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I wonder how a US lab hasn't dumped truckloads of cash into various laps to ensure these researchers have a place at their lab
by softwaredoug 8mo ago
I wonder how a US lab hasn't dumped truckloads of cash into various laps to ensure these researchers have a place at their lab
- mft_ 8mo agoIndeed; or, Europe badly needs a competitive model to hedge against US political nonsense.
- ivan_gammel 8mo agoOffering „You are welcome“ relocation package to Anthropic might be a good idea.
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo agoGiven how American govt. has treated Anthropic, I think you might be right. EU truly has a remarkable opportunity to make Anthropic/Claude European.
- petcat 8mo agoThis US administration (or any admin) would almost certainly impose export controls on US AI technology before it would allow one of the frontier model providers to be acquired/relocate outside the US. It did the same thing when ASML wanted to acquire Cymer (California company that provides the EUV light source technology). The acquisition was only allowed under strict technology sharing/export agreements with the Dutch government. Europe really just needs to rally behind Mistral. That's where they should dump their cash.
- ivan_gammel 8mo agoHaving one „champion“ is flawed European approach. We need local competition and headhunting to make it fly.
- azinman2 8mo agoHard to compete in an environment that’s anti-996 and the pay is so much less.
- ivan_gammel 8mo agoYes. 996 is for lazy people.
- dvdkon 8mo agoDo you consider high working hours to be a benefit akin to higher pay? I think fewer hours and less money is a fair deal for employees.
- azinman2 8mo agoFair deal for the employees but hard to compete against smart, well resourced people who are working 996. Everything with AI is moving so fast that moving slower makes you irrelevant.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- fc417fc802 8mo agoCan they actually prevent it though? In typical cases there would be IP licenses involved. But in this case it's a valuation based (AFAICT) on a team of people plus their infra. What happens if they all just happened to get hired by "AnthropicEU GmbH" a new entity which has been gifted hundreds of millions in computing resources?
- kelvinjps10 8mo agoBut can they restrict the researchers from leaving? What if they are just offered regular jobs by a new European company? What the US has done is dictatorial, but this would be even worse if they try to do it.
- lejalv 8mo agoGiven what Amodei thinks of spying non-US citizens, that's a hard pass from me. If you are that loyal (servile) to your country leaders, don't go elsewhere when you "discover" they are thugs. Put up with it or revolt (as Iranians are being asked to do).
- impossiblefork 8mo agoI'm not sure goals are totally aligned though. The current models are created by enormous expense. We know that many stages are done incorrectly. I am confident that they can be replicated without any unique US knowledge. At the moment my impression is instead that the issue is computational resources. It's important to stay near the frontier though, and to build up ones capacity to train large models. Consequently I don't think we need Anthropic. It wouldn't be terrible if they came. Especially if they picked a nice location. Barcelona would be very nice, for example.
- ekianjo 8mo agoThere is no capital in the EU
- rcbdev 8mo agoIt's all tied up in real estate and horribly inefficient savings accounts.
- cmrdporcupine 8mo agoAnthropic has gone out of their way to make a point about how much they love and admire the US state and its defense sector. Only drawing the line at a very far point and even when they drew the line it was with a big thing about how they believe in the American defense sector blah blah blah. In any case, there's no way Anthropic's investors in Silicon Valley would countenance such a move. Also, I'm biased the logical place is Canada, not Europe. Much of the fundamental/foundational research on LLMs, and a large part of the talent, came from universities in Canada anyways.
- vasco 8mo agoLook up how many of the main people are Polish.
- tiahura 8mo agoCompetitive models are illegal in the EU.
- mijoharas 8mo agoIt'd be great if they went to Mistral!
- bilbo0s 8mo agoThey probably have tried, but you have to have more cash than those researchers feel they can get starting their own lab. When you consider the fact that their new startup lab would have the entire nation of China as, in effect, a captive market; you start to see how almost any amount of money would be too little to convince them not to make a run at that new startup. If money is their aim. I think Alibaba needs to just give these guys a blank check. Let them fill it in themselves. Absent that, I'm pretty sure they'll make their own startup. I do think it'd be a big loss for the rest of the world though if they close whatever model their startup comes up with.
- simgt 8mo ago> I do think it'd be a big loss for the rest of the world though if they close whatever model their startup comes up with. That's very likely to happen once the gap with OpenAI/Anthropic has been closed and they managed to pop the bubble.
- bobthepanda 8mo agoI don’t know, the EV bubble deflated and Chinese firms are still pumping them out with subsidies like their life depends on it.
