Worst part is Europe was near the top of nuclear and microchips ~30 years ago, and France had bleeding-edge AI.

Boomers decided that was enough growth, it's time to cement what they got and cash out without thinking about economic growth opportunities of future generations.

>France had bleeding-edge AI

They still do, but it's all tied in stuffy bureaucratic French-speaking academia, not in monetizable products that scale internationally. Whatever they come up with, the US companies will then buy up, turn into products and sell for money.

There's only so far you can push things before you need breakthroughs that give new approaches and when that happens it is often a new playing field.

The person I was replying to was asserting the the EU could never approach China and US levels in AI even if they made a major effort to do so because by starting N years later they would always be N years behind.

But that is only true, it seems to me, for things that do not plateau. For things that plateau those who start N years late catch up to the leaders N years after the leaders hit the plateau.

ICE cars plateaued a long time ago, and so the EU, the US, and China are all about the same level. They might concentrate more on different market segments, but technologically they all pretty much equally capable.

To build frontier models you need VC money. There’s no VC money because VC believe that there is no market for a ‘EU Champion’.

There’s no market for a EU champion because internal EU market is not big enough for VC returns. Why invest in EU champion when the US champion is guaranteed to have better returns ?

And there’s no public alternative to VC either because that’s national level and national investment in EU doesnt cross national boundaries

Mistral actions reflect this, they need returns and they target the market where they can be competitive, which is the scraps the US labs cannot address. This is not enough to fund frontier lab research

Also the legal context on regulations is quite different from the US. In the US you can have unlimited damage, that is not the case in the EU, where regulation penalty can never as a matter of principle put the existence of the company in danger, and thus the application of the regulations is always a matter of negociation with the government. You don't have to respect everything all at once, size of the company and ability to actually implement the regulations are taken into account, which means that sartups are usually excempt.

The Southern Countries are parasitically living from EU funds and EU programs, including money transfer for the budgets. The rich countries are desperately seeing China eating their lunch in Cars and all the rest.

Add to this the aging population, and now having the head under the sand on AI, and it does not look pretty...

That's just completely false but ok. There's even a EU regulation to ensure the exact opposite: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=legissum...

Here is an example of the current situation in Luxembourg for example, where the EU Court is based! They want you to clean up your debts first, well you would not go bankrupt if you could no? And if you look at the remaining conditions for the so called second chance they are impossible to achieve.

https://sstlaw.lu/obtaining-a-business-license-after-facing-...

In the Netherlands restarting after bankruptcy is possible, but not automatic. The bankruptcy trustee determines whether the business can restart, and restart may be impossible if it harms creditors...

Spain excludes or limits discharge for some public debts and certain debtors...

Ireland and Austria completely ignored the law you quoted and currently have infringement procedures...see you in a few years...

Poland did not apply at all the law you mentioned, and had been criticized by the EU but nothing was made about it until now...

There are differences between being on the field, or knowing how to do a google search...

Here is a real example: open a company, buy a small piece of land, section it in smaller pieces, promise you build houses, get people downpayments in cash, syphon all money to other companies with having contracts just a bit bigger than average market price, declare bankruptcy, then start again. You of course have smaller stakes in those other companies.

It will never happen because it's a political decision!

European politicians and bureaucrats, at any level, are idiots(in the best case scenario) or corrupted(in the worst one). Cloud computing is a thing since at least 10 years, and we still don't have a single fucking hyperscaler despite having everything already in place: Ovh, Hertzner + several other big cloud providers in all major countries, but instead of acting as a unique actor ...

My understanding is that Bedrock is for those who want to use existing models. It lets you access models from various companies via a unified API, helps comply with things like GDPR and HIPAA, makes it easy to switch models, and some other things.

For those developing new models what they are looking for is lots of CPU/GPU/storage. They would be fine with classic hosting services where you rented or leased a machine and all the hosting company did was manage the hardware for you.