One can and must discuss and challenge all these regulations, but this seems better than just sliding carelessly into some sort of mega-corp dystopia. It is good to have some balance of power. Is the EU perfect? Absolutely not, but neither are the corporates. Ideally, compromises will be found (and mostly they are found). Honestly, what’s the worst that can happen here? If this slows down the European economy, that’s a trade-off Europe has chosen to take (and yes, I’m very aware of the difficulties of fair representation in such a complex entity as the EU). We now have three big power blocks with very different politics and governance models. Isn’t that so much better than just playing one massive bet on a few big AI players? Honestly, I think it is exciting!
jopsen 23 hours ago [-]
> Honestly, what’s the worst that can happen here?
Regulation that cannot practically be implemented or complied with (example: forks of open models), this leads to selective enforcement and by extension corruption and loss of rule of law.
Regulation before the market has even settled down, we don't know if AI will be datacenter only, or open models everybody forks, modifies and runs locally.
And we won't know for a couple for years to come.
thesumofall 23 hours ago [-]
Absolutely fair points!
> Regulation before the market has even settled down
The counter point would be: the major AI providers have seemingly also lost control of their creation. So at the very least both sides are doing things before they fully understand what they are doing. Also, looking at the (planned) IPOs and the share of AI in S&P 500, one could argue that while the market hasn’t settled, it already is a massive market. When should we start regulating? Eventually it will be too late
> Regulation that cannot practically be implemented or complied with
Yes. Having worked with one EU authority, it’s still people who eventually do the enforcing. That has the risk of corruption but I have also seen repeatedly that they won’t do something if it violates common sense. As always, there is room for interpretation and enforcement and it will be used. Like with any good governance. And companies still can (and do!) sue
Voultapher 21 hours ago [-]
Distilling your own alcohol is technically trivial and process inputs are sold readily at every supermarket. So clearly we should just allow 15 year olds to buy hard liquor since we can't stop them .. HN baffles me again again with the whole because we can't do 100% 0% is better reasoning.
rcarmo 23 hours ago [-]
Started reading, saw “The timing is the story”, and my LLM-generated-spider-sense tingled. The piece is informative, but I now have no idea if the arguments are human or AI driven
brador 21 hours ago [-]
Time to collect facts and start thinking for yourself again.
The age of written expertise influence is over.
tencentshill 13 hours ago [-]
Good. Too many people don't trust the media, so new reliable sources of truth need to arise. Even then, "Grok is this true?".
Phelinofist 24 hours ago [-]
It's a good thing - AI is in basically everything, it needs regulation.
aenis 24 hours ago [-]
By people who never built anything except bureaucracies?
Phelinofist 24 hours ago [-]
I mean it is true that Europe is lagging behind in some frontier things, but if the price for catching up means uncontrollable mega corps it is not worth it. Europe also has some very high-tech companies so I think we are still good.
Hamuko 23 hours ago [-]
We should instead be governed by people who never built anything except giant repositories of stolen data?
aenis 22 hours ago [-]
No, but there is quite a bit of spectrum between 'never built anything' and 'only built things unethically'. I'd prefer to be governed by people who built something in their lives, and are not career bureaucrats.
Hamuko 12 hours ago [-]
I'd definitely prefer the career bureaucrats instead of the unethical builders, and the unethical builders will be the ones governing if the AI companies are left to their own devices.
aenis 9 hours ago [-]
I hail from the post-communist part of the world, and - given the choice - i'd err on the side of unethical builders such as musk, altman et al. Career bureaucrats are introducing a world where merit does not matter; unethical builders are still merit driven, after all, one does not build claude code without engineering and scientific skills, which implies attachment to physical reality, whereas building bureaucratic regimes is an entirely physical-reality-optional game.
asdfasgasdgasdg 1 days ago [-]
I doubt it’s the end of AI access in Europe. Even if they do fine them 3% of global turnover, that’s probably a small enough fraction of their European revenue that it’s worth the risk. After all if they drop European traffic it’s not like it’ll change their fixed costs, and the marginal cost to serve Europe is probably relatively small compared to their fixed costs.
I do think it’s most likely that they will end up fining the AI companies quite a bit under this act. It seems like a bit of a pattern with European legislation that disproportionately impacts American tech companies.
bestham 1 days ago [-]
I really oppose the notion that “European legislation … disproportionately impacts American tech companies”. US tech has a profound impact on the lives of everyday Europeans while the US has almost no checks and balances in place for the tech industry. Europeans are ought to be able decide how they want to live their lives and build a society. This must include deciding how much influence American tech companies shall be allowed to have by passing laws for Europe.
benoau 1 days ago [-]
The whole premise ignores how much the same companies are fined and settling for in the US, for many of the same reasons: privacy abuse, market abuse, societal abuse, worker abuse, etc. Pound for pound the recent Meta settlement has certainly skewed the numbers much higher for the US too.
spiderfarmer 1 days ago [-]
Also, most US citizens want the same regulations as EU citizens, but only one of them have a functioning government.
alejoar 1 days ago [-]
No they don't.
