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I feel that not only is Europe losing its independence to the US and China, but it does not even try to take part in the race. Unlike the US, Europe has no Cal

• ews 4mo ago
  Europe decided to regulate the hell out of foreign AI instead of investing in their own systems. It's sad to see the European continent lost the race to create a decent startup ecosystem (no decent search engines, social networks, cloud, mobile OS) and now it seems to be hellbent in losing this battle.
  • joe_mamba 4mo ago
    >It's sad to see the European continent lost the race to create a decent startup ecosystem What's ironic and sad at the same time is that pre-2022 Russia's Yandex(domestic Russian variant of Google) was lightyears ahead of what EU, a significantly richer and more capable block, had. IIRC, their reverse image search was so good, they had to nerf it because people were using it to find the identity of people from photos. Same for Israel, their tech sector is probably greater than the EU one combined Absolutely shameful how the EU kept managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory over and over.
    • vanviegen 4mo ago
      I think much of that is because European customers (both private and business) tended to prefer American suppliers over suppliers from European countries that were not their own. That may have something to do with most people in IT being quite fluent in English, while European products were all-to-often half-heartedly translated from German/French/Spanish/Polish/Italian/Ukranian. In many cases, well-established and well-liked European services have been supplanted by American counterparts that came later and were not really better in any way. They did usually have much more money to burn though, undercutting pricing until competition was dead. I'm speaking in the past tense, because now for the first time in the couple of decades I can remember, there seems to be a somewhat commonly held preference for European suppliers.
    • vovavili 4mo ago
      Not surprising. All the Yandex people that moved over to here to the Netherlands that I know of are astounded about the insane difference in the tax burden between what they had in Russia and what they have in Western Europe (when their 5 year tax discount ends, that is). If the government takes the bulk of your income after a certain point, there isn't really that big of a push to create ground-breaking technology.
      • conradkay 4mo ago
        > If the government takes the bulk of your income after a certain point, there isn't really that big of a push to create ground-breaking technology. I'm skeptical that high taxes is a large reason to lose to California of all places. Maybe in some important sense CA has "earned" that via talent and funding density while NL hasn't (from the perspective of a company, to be clear)
        • deleted 4mo ago
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        • joe_mamba 4mo ago
          NL is a corporate tax haven in Europe(and also compared to California), that's why almost all US and foreign companies have their corporate HQs there, Dublin or Luxembourg. Companies go there because taxes are low for them, not necessarily for their employees(ignoring the NL 5 year tax break for foreigners). It's kinda like the US Delaware of Europe.
      • wolvoleo 4mo ago
        We also have much nicer societies than Russia. It's a dictatorship ffs. And yes having nice things cost money. And a safety net is important. I would never want to live in America even if I got 3x my wage. Nor Russia of course but that's a foregone conclusion.
    • throw-the-towel 4mo ago
      Frankly, being Russian myself, I'm also very disappointed by the state of tech in Europe. But you know what hurts the most? That I know it wasn't always that way. I'm sitting right now in the same country that invented the Minitel, built out the TGV network and the Grands Projets, and don't even get me started about the weird and wonderful machines they've got in that museum in Mulhouse, hell, you could go back in time to Gustave Eiffel. Industry and ambition used to be here. It was almost physically painful to discover that it seems to be gone now.
      • RetroTechie 4mo ago
        > It was almost physically painful to discover that it seems to be gone now. It's not gone, it just needs to be re-discovered. And the bureaucrats need to flash some € then get out of the way.
        • dmix 4mo ago
          The EU chips act was already largely a failure and they threw plenty of money at it. The problem with the Europe is they look to their bureaucrats to stimulate things then expect different results from the last 50 times. Europe needs its own private industry that attracts talent and capital. It doesn’t need another EU press release talking about hopes and dreams
          • joe_mamba 4mo ago
            >The EU chips act was already largely a failure and they threw plenty of money at it. Yep, the proof is in the pudding. They managed to grab defeat from the jaws of victory again when US got TSMC to open a fab there. For example, both German and Austrian semiconductor companies are choosing to expand manufacturing in Malaysia and not domestically. I don't know what more proof people need that the EU is cooked on manufacturing side. >The problem with the Europe is they look to their bureaucrats to stimulate things then expect different results from the last 50 times. The definition of insanity. This is a mentality problem and is deeply ingrained into the EU population. European people are always looking at the state to solve any problems including those of industry and free market, without realizing the state mostly isn't good at those things and they'd actually be better off with less government there. Whenever the state intervenes into the economy it just further supports the massive bloated legacy companies who lobby the politicians never the startup ecosystem. And then people mistake again by voting for more government hoping to fix that which just results in more expensive bloat and more red tape nor a competitive freer market with more capital and innovation. >Europe needs its own private industry that attracts talent and capital. It doesn’t need another EU press release talking about hopes and dreams Hey, it worked for the USSR, right? ;)
• creesch 4mo ago
  > Unlike the US, Europe has no California-level VCs. Some would consider that a good thing. There is a lot to be said for VC in recent years not being beneficial for the economy, certainly on an individual level, other than "number go up".
