Not to mention UK is arguably further down the mass surveillance pipeline than the US. They’ve always had more aggressive domestic intelligence surveillance laws which was made clear during the Snowden years, they’ve had flock style cameras forever, and they have an anti encryption law pitched seemingly yearly. I’d imagine most top engineers would rather try to push back on the US executive branch overreach than move. At least for the time being.

BitsAndObjects 7mo ago
For sure we’re not currently attracting the talent. There’s more to that than just money, but money is significant factor. When it comes to compensation, AI is too broad a category to have a meaningful debate. Hardware or software or mathematics or what kind of person? Etc. I’m not gonna dispute the UK being further down some parts of the road. Not sure what you’d count as top engineers, but I know enough that have been asking about and moving to the UK/EU that it’s been a noticeable reversal of the historic trends. Also, a major slowdown of these kinds of people in the UK/EU wanting to move to the US.
reaperducer 7mo ago
The EU and UK is a long way from attracting top AI talent purely from opportunity and monetary terms. Which is why people are talking about this -- it's about ideology now. You may personally be motivated solely by money. Not everybody is you.
- dmix 7mo ago
  I’m not an AI engineer but it’s not hard to imagine why some bright talent would want to work at the most exciting AI companies in the US while also making 3-10x what they’d make in Europe. Ideology is easy to throw around for internet comments but working on the cutting edge stuff next to the brightest minds in the space will always be a major personal draw. Just look at the Manhattan project, I doubt the primary draw for all of those academics was getting to work on a bomb. It was the science, huge funding, and interpersonal company.