Barrin92 24 hours ago [-]
Roughly half of American states have passed extensive internet regulation in the last few years to the point of entire businesses exciting their states, and that's the conservative parts of America.
The American public, of various creeds and political orientations is as, if honestly not more skeptical of US tech companies. They simply have no control over their government, which is captured by tech CEOs.
The recent anti datacenter activism extends to IIRC over 40 states now and has roughly 70% largely bipartisan support.
alejoar 23 hours ago [-]
Sure, and fair.
But that only explains that Americans want regulation, not that they want EU regulation.
Americans put innovation and result ahead while Europe prefers precaution/fairness first.
There are real costs for Europe in terms of productivity because of this. Take a look at the Draghi report.
Also see European founders relocating and citing regulation as a problem when it comes to access to capital.
consensus1 1 days ago [-]
Isn't part of " Europeans are ought to be able to decide how they want to live their lives" that they have the choice of using products of US tech companies?
refactor_master 24 hours ago [-]
If my manager's manager's manager decides, for any number of reasons, to buy a product which is using US-based technology, then I don't reasonably have the option to "vote with my feet", but I do have a fallback called Regulation, which works its way all the way up the chain automatically.
consensus1 24 hours ago [-]
Why would you ever expect that you would have a choice of what products you use at work? You are being paid to work there. And yes, if you feel that strongly, you absolutely do have the option to vote with your feet at any time.
lurk2 23 hours ago [-]
> Why would you ever expect that you would have a choice of what products you use at work?
Similar arguments were made to defend Harvey Weinstein.
> And yes, if you feel that strongly, you absolutely do have the option to vote with your feet at any time.
People shouldn’t have to switch jobs because they don’t want to provide Bill Gates with their phone number.
cbg0 23 hours ago [-]
> Similar arguments were made to defend Harvey Weinstein.
We're now comparing a SaaS product versus people you work with? I don't think ChatGPT will ever physically assault you.
> People shouldn’t have to switch jobs because they don’t want to provide Bill Gates with their phone number.
This is why the EU has very strong employee protection laws; in most countries here there are government agencies that will help you, you're not at the mercy of the HR department.
kuerbel 23 hours ago [-]
>Why would you ever expect that you would have a choice of what products you use at work?
Umm Because of worker protection laws? For example the Betriebsrat has the right to have a say in this.
Second what if the product is very much inferior and the whole company would be more productive with another product?
> You are being paid to work there.
Yes and that means if I see an improvement opportunity or if I have concerns I will voice them. I'm being paid to improve the company, not be a cog in the machine.
satvikpendem 1 days ago [-]
Perhaps the fines themselves act as a de facto AI tax that some people have been trying to promote in the political sphere, and we'll see how successful it is.
toenail 1 days ago [-]
Fines escalate when there is no compliance.
satvikpendem 1 days ago [-]
Then they'll just pull out eventually and save everyone the trouble.
stymaar 1 days ago [-]
Like how Apple famously pulled out of the EU?
razemio 1 days ago [-]
They did with some services. Not sure if there is a list. For one I am missing phone mirroring to my mac which they disabled because they do not want to give api access.
pjmlp 1 days ago [-]
Poor American companies, who thinks of them when Chinese government does similar actions, and they play ball, regardless of the government actions.
1 days ago [-]
Gerard22Aug 1 days ago [-]
It's a (successful?) lobbying attempt by Mistral. They are falling behind on tech and they want to win on another stupid EU law. You know what will happen next? There will be an exception carved in for "developing countries" ... like China.
satvikpendem 1 days ago [-]
Why would they, both the EU and Mistral specifically, want Chinese models? Isn't the (de facto, underlying) point of the act to raise up homegrown companies like Mistral?
Gerard22Aug 21 hours ago [-]
"Why would they, both the EU and Mistral specifically, want Chinese models?"
Multiple reasons.
US behaving like aholes and forcing EU to make trade with China - in any case it's better tnan war.
Cheaper inference HW from China to replace overpriced Nvidia crap.
Open models so Mistral and Qwen / GLM may cross–distill. (Hint: why libraries and museums exchange books and arts?)
Geopolitics, sanctions, digital EUR – I can't even explain to you all of it in one post which will be downvoted to grey again.
And you probably have lost ability to think*. You believe only in what Opus or ChatGPT "summarises" for you. (This is another reason btw).
Good luck.
spiderfarmer 1 days ago [-]
It’s how conspiracy theories work: find out who could theoretically profit, blame them and spread it as fact. It doesn’t have to stand up to scrutiny, if it sounds plausible “you told them like it is”.
satvikpendem 1 days ago [-]
That doesn't make any sense because Mistral wouldn't profit if Chinese models are allowed so not sure why the person above thinks the EU would add a China exemption.
spiderfarmer 17 hours ago [-]
Hence the “It doesn’t have to stand up to scrutiny“
stymaar 1 days ago [-]
Mistral is serving GLM in addition to their own models.
