Deepseek's release has shown that there's no great risk in getting left behind. All the info is out there, people with skills are readily available, creating a model that will match whatever current model is considered frontier level is not that hard for an entity like the EU.
For everyone here shouting that the EU needs to do something, be a leader, what have they lost so far by choosing to lead in legislation instead of development?
They've lost nothing. They've gained a lot.
They can use the same frontier level open source model as everyone else, and meanwhile, they can stay on top of harmful uses like social or credit scoring.
Also speaking as a European, legislation is kind of the point of a government in the first place. I do think the EU goes too far in many cases. But I haven't seen anything that makes me think they're dealing with this particular hype train badly so far. Play the safe long game, let everyone else spend all the money, see what works, focus on legislation of potentially dangerous technology.
> legislation is kind of the point of a government in the first place
I would personally consider legislation to be but one means to an end, with the point of a (democratic) government actually being to ensure stability and prosperity for its citizens.
In that framework, "leading with legislation" doesn't make any sense—you can lead with results, but the legislation is not itself a result! Lead with development or lead with standard of living or lead with civil rights, but don't lead with legislation.
Your formulation sounds like politician's logic: "something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it". Legislation as an end in itself. Very interesting.
> I would personally consider legislation to be but one means to an end, with the point of a (democratic) government actually being to ensure stability and prosperity for its citizens
You're correct, in retrospect I was a bit hyperbolic in my statement.
A better statement of my view is: the goal of a government should be the prosperity and wellbeing of it's citizens and the greater system we're all a part of (both geopolitical and ecological), and the best way we've so far discovered to do that is via legislation of an otherwise free market.
> They can use the same frontier level open source model as everyone else, and meanwhile, they can stay on top of harmful uses like social or credit scoring.
We are dependent on models created by USA and Chinese companies for access to the technology that seems to be the next internet - while the entire world is accelerating hard towards protectionism and tariff wars.
Yeah, this is exactly what scares me. But it also scares me that there's almost zero oversight on what USA and China are producing and the bias that could be embedded into these models by their creators...
I'm just not sure whether it's worse to be behind or to try to be in front by all means necessary.
I partially agree with you. The only problem is that these markets are highly monopolistic, and we will be creating another technological dependency on the US.
Deepseek didn't show anything except the compute cost of final model. We don't know how much data collection costed, how much unethical data like copyrighted data or OpenAI's data is needed, the cost of experiments etc.
> Creating a model that will match whatever current model is considered frontier level is not that hard for an entity like the EU.
If they have this as their top priority and allotted few billion dollars then sure. Not in the current form where the people involved are only involved for publication, not doing hard engineering things that takes months or years and they could do the same thing in OpenAI or Deepseek for like $1 million salary which both of them pay.
I’ll add some European wisdom to your sports metaphor. You don’t have to become a big football player to make money in football. I’d rather make money from the tickets and rights than dedicate my life to a sport that’s only played in the US.
> As an American, most of this post reads like doublespeak satire
Yeah, you guys have a lot of brainwashing to get over. I can imagine that you're deeply conditioned to read any outside views on politics as satire.
One kind of brainwashing is the need to reframe everything political into sports metaphors. The EU is not a sports team. It's a political entity. Whatever you might have been taught, these are very different things, with different needs. You can't have meaningful conversations about a political entity via sports metaphors.
Well, maybe in US politics you can. There you have two teams determined to beat the other at all costs. EU politics isn't like that. We are trying to work together, not kill each other.
> There you have two teams determined to beat the other at all costs
On the surface. It's all kayfabe though; heels and babyfaces. Just like with wrestling, the media know the score, and all the angles. After the match, they all laugh and joke together on the depraved billionaire owner's megayacht.
I don't think this is accurate, looking at it from outside. I mean, yeah, they both want to end up sitting on the billionaires yacht.
But one side wants to do that while looking out over a fascist dictatorship.
The other side has some weird idea that the billionaires will use their wealth to create a good life for everyone else too. Even though the term went out of fashion, it's still trickle down economics.
These two sides are not the same. They're both bad, but one is much worse. The last time fascism took hold it took nuclear bombs in Japan and firebombing Dresden to end it.
If you think Democrats were "determined" to beat Trump "at all costs" this last election, please, explain why they couldn't promise to stop arming Israel's genocide.