  • stared 4mo ago
    Sure. At the same time, it made in many cases EU dependent on the US. A lot of governments are basically dependent on MS Office or Google Cloud. With AI, it is even more strategic.
    • king_phil 4mo ago
      Which has nothing to do with VCs, just with sourcing decisions.
      • stared 4mo ago
        If there were European MicroSoft or Google, there would be a preference.
      • guywithahat 4mo ago
        Well those companies exist because of VC's, and the nation's business freedom compared to Europe
        • deleted 4mo ago
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    • layer8 4mo ago
      My impression is that in Europe much fewer people are convinced that AI-maxxing is necessary or even a net benefit.
      • c7b 4mo ago
        And if you ask a bit more, you'll find that those same people are very likely to daily-drive AI models, desktop and phone operating systems and various other software critical to their professional and personal lives from US companies. And buy tons of Chinese products over Chinese or US e-commerce platforms. What people say matters much less than what they do.
• surgical_fire 4mo ago
  Europe is not a country. Regulations are not even throughout each of the 27 member states. Each country is relatively small in the world stage. Until EU progresses towards federalization, discussing this is a moot point.
• eightysixfour 4mo ago
  I'll play devil's advocate a little bit - I'm not sure it is losing its "independence" by not taking part in the race. It could very well be that it is gaining independence from tech and choosing a "second mover advantage" to decide how it gets deployed after seeing how it impacts everyone else. Let the US and China experiment on the bleeding edge (and their citizens feel the effect, both good and bad), and then be picky about how you use it. I don't know if it is the right strategy but there's certainly a legitimate strategy in there.
  • stared 4mo ago
    Let’s autonomous Russian drones, and Europe is at mercy of two other empires, who capitalize on this opportunity.
  • sarjann 4mo ago
    The problem is recursive self improvement creating a very difficult gap and the fact that power, compute has a lag from when you invest and when data centers come up. You also can't just spin up a research team out of nowhere.
    • eightysixfour 4mo ago
      These things are true, however: 1. The labs in the US and China don't seem to have any problem selling (or even giving) access to these models right now. 2. If some kind of take-off happens which makes that not true, my bet is all bets are off on what that outcome even looks like. What would the economic paradigm even be under a superintelligent AGI? Do you think "it" is going to listen when Trump says "you can't work with Europe"? There's a whole bunch of grey in between the two, for example only having access to second rate models, but I'm not sure that particularly matters if the strategy is "second mover."
      • numeri 4mo ago
        I mean, it might listen to him. We have no clue, which is the problem.
• gonzalohm 4mo ago
  You are saying that as if China or the US are completely isolated from the EU. We live in a globalized world whether you like it or not, and every supply chain spans multiple countries. Arguably, staying out of the AI "race" is a good thing
  • stared 4mo ago
    Military race isn't a good think either, but you don't want to be on the losing side.
• input_sh 4mo ago
  Serious question: what does any of that have to do with the submitted article? Where is the relevance to the topic at hand?
• TacticalCoder 4mo ago
  > Unlike the US, Europe has no California-level VCs. I don't expect hundreds of billions of Euros to be poured into long-shot projects. My ex-neighbor (when I was a teenager, living in Belgium) and very good friend really wanted to make it big. He became a chip engineer, moved to California, raised money for a first startup (it tanked) then raised money for a second startup. He made the world a better place (he created some very specific micro-inverters for solar panels) and made a $$$ exit. The EU saw exactly zero of the wealth he created and he's never ever coming back to what he considers a failure of a continent. That's the problem: many of the great minds with the mindset required to do great things already left the EU. > So yeah, both in economy and warfare, Europe dooms itself to be in the hands of the US, China, or a mix of both. And in energy (economy is energy and energy is economy, and China really understood that) the EU doomed itself to be in the hands of Russia. We are a failure of sinking continent.
  • throw-the-towel 4mo ago
    > economy is energy and energy is economy, and China really understood that In former times the energy monopoly was called "The Power Company"; we intend to give this name an entirely new meaning." – CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Centauri Monopoly"
  • WarmWash 4mo ago
    Europe is a great place to live if you just want to float through life. The US is a great place to live if you have talent, want to work, and want to reap the rewards.
• deleted 4mo ago
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