But conspiracy theory don't have to make sense in the first place.
Gerard22Aug 21 hours ago [-]
"Mistral is serving GLM " ... "But conspiracy theory don't have to make sense".
To me this looks like an example of broken logical thinking, no? :-)
The Chinese models are open weights, so they can host & finetune them in the EU. Mistral is calling them "European Compute Units". Mistral has pivoted to become a hosting provider of open weight LLMs.
"Mistral’s platform will support third-party open models, starting with Z.ai’s GLM-5.2. This and future open models will run on the same infrastructure, regional controls, and service commitments as Mistral models, so customers can broaden model choice without fragmenting where their AI runs."
"European Compute Units, or ECUs, convert those commitments into access to Mistral-built infrastructure over multiple years."
Giving open weight models more leeway “feels” right, but it’s a massive self-pwn based on the mother of all back doors.
It’s a little bit like saying “sysadmins need work visas and vetting, but this guy works for free, so just give him root and don’t think too hard about it”.
hvb2 23 hours ago [-]
For Europe the choices are, foreign actor A or foreign actor B.
I don't think the current US administration has shown themselves to be less hostile than China...
pdpi 23 hours ago [-]
I'm not saying the scrutiny on US models is unwarranted. I'm saying that open-weight models are the perfect trojan horse, so giving those models a pass on that same level of scrutiny (irrespective of provenance) is just begging to be pwned.
satvikpendem 14 hours ago [-]
This makes much more sense, if they're a hosting provider.
Gerard22Aug 21 hours ago [-]
... downvoting this account to the oblivion may feel good but it doesn't turn reality into "conspiracy theory" LOL. I am glad you are feeling better.
cbg0 17 hours ago [-]
Writing good arguments will prevent you from looking like a conspiracy nut.
villish 1 days ago [-]
The article only lists US labs, I wonder if that was an oversight. Chinese models are also available to Europeans through API providers. Surely they risk fines too.. right?
alightsoul 1 days ago [-]
It doesn't say meta or thinking machines were asked. Does that mean asking them is futile, even though they are American labs?
number6 24 hours ago [-]
The regulations apply foremost to closed models. Chinese companies mostly release "open models".
And regarding fines, well the track record for EU fines against any big tech companies, US or China, is abysmal. Even if the companies are fined, the fine goes uncollected or is slashed after the big press release.
I am looking as the DSA here...
villish 21 hours ago [-]
Why would they not apply to all models? The models with downloadable weights aren’t “open”. Meaning no one can actually give a summary about their training content and security. Which is what they’re asking US labs.
number6 20 hours ago [-]
I actually looked up the text in the AI Act:
"The obligations set out in paragraph 1, points (a) and (b), shall not apply to providers of AI models that are released under a free and open-source licence that allows for the access, usage, modification, and distribution of the model, and whose parameters, including the weights, the information on the model architecture, and the information on model usage, are made publicly available. 2This exception shall not apply to general-purpose AI models with systemic risks."
So the chinese models aren't exactly open like in the EU wants them to be
ronsor 1 days ago [-]
Even Brussels knows that would be futile
mmaunder 1 days ago [-]
Frustrating for EU companies trying to stay competitive globally.
satvikpendem 1 days ago [-]
Claude slop article aside, this act is one reason why some people say Europe is an open air museum, as it'd rather regulate itself to obscurity while its great works are behind it. Where is Mistral, Le Chaton Fat? They're not competitive anymore. Meanwhile China reaches ever forward because they know that speed and endurance is everything in a race, not shooting oneself in the foot.
stymaar 1 days ago [-]
The key problem for Europe is that they don't want to take strong enough actions against US tech to let their own actors develop. Which is how China has reached tech dominance, and how even a shithole country like Russia can have their own “tech” industry.
solenoid0937 1 days ago [-]
Even in a hypothetical world where they somehow killed off US tech completely, they still wouldn't have their own actors develop. There is no collective will, no risk taking mindset. The VCs are cowardly with capital, and people don't follow through on bright ideas. Taxes and regulations suffocate any progress and no one wants to do anything about it.
The EU would rather cruise off into perceived comfort and safety rather than attempt to stay relevant economically and on the world stage. Only when the region is unable to afford its own welfare will it start wondering where things went wrong.
cbg0 24 hours ago [-]
> Taxes and regulations suffocate any progress and no one wants to do anything about it.
We could rephrase this as "the shareholders aren't maximizing their value and the average Joe doesn't have a problem with it".
solenoid0937 24 hours ago [-]
You can use as many trendy "capitalism bad" phrases as you want, it doesn't change the reality that the EU has stagnated and fallen behind both economically and on the world stage, and will likely never catch up at this rate. The average Joe's welfare pool will stagnate with it, by the way.
