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This effectively reduces the problem to a specialized supercomputing infrastructure problem which I think is relatively easy to solve. I think the chips are coming. I think Euclyd will be able to do the inference chip and I think the training chip won't be harder. It's just a matter of accepting the need to order a huge number of them, being willing to think a little bit like the kind of people who operate corners. So we can be there next year, I think. What we then lack is a training chip-- maybe OpenChip can do it, maybe they can't, but there are reasonable but still unfinished projects. Maybe if Euclyd finishes an inference chip in 2027 we can have the state pay them to make a training version, put in fp32, put in communication tiles. If their design is real and works (which it should, since it's basically a fancier version of Groq, as it's described, and since even Groq works) I think the advantage these chips is likely to have would be enough that a training version would be NVIDIA-beating.
We probably need some solution for the data-- i.e. to allow people to do things that are against copyright law in a limited way, but I think it's a better idea to start EU firms than to try to attract Anthropic.
Because of the need for capital the hardware-software carousel is necessary. We can't pay for NVIDIA chips and then have NVIDIA feed that money into US firms. We have to feed money into EU chips that either carousel the money into EU AI firms or who just offer cheap chips.
Provided that the systems work, they can at least be repurposed to other things. If the organizations that are to train public LLMs can't do it, we can rent the system out to Mistral or something.
So I think something like 5B, starting 10B to get started, in public money per year, the chip firms are private, some of the LLM firms will be private, but the system is available to train European LLMs-- that's I think a realistic approach.
If they do relax regulation (especially on energy generation) sufficiently to unleash the continent's big brained boffins and entrepreneurs on AI, they could quickly develop their own advances that would give them real leverage.
I could imagine that the challenge is that that having enough solar panels for a few gigawatts of consumption is hard to do on-site, so one needs to connect the data center to the grid, which, in turn, complicates matters and transformators are scarce right now.
Is this about right? I do hope that we find a way to do this more sustainably. AI doesn't solve climate change in the next few years, so clean energy isn't irrelevant.
Because in my country (in Asia) there’s surplus energy from renewables (solar, wind) during the daytime, so much so that they’re having to shut things down because the grid can’t handle it (yet).
However at night we need power from traditional sources (coal, basically. We do have hydroelectric and nuclear power also, but that’s not sufficient).
They cannot shut down the coal plants during the day because apparently turning it back on is a tricky time consuming process.
They cannot run the coal plants at reduced capacity because that reduces the efficiency and increases the wear and tear of the equipment.
And the renewables also brought up another problem in that the power that comes is not steady (unlike the traditional sources).
All that is putting pressure on the grid.
The long term solution is to upgrade the grid to handle all this. And the government is working on it (I think). But that’ll take time to do. At least a decade.
Uhh, I don’t know much more technical details about all this. Maybe more knowledgeable members can contribute.
Or for every solar you need a generator as a backup!
Capital. Capital, capital, capital.
The EU is still not a single unified economy and capital markets remains semi-sovereign.
Every Euro that goes out of (eg.) a Dutch taxpayer's pocket into an (eg.) German domiciled competitor gets pushed back against by national competitors as well as by the government.
You see this with French and German rivalry against Scaleway+OVHCloud versus Hetzner (edited because of early morning brain snafus) to Dassault versus Airbus.
But the issue is, a single unified capital market that overrides national sovereignty also leaves vast swathes of European voters at risk of unemployment via capital flight. You saw this with East Germany's shift towards the AfD following industry's shift to Poland.
So neither industry nor national governments (who remain the overriding power of the EU) have an incentive for a single unified market, and actually remain incentivized to work with outside partners instead.
Doh, I meant Hetzner
> partly made possible by France's inexpensive energy mix
Not really. Both developed well before the energy crisis when energy wasn't a significant input for DC construction.
The reason both succeeded is because French conglomerates continue to invest within France and only buy French.
It also didn't hurt that Xavier Niel and Klaba were able to leverage their preexisting telecom business and network.
It's still viewed as a prestige post, and European industries and states will continue to work with partners outside of Europe if it means surviving.
Additonally, capital consolidation within the EU also means subnational capital flight which means layoffs. For example, look at how East Germany shifted hard to AfD after Germany Inc left for Poland. Therefore, when push comes to shove, it becomes politically untenable.