Democrat elites knew full well, as did the world, that 77% of Democrat voters wanted an arms embargo. Everyone who cared to look knew that in close battleground states over 3 in 10 Biden 2020 voters were saying that their vote could be affected by this, such was their feeling on this issue - understandable, given the daily atrocities livestreamed around the world.
Kamala's campaign had an easy win, a landslide victory for the taking. All they had to do was promise an arms embargo. Instead, she promised to keep sending bombs "no matter what"; even before her campaign page had a single policy on it. Does that look like they were fighting to beat the Republicans "at all costs"?
... How did Democrats hold Trump accountable for his insurrection attempt? Did that look like 'determination to win' to you? [0]
Did Blinken, Miller, Patel, Karine etc look or sound any less cartoonishly evil than the Trump goons? The things they said up there were mind-bogglingly cruel; staggeringly disrespectful of our intelligence.
The Biden admin censored millions of posts, pushed knowingly fake stories, physically removed journalists from the press room for asking legitimate questions, etc. Not super Democratic.
Sure; Republicans are much worse on some issues. But this corporate plutocracy didn't come out of nowhere. Despite the claims from the current Dem team, they do in fact take a lot of money from "bad" billionaires.
Even now, Democrats are crowing that Trump isn't deporting as many immigrants as they did. Because that's what's important right now??
Biden's admin pulled out all the stops to shut down student protesters - compare that to their response to Musk raiding the Treasury!
The two sides are not quite the same (neither are heels and heroes, ya know), but they are funded and owned by the same people. The difference is very clear when you see the unanimous support across the political and media class for things which the American people don't actually want - forever wars, environmental exploitation, tax cuts for the wealthy, full on genocide etc.
What do you call it when one of the billionaires who proudly and publicly sponsored the winning candidate for president (who, fun fact, has nominated enough supreme court judges that they ruled he has total immunity on official acts, and got away with an insurrection, rape, financial fraud, so obviously not a qualified candidate) does a Nazi salute on live TV in front of the whole country?
If this were a book or a movie, everyone would be dismissing it as far too obvious and not how real world works.
You’re right, it has become a fascist oligarchy in just two weeks. Faster than it took for you to realize it. But there’s still time to make Trump king.
> EU politics isn't like that. We are trying to work together, not kill each other.
Oh? Been quite a while longer since there was war inside the US than war inside Europe. While it's been no time at all since vicious party battles in major European countries. Or countries nope'ing out entirely. But apparently fascists are only a thing in the US now?
> creating a model that will match whatever current model is considered frontier level is not that hard for an entity like the EU
What industry has the EU caught up in or maintained pace in like that by "leading in legislation"?
I'd probably much rather retire in the EU than in the US but... there are certainly cons, not just pros, to the lack of urgency and bureaucratic "lets throw words at the problem" approach to economic development.
> Been quite a while longer since there was war inside the US than war inside inEurope
Maybe you need to look up why the EU exists in the first place. Way back when it was called the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). There haven't been any wars between member countries since it's foundation, so I think it's working pretty well, actually.
I don't have much skin in this pissing contest, but I've lived in Europe, North America and East Asia.
> What industry has the EU caught up in or maintained pace
What industries is the US leading which reflects itself in improvement of quality of life of its citizens? Cause some things really don't matter in grand scheme of things.
EU has better quality of life on borrowed time.
Yeah, some things don't matter in grand scheme of things. When your grand is larger, eu is in a bad place.
I’ve been hearing that about EU, China and Japan for the past 20 years in different degrees. Two generations were born and a lot of people have passed away in that period.
Even if EU’s QoL is on borrowed time, at least it has it for some time.
For everyone here shouting that the EU needs to do something, be a leader, what have they lost so far by choosing to lead in legislation instead of development?
They've lost nothing. They've gained a lot.
They can use the same frontier level open source model as everyone else, and meanwhile, they can stay on top of harmful uses like social or credit scoring.
Also speaking as a European, legislation is kind of the point of a government in the first place. I do think the EU goes too far in many cases. But I haven't seen anything that makes me think they're dealing with this particular hype train badly so far. Play the safe long game, let everyone else spend all the money, see what works, focus on legislation of potentially dangerous technology.