A mindset shift away from the very mindset you espouse is what is necessary for the EU to succeed.
rcarmo 23 hours ago [-]
You do realize geopolitics has made it kind of hard to have reasonable negotiations with the US in general, right? (cof cof Canada)
Caius-Cosades 20 hours ago [-]
Taking actions against other economies hardly matters when in like half the EU countries legislation is actively hostile against start-ups and entrepreneurs. You can probably count globally notable companies that were established in the EU in the last 25 years with one hand.
stymaar 14 hours ago [-]
The fact that Russia, with its notably worse institutional framework for business has more relevant tech companies than the EU speeks volume about the value of your argument.
It doesn't matter how good or bad your legislation is when you are always facing an uphill battle against a better capitalized company serving a bigger market, especially in a sector which, despite its name, has very little technology in it, and hence little barriers besides marketing and network effect.
frabcus 1 days ago [-]
The idea was that technology is now powerful enough, everything need not be just competition any more. The world could also work to let every human have a good life. Neither China nor America truly seem to have that goal, despite it being both possible and ethical. Europe at least did, based on our experiences of the horrors of the early/mid C20.
It's true that in the last 10 years that vision feels like it has crumbled. And the inevitableness of competition is coming back. International law and human rights are dissolving - rule based on power. This works well for anyone while it works for them - except for our souls, and longer term... It's hubristic and eventually empires fall. Europe has already experienced this, and remembers it.
Whether these empires will fall to global economic collapse from lack of co-operation, or environmental destruction from lack of charging for externalities, or from global war, or simply from out of control AI, remains to be seen.
But never question, it is possible to avoid all those. But we have to try to, not just cheaply go "competition good", because of the short term thrill of the win. Competition is good, and so is cooperation.
aenis 24 hours ago [-]
China and America's goals will not be influenced one bit by the EU bureaucracy. The only effect it will have it will make EU fall behind even further.
We'd need quite some changes in the EU to focus on actually winning at something again. Winning at the expense of some of the lofty ideals. I'd rather EU have a decent frontier model lab that plays to win, and steps on toes while doing so, than have a very elaborate bureaucracy that tries to prevent that from happening. Its no surprise the bureaucrats have the exactly opposite goals, and its sad that most of the population won't see the consequences of this conflict of interest until it's too late to do anything -- because the Americans and the Chinese have near AGI capabilities, plentiful energy sources, and, really, not a lot of reasons to remember where Europe is on the map.
tzs 6 hours ago [-]
> I'd rather EU have a decent frontier model lab that plays to win, and steps on toes while doing so, than have a very elaborate bureaucracy that tries to prevent that from happening
What in the AI Act makes it hard to develop frontier models?
solenoid0937 24 hours ago [-]
This is a very naive viewpoint that does not understand that superintelligence is a race between the West and China.
While the EU is twiddling its thumbs about copyright, it is shooting its own side in the foot during the most important race in human history.
The pure absurdity of this is a reflection of how the EU routinely chooses short term safety and good vibes over long term prosperity and success. This mindset is why the EU has been utterly unable to compete for years -- and now, they want to impose their failed model on the actually successful Western companies.
cbg0 24 hours ago [-]
> the most important race in human history
This feels like it needs a lot of asterisks. A race implies someone will win it - how exactly is China winning by making those models freely available? "The West" can use that tech, it's not locked away in some vault.
solenoid0937 24 hours ago [-]
This is a very easy question to answer: they're commoditizing AI and compressing margins for the US labs, while their state funds large scale buildouts. It's a decelerating force for the US because it removes dollars that the labs would otherwise put into R&D.
Obviously China will not release models if they ever get far ahead of the US's best models in capability. You can't seriously think that "free models" will remain the game plan if they take an indisputable lead?
cbg0 23 hours ago [-]
But how is it relevant to the EU right now? It seems like sitting it out and spending that money on weapons is a better option for EU money as it solves an immediate danger.
Why would we need to worry about China getting far ahead of US models given the spending trajectory of US companies? If China does get ahead, US companies will just keep pumping more money into the problem to keep the race going. But to what end? LLMs are not going to morph into AGI, that will be a new paradigm.
For most people, the best LLM is the one that is cheapest to them, as models are incredibly good. I'd wager ~90% of people using AI today wouldn't be able to differentiate GPT Sol from GLM 5.3 Flash in their day-to-day usage. The models are already good enough today for most workloads, next year's model won't change that.
solenoid0937 23 hours ago [-]
> Why would we need to worry about China getting far ahead of US models
If China gets to superintelligence first, the EU is cooked. This is a regime that has permanently disappeared tens of thousands of their human rights lawyers.
