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All this will fly until a competitor from outside the US releases a “freedom” model that is even 90% as capable as Fable was without its shackles. But, as a fr
by reacharavindh 3mo ago
All this will fly until a competitor from outside the US releases a “freedom” model that is even 90% as capable as Fable was without its shackles.
But, as a frustrated EU resident lamenting a lack of European option(Mistral is just not competitive enough), I will spread my money towards the Chinese models as well. Thank you Murica! You achieved your soft power by pushing us towards the Chinese :-)
This protectionism and hypocrisy (free markets and freedom!! Until it is us who needs to practice what we preach) is so tiring. I wish European nations would come together closer and put their differences aside and realise larger things together. Become the new power that the US is clearly stumbling away from being.
- vintagedave 3mo ago> Mistral is just not competitive enough Does anyone know why? I was really excited when they emerged, but their models and targets don't seem to be quite in the same market.
- xdertz 3mo agoTheir target market is completely different. Anthropic and OpenAI try to build general AI that wins on all the benchmarks by throwing ungodly amounts of money at it. Mistral focuses on long term b2b contracts and their proposition is that they fine tune their model to your needs with an added bonus of 'not dependent on America' in a politically tumultuous time.
- ghm2199 3mo agoAn so like if a business wanted to home in on one very specific use case that could be hyper optimized by SFT, had really good support for updating and adding new features, on-Prem etc. that’s the kind of market they are in?
- nolok 3mo agoAnother added bonus is that they offer a clear "self hosted" if you want it, you can get the exact same product without sending your queries to them, it's costlier and you need the hardware sure, but between the economic espionnage aspect, the sovereignty aspect, the data safety aspect ... This has teeth in europe.
- mike_hearn 3mo agoLack of capital and (probably) lack of willingness to mass distill Anthropic and OpenAI.
- plufz 3mo agoWhat would happen if they mass distilled one of the really large local models like GLM 700b or deepseek 1.6t?
- grim_io 3mo agoAt that point you might as well just host them yourself.
- sajithdilshan 3mo agoThat's not how the innovation works
- weezing 3mo agoInnovation is teaching your model on stolen data from literally everywhere but other models.
- kelipso 3mo agoInnovation is a pretty neutral concept. It doesn’t care about things like “what if my model learns from other models” as opposed to “what if my model learns from data I painfully curated” if the model progresses the same.
- sulam 3mo agoThose already exist.
- sajithdilshan 3mo agoMost probably lack of capital and talent. At the end of the day they have to compete with other giants for the chips to train the models.
- joelthelion 3mo agoI wouldn't be surprised if they had new models up their sleeve. Could be wrong of course.
- sajithdilshan 3mo agoI’m pretty sure they have new models, but not better ones
- VeejayRampay 3mo agocapital and talent is the same in this context there's no shortage of talent in Europe or France, it's just an issue of available capital
- sajithdilshan 3mo agoWhat I meant was top talent. US is still the top destination for top AI talent in general
- throwaway676712 3mo agoA large contingent of the top AI people is French, the Mistral founders worked at Meta and Google before coming back to France. The real issue is capital, French salaries are shit
- inglor_cz 3mo ago"there's no shortage of talent in Europe or France, it's just an issue of available capital" This is more complicated than you paint it. Countries like UAE have enough capital to throw at things and little-to-no taxation, yet they don't attract as much talent as they would like to. Preexisting centers of excellence like Silicon Valley are attractive for young talented people precisely because a lot of older talented people are already there. The same reason why a young talented painter in 15th century would prefer Florence to some rich, but boring place elsewhere. You can only really do a meaningful work in a "heavy" field by tightly cooperating with others, and physical proximity still matters.
- seviu 3mo agoThis. I have been using anthropic and codex subs, on max. All this changed in June. We are clearly entering an era where we cannot rely on American models. As a solo developer I value reliability over performance. I cannot pay hundred of $, plus a lot of my private time figuring out how to properly use this technology, for it to be taken away within hours. On top of that, the intelligence is being dialed down. Sonet 5 is a living proof of this. Fable has strong guardrails, but new Sonet is a dumbed down expensive model, which already falls behind GLM 5.2 and Kimi 2.7. I might go back to Claude since I know Fable is just a limited offer, and I am not going to pay for API usage. But what they are signaling with Sonet will also come to Opus. A lobotomized more expensive model. I am honestly baffled how the current administration is giving the whole world, on a golden plate, to China. And they don't seem too bothered about it. They are living in their own bubble and reality distortion field I guess. I could go on endless rant about Dario, but I feel I am so strongly biased now that my judgement might be clouded. Time to move on
- Forgeties79 3mo agoI feel like I see this comment every few months and yet in between people keep talking about all of the functionality they’re getting out of anthropic’s offerings. It doesn’t seem to me that people are willing to give up the “shackles” as it were and we’re just going to wind up with what we’re fearing here. On top of that, local models are just not turnkey enough for the average person yet (go ahead and drop somebody into LM studio and tell them to get to work, it won’t go well).
- glimshe 3mo agoThe reason Anthropic gets away with all of that is that Claude revenues are increasing with no end in sight. People write these entitled rants and silently go back to Anthropic and OpenAI like obedient puppies.
- Forgeties79 3mo agoIt’s in increasing but they still haven’t gotten into the black. I’m pretty sure nobody has yet, right?
- sajithdilshan 3mo agoA lot of bitter europeans would down vote this comment, but saying Murica has pushed you towards China is hypocrisy is at its finest. Your incompetent EU politicians are the ones that has failed you by outsourcing every aspect of sovereignty to the rest of the world instead of self-reliance. You have nobody to blame but yourselves. In one year you'll be blaming China for abandoning the EU when they starts controlling their frontier models.