It's not the first time in recent history frontier technology has been developed and commercialized, before any of this "capital" you are talking about really existed. That's the easy part (print money). The hard part is, taking leadership to convince the citizens of a place to be... what? Do you know?
this spending of billions just to get a 4 month lead, without even trying to invest in getting this stuff to run properly is wasteful to the point of insanity. I don't think it's at all productive to chide people for not wanting to dump their resources into a black hole.
it seems pretty clear that the investors and the AI companies _like_ to throw around big GW numbers. it gives them a moat, and it fuels the bubble.
the problem is big chunks of europe have expensive power and insane red tape for building data centers (or anything else really). i think france is the best option with cheap nuclear but its years before any large buildout can even start.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/solutions/confident...
Yes. And its already on offer today.
See Tinfoil(US)[1] and Privatemode(Germany)[2]
Tinfoil have not been independently audited, it is somewhere on their long-term radar.
Privatemode have been thoroughly independently audited with documentation available on request.
[1]https://tinfoil.sh/ [2] https://www.privatemode.ai/
Well, yes, its the oldest adage in computing that "physical access == game over".
So I would argue it is more about reducing your risk to a more acceptable level.
And in that respect I would say using services such as Tinfoil or Privatemode is an enormous step up from "trust me dude, we won't look at your data".
Remotely verifiable attestation combined with independent audits of the company hosting is a large step up from a Zero Data Retention clause in your contract that you have no way of verifying is actually happening other than "trust me dude".
Clearly I absolutely agree, having it on your own infrastructure is best for confidentiality. But even then, what about evil-maid attacks in the datacentre ? Unless you have your own datacentre, you're going to be in a shared colo facility ...
Edited : this looks like it is in paywalled https://uk.news.yahoo.com/austria-lobbies-eu-host-anthropic-...
If I were a frontier lab with a billion-dollar investment under my belt, I wouldn't want to operate in a regulatory environment with the same prediction horizon as the weather.
Hasn't the EU basically already regulated any potential "unsafe" AI in Europe out of existence?
Yeah that's true, getting investment of few million EUR to your company takes years and investors are looking at you like they are giving you their whole national budget. It is comical to the point that businesses rarely seek investments in general in Europe and you just need to grow naturally.
> When interpreting EU law, the CJEU pays particular attention to the aim and purpose of EU law (teleological interpretation), rather than focusing exclusively on the wording of the provisions (linguistic interpretation). This is explained by numerous factors, in particular the open-ended and policy-oriented rules of the EU Treaties, as well as by EU legal multilingualism. Under the latter principle, all EU law is equally authentic in all language versions. Hence, the Court cannot rely on the wording of a single version, as a national court can, in order to give an interpretation of the legal provision under consideration. Therefore, in order to decode the meaning of a legal rule, the Court analyses it especially in the light of its purpose (teleological interpretation) as well as its context (systemic interpretation).
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/5993...
All regulatory systems have some informal edge cases, of course. But Americans expect law to in general work more like a list of checkboxes and rely less on divining the regulator's intent. Indeed, that's one of the reasons why the regulatory environment under Trump is so frustrating to many of us; in the American view, there's supposed to be a strict distinction between what the law is and what the people at suchandsuch agency think the law is supposed to be or meant to achieve.
Trump forced all European countries to increase their defence budgets, And as AI is both a offensive and defensive tool, it can be argued that a chunk of this defence budget can be spent on AI R&D.
If Anthropic quit the USA, Trump administration would likely make an example of them.
Wouldn't be pretty.
I have always thought the UK was too liberal in allowing foreign takeovers of key businesses. Arm and Deepmind are great examples of why.
Today and in this context, I consider "foreseeable future" to be "up to 2 years".
I read that from it too, but not sure how it would help as that doesn't stop export controls.
Alexander Pröll is like Sebastian Kurz here. The ÖVP always wants to have financial interests leak into politics.
Leave your fascist remarks out of here
Even if nothing comes of it, it’s a healthy consideration to anyone operating in the US to really think about their goals and what best sets them up for success.
Many other parts of the world do not operate under the same capitalistic mindset that American companies are forced into by pressure of the systems they are beholden to.