> will just keep pumping more money into the problem to keep the race going
Do you think taxing the US companies at 3% of global turnover and twiddling thumbs over copyright helps or hurts the West in the race to superintelligence?
> most workloads, next year's model won't change that.
"Most workloads" are irrelevant, the models matter only at the edge of the hardest problems they can solve, you are thinking of these models like any other technology when they will soon solve incredibly difficult problems that may give one country a real edge over the other.
cbg0 23 hours ago [-]
> If China gets to superintelligence first, the EU is cooked.
If it's as dangerous as you say, the first country that will get to this will be in big trouble, regardless of who they are.
> Do you think taxing the US companies at 3% of global turnover and twiddling thumbs over copyright helps or hurts the West in the race to superintelligence?
Global turnover taxation was meant to prevent companies using creative accounting to not pay taxes, not to hurt "the West".
> they will soon solve incredibly difficult problems that may give one country a real edge over the other
What is this based on aside from AI hype?
frabcus 24 hours ago [-]
Yes, that's fair, and particularly so for AI. The best action would be to speak softly and carry a big stick.
But ultimately, to avoid the dangers of AI, a control treaty of which the only similar historical example was nuclear weapons, will be needed between the US and China. And perhaps, Europe would be better at negotiating that if it was all three.
Meanwhile, legislating to label deepfakes, and evaluating models for safety, should hardly be controversial. And in an ideal world, the US and China would agree and be collaborating with Europe on doing that, not whining about it. That includes reform of copyright.
solenoid0937 24 hours ago [-]
It is totally unrealistic to think that any country could regulate the other country's race to superintelligence.
This is a technology that will give the victor control over the future of humanity forever, and the ability to lock out any competitors from reaching the same level of capability.
Do you really think China would sign any agreement here in good faith? It would be hopelessly naive to negotiate a slowdown and assume that China is not lying through their teeth and accelerating internally. The stakes are too high - we would do the same.
The only option is to win the race, because no entity is naively trusting enough to risk losing this race.
frabcus 13 hours ago [-]
Not unrealistic - the same thing happened with nuclear weapons, between two superpowers who were at cold war with each other. China and US now are much more similar to each other.
Of course it won't happen without the threat of mutual annihilation, but superintelligent AI provides that threat.
As to how... Obviously you have to be smart and tough and invent mechanisms to make it work without trust. Plan A has a bunch of ideas to start with https://ai-2040.com/supplements/verification-plan
bugbull 15 hours ago [-]
> Meanwhile China reaches ever forward because they know that speed and endurance is everything in a race, not shooting oneself in the foot.
China reaches ever forward because they aren’t afraid to use power to crack down on anti-social or against the interests of the nation.
The US population into squeamish. Even nowadays as the sort of enlightenment liberal/libertarian culture amongst the US population starts to waver.
I suspect liberal democracy will slowly be on its way out over the coming decades in the west. It has proven to be too obstructionist against the desires of the elite class.
seibelj 1 days ago [-]
You’ll get downvoted to oblivion but it’s true in endless ways even before AI. The EUs obsession with green energy and destroying nuclear in Germany, the wealth taxes, the bureaucracy, how it’s 10x easier to get disability than it is to start a corporation. Death by a thousand cuts. I don’t see this improving until real, visible pain is felt. They are so poor economically but the consequences are not being felt yet
razemio 1 days ago [-]
Just my 2 cents. Nuclear was dead in Germany without political influence. The reactors where so old, that upgrading them to modern standard would have been a waste of money compared to renewables. France only works because the state helps out. UKs new reactors are financial suicide.
Everything else you might have a point. The EU behaves as if it has influence over companies abroad. Then its strategy might work and do some good. Sadly this is not the case. Instead we are getting isolated and loosing the AI battle bad while bureaucracy and regulations forces inventors to leave.
UpsideDownRide 24 hours ago [-]
Nuclear in Germany was destroyed mostly due to unchecked Russian influence. Shroeder got rewarded by putting the final nail by getting all those board positions in Russia. And they had a reason to be blind to it since the industry does want Russian hydrocarbons.
And as sad of a story as it is, it's nothing compared to what Orange did. It will be a good showcase for the future how business is not the economy.
satvikpendem 1 days ago [-]
And it's not even just me who says this, this is an exact title I've seen online as well before, below.
The reality is Europe will tend towards stagnation while other superpowers continue trudging on, some with their help of their governments while others, even despite themselves and their governments.
The proof is in the pudding. On a pure price-return basis without dividends, an investment in the Euro Stoxx 50 in 2000 sat at approximately 0% capital growth for nearly 25 years.
waitdontanswer 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
satvikpendem 15 hours ago [-]
Don't make accounts to write one comment, use your real account so we know who to flag.
cbg0 1 days ago [-]
The anti-EU comments are always the same shape, unable to separate the EU from individual countries and misattributing country specific policies to the entire EU. Only a few countries in the EU have wealth taxes, and it's not the EU who imposed them. Disability pensions are not easy to get and require a lot of medical paperwork and approvals in most EU countries. And what does "so poor economically" even mean?
frabcus 24 hours ago [-]
Right - the EU is not that powerful. If anything Europe's mistake has been not making it powerful enough, so there is possibility of competing with China and America.