- grim_io 3mo agoMaybe we will in a year, but then we'll just complain about China copying protectionism and censorship from the USA. If that's a comfortable position for you, all good. We held the US in higher regards, that's all.
- sajithdilshan 3mo ago[flagged]
- grim_io 3mo agoWe are just disappointed. You have to actually live there :) I don't think anyone is making the same mistake with China, as open weight models can't be Thanos'd away.
- sajithdilshan 3mo agoBut open weighted models would be outdated in terms of capabilities and performance in few months. Also I can imagine Chinese companies only make less capable models open weighted in the future and any model capable than Mythos or even higher would be proprietary
- Citizen_Lame 3mo agoWell you are not wrong, I would also add corrupted and cowardly politicians. We are in worse position than China, and under full control of daddy USA, no matter what they say. If US would pull switch, it would be catastrophe for the EU. Even the premier EU companies such as ASML are heavily reliant on US supply chain. But why can't we be bitter?
- pokot0 3mo agoIsn't building a 90% frontier model relatively cheap for EU? I feel like EU could start a company, start from available open weight models, feed 2bln a year into it (1% of the EU budget) and make a compelling almost SOTA model for the EU market. This company could partner with datacenter providers and sell it hosted in the EU or somewhere else with EU protection terms. The budget for this company would easily double with the added revenues and you are creating an ecosystem of providers that can compete with US big-techs and have a 500 million people market that can't wait to ditch US companies for them, given the current mood. The model can be open weight and it's an easy way to compound the efforts we are seeing in China without even having to talk to each other. Maybe there is a way to make it work not open weights but I am not sure how would that work. These are those kind of decisions that seem such no brainers to me, which probably means I am completely out of touch with reality.
- throwaway676712 3mo agoEuropeans are risk averse and don't have access to that many deep pocketed risk-taking VCs. On top of that the US is poaching all the talent since most EU firms won't or can't match the salaries offered in the US to AI researchers. This may change in the future as AI gets more commoditized and the current US admin keeps shooting itself in the foot but they are still very far ahead right now
- cindyllm 3mo ago[dead]
- adrianN 3mo ago1% of the budget is a really big number. The EU has a lot than a hundred responsibilities that demand money.
- benny_s 3mo agoGood idea in theory, but in reality 90% of this 2bn budget would just be swallowed up by the bureaucracy that would surround this.
- 3mo ago
- lmf4lol 3mo agoNot the EU should build one but companies from the EU!!! We need to stop relying on the Brussel bureaucrats. China is not building models. US is not building models. Deepseek is doing and Anthropic!
- Alifatisk 3mo ago> All this will fly until a competitor from outside the US releases a “freedom” model that is even 90% as capable as Fable was without its shackles. A Chinese cybersecurity company "360" has announced "Chinas version of Mythos".
- andsoitis 3mo ago> as a frustrated EU resident lamenting a lack of European option(Mistral is just not competitive enough), I will spread my money towards the Chinese models as well. Thank you Murica! It is interesting to hear a European exclaim they would rather depend on a selection of models from companies in China with concomitant strings attached, rather than be dependent on a selection of models from companies in America. Isn't it better to simply stick to whatever is best and then, should it be pulled from under you, simply switch out to the new best model that IS available? I don't know that models have a moat and you can easily swap out should you need to. Pre-emptively betting on which is going to be least susceptible to government intervention seems like premature optimization to me.
- nicoburns 3mo agoNote the GP says "I will spread my money towards the Chinese models AS WELL", so it's more of a case of encouraging competition rather than betting on any one actor.
- andsoitis 3mo agoThe "as well" is ambiguous. I interpreted it as "like other people are doing" rather than "spend twice as much as contingency". To me it seems like the more parsimonious interpretation, but I could very well be mistaken and they are indeed planning to throw money in both directions already just in case.
- surgical_fire 3mo agoChinese models cost a fraction of the price, and as someone who has been using DeepSeek and MiMo, they are nothing short of excellent. In terms of cost-benefit, they are already the best models I could find.
- thewebguyd 3mo ago> Companies in China with concomitant strings attached What strings? The Chinese models are open weight, you don't have to spend your money directly with those labs. They can be hosted within the EU, by EU companies without sending a dime to China. The bigger question is does the EU have the appetite to invest in building out data centers/hosting infrastructure for this, and that's where I have my doubts.
- burnerRhodov3 3mo agoEurope seems to be going through an identity crisis lately, and i hope this sentiment doesn't continue. Europe becoming more reliant on the Chinese is not the answer, and will, if continues, isolate the EU from the US.
- squidbeak 3mo agoEurope may face technological and economic challenges, but one thing it isn't suffering is 'an identity' crisis - except in the daydreams of right wing propagandists. The EU's identity is represented in its charter and the various treaties behind it. > Europe becoming more reliant on the Chinese is not the answer, and will, if continues, isolate the EU from the US There are sound reasons to avoid reliance on China, but the risk of isolation from a fading superpower - who befriends the EU's enemies, agitates in EU politics, inflict needless damage on the EU's economy, and insults EU leaders - isn't one of them.
- calgoo 3mo agoAlso, don't forget how much they are medeling with the EU politics. Here in Spain the ultra right wing are following the thrump playbook step by step. Now I can't prove this, but with our current government standing up to both the US and Israel, there is a feeling that a bunch of money and "think tank" guidance is happening.
- SubiculumCode 3mo agoIt's Russia and the US and EU have long been under attack.
- squidbeak 3mo agoRussia's meddling is malign. But did Russia send the USA's Vice President to Hungary to campaign on behalf of Viktor Orban?
- 3mo ago