EU Pledges $200 Billion in AI Spending in Bid To Catch Up With US, China (msn.com) 36
The European Union pledged to mobilize 200 billion euros ($206.15 billion) to invest in AI as the bloc seeks to catch up with the U.S. and China in the race to train the most complex models. From a report: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the bloc wants to supercharge its ability to compete with the U.S. and China in AI. The plan -- dubbed InvestAI -- includes a new 20 billion-euro fund for so-called AI gigafactories, facilities that rely on powerful chips to train the most complex AI models. "We want Europe to be one of the leading AI continents, and this means embracing a life where AI is everywhere," von der Leyen said at the AI Action Summit in Paris.
The announcement underscores efforts from the EU to position itself as a key player in the AI race. The bloc has been lagging behind the U.S. and China since OpenAI's 2022 release of ChatGPT ushered in a spending bonanza. [...] The EU is aiming to establish gigafactories to train the most complex and large AI models. Those facilities will be equipped with roughly 100,000 last-generation AI chips, around four times more than the number installed in the AI factories being set up right now.
The announcement underscores efforts from the EU to position itself as a key player in the AI race. The bloc has been lagging behind the U.S. and China since OpenAI's 2022 release of ChatGPT ushered in a spending bonanza. [...] The EU is aiming to establish gigafactories to train the most complex and large AI models. Those facilities will be equipped with roughly 100,000 last-generation AI chips, around four times more than the number installed in the AI factories being set up right now.
This isn't how innovation works (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This isn't how innovation works (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't just dump money on a problem and hope it gets better.
No, but you can drum up enough FOMO so that you can funnel funding towards something that your family, friends, and the financiers for your political campaign can siphon money off of with little oversight and plenty of plausible deniability when the investment doesn't pan out.
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It's actually a relevant FP angle, but with political poison mixed in. Confusion about the role of government and whether or not the money-chasing gamesters should be free to rake in as much money as possible without any concerns for the external costs imposed on society and the harms caused to other people.
Interesting read on the topic is The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. I hope to finish the book within a few days... Basic premise is that smartphones may have destroyed an entire generation, with
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*sigh*
c/for to/to/
c/it's job/its job/
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Confusion about the role of government ...
There's no confusion about who benefits from a lack of regulation and socialism (social security, education), from privatizing government services (health insurance, student loans, postal delivery), from excusing systemic discrimination and elitism.
Getting much attention at the moment, is "The siren's call" by Chris Hayes (not to be confused with "The siren call", 1922, movie). It claims, being always-connected to endless entertainment and reporting, makes thinking and attention-span a marketable commodity
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Indeed. This is not a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it. On the other hand, LLMs are really not that great and that is unlikely to change. There probably is no need to "catch up" to anything.
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Indeed. This is not a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it. On the other hand, LLMs are really not that great and that is unlikely to change. There probably is no need to "catch up" to anything.
I think the tech-bros are trying desperately to prove that throwing money at it *IS* the solution to this particular problem. They're tossing billions into energy production and data center development, all hoping that they gave have the biggest tech-boner of all time so they can beat the other players with it. It's tech-bro sword fighting, which I would be all for, except for the fact that there's potential lots of us will be collateral damage as they war it out.
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You can't just dump money on a problem and hope it gets better. The EU's regulatory system is absolutely opposed to technology companies. This money will simply disappear just like the CHIPS act money has.
Really, and where has the private money Open AI and pals have raised gone? Judging from the last few US originated bubbles I lived through that money is in the process of evaporating. There is already plenty of AI startups in the EU and if they spend this money wisely it should help, particularly if it is spent on processing power which is what they seem to be doing. Making these facilities will be made available to startups and FOSS projects I can hardly imagine a better way to foster innovation. It would
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The EU's regulatory system allows technology companies to do very well, as witnessed by them... doing very well. Not the ones that rely on stealing data, or locking customers in, but the ones that actually work on developing technology.
It's definitely possible to dump money on problems and solve them where money is the problem. In this case, the money is aimed at hardware manufacturing, which has already started gaining attention in the EU. The problems with relying on getting silicon through fragile trade
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Of successful technology companies in the EU?
SAP, Dassault, Spotify, Capgemini, SAAB, ASML, Zeiss, Siemens, Nokia, Arm, Ericsson, EVG, AMS, Bosch... the list goes on.