Britain has left it and that's made a negative difference to our productivity. Large home markets are critical, when your two major competitors have large home markets.
Taxes and social services are cultural things in Europe, based on us understanding what a good way to use the wealth technology has given is. America understands this as well - it spends more on state healthcare than Europe does (yes, PPP adjusted), just not universally available.
cbg0 24 hours ago [-]
That "just not universally available" is kind of the crux of it; all that money in a first world country and many people still fear that calling an ambulance will bankrupt them.
seibelj 1 days ago [-]
It’s the mentality of the electorate. Without serious, horrible pain, which I truly believe will be felt over the coming 25 years, politicians won’t be elected who really embrace it. The welfare state can’t continue its current form without new innovative companies operating at a global scale. You can point to a few successes but without a grand, EU-wide mentality-shift I will continue to visit Europe exactly as I see it: a sclerotic, decaying old-world system that’s best use is a museum for my tourist dollars
mhitza 24 hours ago [-]
Ha! That's pure nonsense propaganda. Show me where it is 10x easier to take disability than establish a company. Then show me how EU destroyed Germany's nuclear energy, while doing well in other countries.
If you can't you are no better than the russian and right-wing americans that push anti-EU propaganda.
aenis 24 hours ago [-]
True, the Germans destroyed their own nuclear industry, and with it - its prosperity - entirely on their own. Specifically, Angela Merkel did that, along with lots of other horrible things that deprived the Germans of the future.
thallium205 1 days ago [-]
Europe on another money grubbing fishing expedition on US corporations.
cbg0 24 hours ago [-]
Should the EU not enforce its own regulations? (which apply to all, not just US companies by the way)
mhitza 24 hours ago [-]
GDPR would be enough if money was the aim. Enforcement is pretty thin with that as well, not as if there weren't enough companies out there that can and need to be fined.
aenis 24 hours ago [-]
Enforcement is thin, but every large company operating in the EU pays for legal advice. It's a racket, if you are a large target you will do well to pay for external firms that employ people who personally participated in the establishment of the GDPR regime. This is a tax on the European business - one of many types.
cbg0 24 hours ago [-]
Very large companies already have in-house council or a law firm on retainer.
aenis 24 hours ago [-]
Indeed. But if you are a large enough target, you will employ specialized external firms that deal with GDPR, or else.
Hamuko 23 hours ago [-]
How's that Venezuelan oil?
OKRainbowKid 24 hours ago [-]
Won't somebody think of the poor trillion dollar companies...
pennyforgehq 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
stymaar 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
tadfisher 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
aenis 24 hours ago [-]
I absolutely hate those bureaucrats, people who never built anything and just want to control, review, and develop their cottage industries of well paid lawyers one needs to retain to operate in the market. Same as with GDPR - absolutely no positive impact on actual privacy, but a lot of burden on everyone.
The worst part is, those people can't be voted out. Because of how EU works, the bureaucrats have an upper hand over the elected officials, and because of lavish compensation for the said elected officials, mostly bad people get elected anyway - those whos domestic careers have ended, or those whose parties want out of active politics, and somewhere "safe" where they can earn good money without causing any trouble. Thats a horrible system.
cbg0 17 hours ago [-]
> Same as with GDPR - absolutely no positive impact on actual privacy, but a lot of burden on everyone.
Confidently wrong on this one; it has been very helpful for me to both extract data as well as exercise my right to be forgotten from various providers that would otherwise have no obligation to delete my data.
9 hours ago [-]
Rendered at 05:28:23 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Regulation that cannot practically be implemented or complied with (example: forks of open models), this leads to selective enforcement and by extension corruption and loss of rule of law.
Regulation before the market has even settled down, we don't know if AI will be datacenter only, or open models everybody forks, modifies and runs locally.
And we won't know for a couple for years to come.
> Regulation before the market has even settled down
The counter point would be: the major AI providers have seemingly also lost control of their creation. So at the very least both sides are doing things before they fully understand what they are doing. Also, looking at the (planned) IPOs and the share of AI in S&P 500, one could argue that while the market hasn’t settled, it already is a massive market. When should we start regulating? Eventually it will be too late
> Regulation that cannot practically be implemented or complied with
Yes. Having worked with one EU authority, it’s still people who eventually do the enforcing. That has the risk of corruption but I have also seen repeatedly that they won’t do something if it violates common sense. As always, there is room for interpretation and enforcement and it will be used. Like with any good governance. And companies still can (and do!) sue
The age of written expertise influence is over.
