This vaguely-nationalist world view around tech that’s emerging in Europe is dangerous, man.
On the brain drain problem in particular, one way to ensure talent sticks around is to create a good environment for people to do their best work. In much of Europe, getting bureaucracy out of the way and encouraging real investment would go a long way. People leave because they can make more money and they want to be surrounded by the best people. People would trade some of that off to stick around their home countries, however if you go to California and talk to folks from e.g. NL or DE working on this stuff, they have a lot to say about innovation and working culture back home.
The EU was build on the principles of collaboration, to overcome the nationalistic impulses. Free trade and free movement of people, no need for everyone to replicate what everyone else is doing. Preventing individual nation states from favoring and supporting their home grown firms over other EU firms is a central legal principle.
But this only works if it is reciprocal. And ideally if the partners are roughly on the same level. When you force developing nations in trade deals to not protect local firms, you are also preventing them from moving up the value chain and locking them into the position of "raw material providers".
When trading with China we know that China has absolutely no qualms supporting its strategic industries with a truck load of subsidies. And it is preventing foreign firms from investing and selling on the domestic market.
For the longest time the US was considered a safe partner though. Sure, plenty of disagreements in the details, but in principle someone whom you can rely on. That idea has been decisevly dismantled over the last 10ish years. The US unilaterally cut of the EMails of EU courts. The US has unilaterally decided that EU partners cannot use Fable/Mythos.
The only reasonable reaction is to make sure that the EU can maintain and create its own critical infrastructure.
And in response NL should weaponize ASML for example. Then both sides would naturally back down. Specialization is the most efficient way of developing tech civilization.
Whereis everybody building their own mediocre versions would be repeating Russia in its attempt to make its own national messenger - a lot of government money sunk, yet people are still using Telegram/etc.
(despite the name, i am not dutch)
This sounds great but doesn't really make any sense. What skeptics are saying is there should be a pan-EU effort to build frontier models, rather than one-off toy models built by each country as a box-ticking exercise.
"We built the EU as a powerful supranational organization, so logically the EU's response to a great power challenge in the realm that may well define the 21st century is gonna be to shatter its efforts into 27 useless pieces, because Trump bad" is just absolutely ridiculous and will not lead to anything good. Be the change you want to see, etc.
Both Netherlands and Sweden produce highly competent researchers. Per capita on par with any other location on the planet, including California.
This will be good for Europe as a whole and also the planet.
And yes, I do believe Europe will invest in this technology.
What a glorious day for Canada and, therefore, the world.
It was only nominally democratic, now it’s a total shit show.
These people can then fund for-profit companies once they have a promising approach and bring in private investment.
As for nationalism, like it or not, this is a govt sponsored effort, and governments and universities are funded by the public of specific nations
Guess which country blocked access to a SOTA model based on national security bullshit.
It’s a response to the actually-nationalist practice of the United States. I can understand why it might feel different from California, but things are a bit scary over here right now.
It's a direct response to the MAGA / America First attitude of the American electorate.
That is why people lament at idea of being completely dependent on Russian gas, US tech or Chinese manufacturing.
The fact they aren’t points to the moribund nature of things in the EU tech space. Both China and America are doing this although with very different approaches.
Your argument would suggest the EU developing a European model would be a better direction. A heavy-weight competitor would help advance the field after all.
> getting bureaucracy out of the way and encouraging real investment
I don't think this is really about regulation - it's about network effects. The only way to compete with strong network-effects is to create your own.
> This vaguely-nationalist world view around tech
Nationalism breeds nationalism and it is the fundamental reason European states feel the need to build their own expertise. Can you imagine if your country was subject to the whims of an aspiring dictator?
> Got it, so every country should focus on having a mediocre-at-best AI strategy by refusing to work together? Surely this will create a better future instead of pooling resources.
Yeah, why is Anthropic making their own mediocre models, if they could just pool their resources with OpenAI, that makes no sense.
These people can then fund for-profit companies once they have a promising approach and bring in private investment