- velcrovan 8mo agoWhat the US has done is dumped truckloads of cash to make it likely that as a legal immigrant you will be abducted and sent to a camp.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- riddlemethat 8mo ago[flagged]
- mattnewton 8mo agoI feel like we would disagree on the role of immigration in the US but I really appreciate you calling out how the current administration’s approach is only effective at making viral clips online. Meta comment, but it’s refreshing to talk with people who have different goals while still referencing a shared reality. Removing the masks and adding cameras shouldn’t be controversial unless your goal really is to make a paramilitary force for the president.
- WarmWash 8mo agoMaking viral clips is exactly what they want. Their goal is for every one person violently detained, 10 decide to leave on their own, and 100 decide to not come in the first place.
- ecshafer 8mo agoChina is also giving them dump trucks full of cash though. Plus you have to content with the nationalism reason (unfortunately this has died off in America for too many). The idea of building your country is valued for most Chinese I have met. Plus China is incredibly nice to live in, especially if you have lots of money and/or connections. So you can work in China, get paid lots of money, feel like you are doing good. Or In America you can get paid lots of money, and get yelled at by people online because the Government wants to use your model.
- danny_codes 8mo agoChina city life is amazingly convenient. Trains and subways are just such an enormous quality of life boost. Add to that the relative cleanliness of having nearly zero homelessness and you’ve got something very compelling. I will say we are winning in accessibility. China doesn’t have much of a ramp game
- softwaredoug 8mo agoAll very true. I wonder if you max out your options in China. It seems the Party is suspicious of ambition and high profile winners. I'm sure you can live comfortably, but there's a ceiling.
- bdangubic 8mo agowhat is the issue with having a ceiling?
- gaoshan 8mo agoICE has been detaining Chinese people in my area (and going door to door in at least one neighborhood where a lot of Chinese and Indians live). I was hearing about this just last week as word spread amongst the Chinese community here (Ohio) to make sure you have some legal documentation beyond just your driver's license on you at all times for protection. People will hear about this through the grapevine and it has a massive (and rightly so) chilling effect. US labs can try but with US government behaving like it is I don't think they will have much luck. *edit: not that it matters, but since MAGA can't help but assume, these are all US citizens and green card holders that I am referring to.
- sourcegrift 8mo agoYes. Yes, so true. And the phd types building these models are probably even scared in China that ICE will fly there to deport them.
- jwolfe 8mo agoThis thread is about bringing these people to the US.
- swiftcoder 8mo agoThere's no huge reason to bring them to the US. Plenty of US corporations have maintain overseas offices. Even if its impolitic to employ them directly in China, you can employ them in other offices (for example, Amazon has been known to do this with their Singapore offices)
- user34283 8mo agoThis thread is largely pointless political back-and-forth were predictably the comments with a more positive opinion on current US immigration enforcement will be flagged. To get back to the original point, personally I doubt sentiment on US immigration enforcement would be so significant a deterrent for Chinese talent, who may not share the political views of the American left for whom this is a big concern.
- mmaunder 8mo agoYeah that was my first thought is it’s a tit for tat poach. They got the Gemini researcher so google responded in kind.
- lynndotpy 8mo agoWell, the problem aren't just the NSF funding cuts. Everyone else is already dumping truckloads of cash. There's also the public health situation (who wants measles or polio?), the risk of retaliatory attacks from the countries we're at war with, etc. You could write paragraphs about why the US is less attractive to researchers. When I was a deep learning PhD in the first Trump administration, US universities were already very deeply affected by the Muslim ban, and so a lot of talent ended up in other countries. Sibling commentators are rightfully pointing out that foreigners, especially those who would not be recognized as white, face an onerous and risky customs process with long-term and increasing risks of deportation. When you see a headline like the NIST labs abruptly restricting foreign scientists, _everything_ else feels uncertain. Even if someone doesn't believe they're personally at risk for deportation, they're still seeing everything else. And then it all boils down to a reputational thing. The era where we were the top choice for research is in the past. If you start a PhD in the US on your resume during this era, you might be anticipating how you'll answe the question of why you weren't good enough to get accepted somewhere better.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- sciencejerk 8mo agoWhere do researchers go instead of USA then? Genuinely curious
- lynndotpy 8mo agoCanada has always been appealing for people who were set on the United States but taken aback by the political climate. This goes back decades (famously in the AI space, Reagan is why Canada got Hinton instead of the US) but is exacerbated as of late. China also has pretty amazing investment in tech companies and research institutions, but Mandarin doesn't yet enjoy the same widespread adoption of English Big caveat that I have the perspective of just one US-based former academic.
- expedition32 8mo agoIf memory serves the father of the Chinese bomb studied in America and went back. It may be inconceivable to Americans but Chinese patriotism exists. Besides you can live a comfortable life in PRC nowadays or live in a racist America.
- seanmcdirmid 8mo agoThey already kind of do, but I think anyone who was into US money has already left for it, and the money China is throwing at the problem is pretty good also. You can also have a lot more influence in a Chinese company without having to adopt a weird new American corporate culture.