I do think it’s most likely that they will end up fining the AI companies quite a bit under this act. It seems like a bit of a pattern with European legislation that disproportionately impacts American tech companies.
The American public, of various creeds and political orientations is as, if honestly not more skeptical of US tech companies. They simply have no control over their government, which is captured by tech CEOs.
The recent anti datacenter activism extends to IIRC over 40 states now and has roughly 70% largely bipartisan support.
But that only explains that Americans want regulation, not that they want EU regulation.
Americans put innovation and result ahead while Europe prefers precaution/fairness first.
There are real costs for Europe in terms of productivity because of this. Take a look at the Draghi report.
Also see European founders relocating and citing regulation as a problem when it comes to access to capital.
Similar arguments were made to defend Harvey Weinstein.
> And yes, if you feel that strongly, you absolutely do have the option to vote with your feet at any time.
People shouldn’t have to switch jobs because they don’t want to provide Bill Gates with their phone number.
We're now comparing a SaaS product versus people you work with? I don't think ChatGPT will ever physically assault you.
> People shouldn’t have to switch jobs because they don’t want to provide Bill Gates with their phone number.
This is why the EU has very strong employee protection laws; in most countries here there are government agencies that will help you, you're not at the mercy of the HR department.
Umm Because of worker protection laws? For example the Betriebsrat has the right to have a say in this. Second what if the product is very much inferior and the whole company would be more productive with another product?
> You are being paid to work there.
Yes and that means if I see an improvement opportunity or if I have concerns I will voice them. I'm being paid to improve the company, not be a cog in the machine.
But conspiracy theory don't have to make sense in the first place.
"Mistral’s platform will support third-party open models, starting with Z.ai’s GLM-5.2. This and future open models will run on the same infrastructure, regional controls, and service commitments as Mistral models, so customers can broaden model choice without fragmenting where their AI runs."
"European Compute Units, or ECUs, convert those commitments into access to Mistral-built infrastructure over multiple years."
https://mistral.ai/news/regional-inference-open-models-new-c...
It’s a little bit like saying “sysadmins need work visas and vetting, but this guy works for free, so just give him root and don’t think too hard about it”.
I don't think the current US administration has shown themselves to be less hostile than China...
And regarding fines, well the track record for EU fines against any big tech companies, US or China, is abysmal. Even if the companies are fined, the fine goes uncollected or is slashed after the big press release.
I am looking as the DSA here...
"The obligations set out in paragraph 1, points (a) and (b), shall not apply to providers of AI models that are released under a free and open-source licence that allows for the access, usage, modification, and distribution of the model, and whose parameters, including the weights, the information on the model architecture, and the information on model usage, are made publicly available. 2This exception shall not apply to general-purpose AI models with systemic risks."
https://ai-act-law.eu/article/53/
The why is under:
https://ai-act-law.eu/recital/102/
So the chinese models aren't exactly open like in the EU wants them to be
The EU would rather cruise off into perceived comfort and safety rather than attempt to stay relevant economically and on the world stage. Only when the region is unable to afford its own welfare will it start wondering where things went wrong.
We could rephrase this as "the shareholders aren't maximizing their value and the average Joe doesn't have a problem with it".
A mindset shift away from the very mindset you espouse is what is necessary for the EU to succeed.
It doesn't matter how good or bad your legislation is when you are always facing an uphill battle against a better capitalized company serving a bigger market, especially in a sector which, despite its name, has very little technology in it, and hence little barriers besides marketing and network effect.
It's true that in the last 10 years that vision feels like it has crumbled. And the inevitableness of competition is coming back. International law and human rights are dissolving - rule based on power. This works well for anyone while it works for them - except for our souls, and longer term... It's hubristic and eventually empires fall. Europe has already experienced this, and remembers it.
Whether these empires will fall to global economic collapse from lack of co-operation, or environmental destruction from lack of charging for externalities, or from global war, or simply from out of control AI, remains to be seen.
But never question, it is possible to avoid all those. But we have to try to, not just cheaply go "competition good", because of the short term thrill of the win. Competition is good, and so is cooperation.
We'd need quite some changes in the EU to focus on actually winning at something again. Winning at the expense of some of the lofty ideals. I'd rather EU have a decent frontier model lab that plays to win, and steps on toes while doing so, than have a very elaborate bureaucracy that tries to prevent that from happening. Its no surprise the bureaucrats have the exactly opposite goals, and its sad that most of the population won't see the consequences of this conflict of interest until it's too late to do anything -- because the Americans and the Chinese have near AGI capabilities, plentiful energy sources, and, really, not a lot of reasons to remember where Europe is on the map.
What in the AI Act makes it hard to develop frontier models?
While the EU is twiddling its thumbs about copyright, it is shooting its own side in the foot during the most important race in human history.
The pure absurdity of this is a reflection of how the EU routinely chooses short term safety and good vibes over long term prosperity and success. This mindset is why the EU has been utterly unable to compete for years -- and now, they want to impose their failed model on the actually successful Western companies.