And nobody in the world makes chips without Zeiss and ASML
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By "technology company" I guess you mean a web software company that sells targeted advertising?
It would be nice to see the EU, and anyone else, put some money into AI applications that are not in that area.
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Everyone is looking at Taiwan who makes 98% of the financially relevant computer chips and listening to China repeatedly warning they're going to take over Taiwan and realizing there's too many eggs in one basket, and countries should own strategic technology like semiconductors for national security reasons just like they do aerospace and tank manufacturing. Having rudimentary AI technology is likely to become necessary in the future and the window to catch up is still open for the next couple of years and
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They can steal the work of others ala DeepSeek and save a fair amount of money doing so. Though they'd be better off selling training and inference hardware.
Can someone explain to me (Score:2)
What "problem" AI is supposed to solve?
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What "problem" AI is supposed to solve?
How to release humans from the burdens of doing creative work like art and songwriting and such, so humans can focus on the kind of work they do best, like cleaning bathrooms and serving you at McDonald's.
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AI.
Whoever gets there first has a huge productivity advantage as human labour is rendered obsolete. AI is dumber, but it's orders of magnitude faster and never asks for a raise.
The problem is that we don't know how to handle being so productive that the majority of people become economically redundant. That's where the fascism and scapegoating will help with massive population reduction so we don't keep getting in the rich people's way.
We are currently not on course for a happy Star Trek style post-scarci
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In China, AI is primarily being used to run the surveillance state.
That's not a race that you'd want to be in.
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Supposed? Everything! The new golden age!
In reality: It gives you better search when you search things you do not know the terminology for or when you want comparisons or any other case where you want to search with a simple description. Apparently it works relatively well for cultural comparisons like how to behave at, say, a hair-dresser, and what to expect there. Oh, and only if you can fact-check the results and when no reasoning is needed, just statistics. Essentially very broad but very shallow things
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Mainly separating investors from their funds.
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What "problem" AI is supposed to solve?
Humans. Needing humans to do actual work. Or at least that's the way they've been trying to sell it.
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Ridding those pesky rights-demanding human employees so we plutocrats can get ever richer by having cheap obedient bots do the work.
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We still use humans for tasks that are too difficult or expensive to program or automate. If you can train a human to do a job in a day that's a minimumâ wage entry level job. We're on the cusp of being able to train robots to do human physical tasks using actions and words. Robots don't sleep, don't need to pay rent, don't get sick and don't show up hung over to work.
AI is also really good at doing basic white collar tasks like AR, AP, accounting, basic programming and other entry level admini
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In before "but robots are expensive"; unitree has several models of bipedal humanoid looking 4'6" to 5'6" robots that range in price from as low as $16k to as much as $70k. Even at $50k and a maintenance contract the ROI is probably under 2 years to replace a human. Potentially anything under $150k is financially viable when you include insurance, OSHA, severance, financial liability, pension/social security etc. Depends on the industry but C-3PO isn't a million dollar android, he's more like a used Lexus a
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What "problem" AI is supposed to solve?
*ALL* of them. Duh. /s
That is the hype anyway. The reality is that it is just a tool for doing the things we already do -but maybe more efficiently. The main thing that we will get out of it is advanced automation/robotic systems. We will also advance the fields of mathematics and physics as we develop these tools.
It is kind of like going to the moon was back in the 60s. It was cool to have accomplished it, but the main value was in what we developed in order to accomplish it.
EPP level of stupid (Score:2)
EPP - European People's Party. Nearly as dumb as their republican counterparts in the US. And just as corrupt.
VP Vance talk @ AI Action Summit Plenary Summit (Score:2)
Incredible to see a political leader translate how a new technology can promote human flourishing with such clarity. Exceptional speech.
https://x.com/KTmBoyle/status/... [x.com]
A note on this kind of speech— it’s not written by a speechwriter, where the speaker has no knowledge of the subject. It’s not full of filler words that carry no meaning. It has a clear argument, and a surprising one for the audience he’s addressing.
One of the problems with AI is that politicians are so intimidated by
AI chips (Score:2)
Those facilities will be equipped with roughly 100,000 last-generation AI chips
I fear EU is not going to design and produce that chips.