This feels like it needs a lot of asterisks. A race implies someone will win it - how exactly is China winning by making those models freely available? "The West" can use that tech, it's not locked away in some vault.
Obviously China will not release models if they ever get far ahead of the US's best models in capability. You can't seriously think that "free models" will remain the game plan if they take an indisputable lead?
Why would we need to worry about China getting far ahead of US models given the spending trajectory of US companies? If China does get ahead, US companies will just keep pumping more money into the problem to keep the race going. But to what end? LLMs are not going to morph into AGI, that will be a new paradigm.
For most people, the best LLM is the one that is cheapest to them, as models are incredibly good. I'd wager ~90% of people using AI today wouldn't be able to differentiate GPT Sol from GLM 5.3 Flash in their day-to-day usage. The models are already good enough today for most workloads, next year's model won't change that.
If China gets to superintelligence first, the EU is cooked. This is a regime that has permanently disappeared tens of thousands of their human rights lawyers.
> will just keep pumping more money into the problem to keep the race going
Do you think taxing the US companies at 3% of global turnover and twiddling thumbs over copyright helps or hurts the West in the race to superintelligence?
> most workloads, next year's model won't change that.
"Most workloads" are irrelevant, the models matter only at the edge of the hardest problems they can solve, you are thinking of these models like any other technology when they will soon solve incredibly difficult problems that may give one country a real edge over the other.
If it's as dangerous as you say, the first country that will get to this will be in big trouble, regardless of who they are.
> Do you think taxing the US companies at 3% of global turnover and twiddling thumbs over copyright helps or hurts the West in the race to superintelligence?
Global turnover taxation was meant to prevent companies using creative accounting to not pay taxes, not to hurt "the West".
> they will soon solve incredibly difficult problems that may give one country a real edge over the other
What is this based on aside from AI hype?
But ultimately, to avoid the dangers of AI, a control treaty of which the only similar historical example was nuclear weapons, will be needed between the US and China. And perhaps, Europe would be better at negotiating that if it was all three.
Meanwhile, legislating to label deepfakes, and evaluating models for safety, should hardly be controversial. And in an ideal world, the US and China would agree and be collaborating with Europe on doing that, not whining about it. That includes reform of copyright.
This is a technology that will give the victor control over the future of humanity forever, and the ability to lock out any competitors from reaching the same level of capability.
Do you really think China would sign any agreement here in good faith? It would be hopelessly naive to negotiate a slowdown and assume that China is not lying through their teeth and accelerating internally. The stakes are too high - we would do the same.
The only option is to win the race, because no entity is naively trusting enough to risk losing this race.
Of course it won't happen without the threat of mutual annihilation, but superintelligent AI provides that threat.
As to how... Obviously you have to be smart and tough and invent mechanisms to make it work without trust. Plan A has a bunch of ideas to start with https://ai-2040.com/supplements/verification-plan
China reaches ever forward because they aren’t afraid to use power to crack down on anti-social or against the interests of the nation.
The US population into squeamish. Even nowadays as the sort of enlightenment liberal/libertarian culture amongst the US population starts to waver.
I suspect liberal democracy will slowly be on its way out over the coming decades in the west. It has proven to be too obstructionist against the desires of the elite class.
Everything else you might have a point. The EU behaves as if it has influence over companies abroad. Then its strategy might work and do some good. Sadly this is not the case. Instead we are getting isolated and loosing the AI battle bad while bureaucracy and regulations forces inventors to leave.
And as sad of a story as it is, it's nothing compared to what Orange did. It will be a good showcase for the future how business is not the economy.
The reality is Europe will tend towards stagnation while other superpowers continue trudging on, some with their help of their governments while others, even despite themselves and their governments.
https://www.trouw.nl/opinie/wil-europa-geen-openluchtmuseum-...
https://www.theprincetontory.com/is-europe-an-open-air-museu...
https://www.investmentofficer.lu/en/columns/gregory-kennedy/...
Britain has left it and that's made a negative difference to our productivity. Large home markets are critical, when your two major competitors have large home markets.
Taxes and social services are cultural things in Europe, based on us understanding what a good way to use the wealth technology has given is. America understands this as well - it spends more on state healthcare than Europe does (yes, PPP adjusted), just not universally available.
If you can't you are no better than the russian and right-wing americans that push anti-EU propaganda.
The worst part is, those people can't be voted out. Because of how EU works, the bureaucrats have an upper hand over the elected officials, and because of lavish compensation for the said elected officials, mostly bad people get elected anyway - those whos domestic careers have ended, or those whose parties want out of active politics, and somewhere "safe" where they can earn good money without causing any trouble. Thats a horrible system.
Confidently wrong on this one; it has been very helpful for me to both extract data as well as exercise my right to be forgotten from various providers that would otherwise have no obligation to delete my data.