Regardless of how you view the current political climate in USA, it's simply become a major risk-management factor for almost any European organisation. We're heavily invested into Azure, but we've had to work out plans on how we could potentially exit within 30 days because we're part of the European energy sector. (We're really part of the global energy sector, but we're based in the EU.) We still view US tech companies as more reliable and secure than a lot of other non-EU places, but it's not like it was 5 years ago. I'm not sure any of us are really happy with this. Mistral is fine, but it's not as good as Claude and similar. It is what it is though.
Ironically there are no current exit strategies for our public sector mobile apps which rely solely on Google play or the Apple store. I've written a plan for how we can move our resources from Azure to Hetzner, luckily I'm not involved with how we would move any 365 products so it was not too bad. Only the plan involves me using our digital national ID app on my phone, which would not work if I wasn't running android with Google Play (or apple). I mean, in the extreme it wouldn't be impossible to use my passport in person, but still.
> Ironically there are no current exit strategies for our public sector mobile apps which rely solely on Google play or the Apple store.
Its not just consumers. A lot of the private sector also relies on mobile apps. Even more of it relies on American desktop OSes. There are lots of other online services - email, storage. Lots of non-IT services such as payments (SWIFT, Visa, Mastercard).
How much good will you moving from Azure to Hertzner do if lots of other businesses are down, lots of payments are not working, and a lot of government stiff is not working. Maybe you can keep a few things going because they have energy (and it is important to keep supplies going if everything else fails), but that is about it.
Out of curiosity - do you also plan for the possibility that your will want to move to another provider at the same time as the rest of your industry if not large parts of the EU as a whole?
Whenever I think about these things I just don’t see us Europeans being able to tackle suddenly having to decouple from the US if Trump or a successor suddenly turns the screws to 11.
Sort of. We're heavily containerized and have almost no reliance on Azure only services. So we could deploy it to any EU cloud, or even put it on our own hardware if needed. In the worst case, we could use work laptops as a linux cluster and run on that, though storage would be "interesting". That is my part of the business though. IT operations don't exactly have an easy exit if they're told we can't use Windows or Office in a month. Finance doesn't have an easy exit if they're told they can't use BC, and so on.
Basically energy production would have few isses with a disconnect from the US, regardless of where we'd have to go. But the business would struggle.
Even though it's the same app and ID, there is a bit of a difference between the company ID tied to my digital ID and my private digital ID. You can get a physical code thingie instead of the phone app for private use. To be honest though, the primary reason I have a smartphone is that it's annoying if you don't. Banking, contacting the doctor, buying medicine, dealing with your childrens school, going to the library and so on are all super annoying without apps, and you can't get them without Google Play or Apple.
I agree it's annoying, and even though I have a smartphone, I'm annoyed. My kids' school uses a tool that has a web UI but I wonder how long that will last.
In Sweden you can technically get by with only a psychical ID. But even now when the number of people that only have a physical ID is low getting things done can be hard. Suddenly switching to physical ID only on asocialt wide basis would be comparable to going from almost exclusively shopping online to in-store cash only.
Given that the EU is encouraging disaster preparedness and handling things like extended power outages I really hope they don't make it impossible to function without a charged phone.
My problem with the EU overall, aside from being inefficient, is that they don't really push towards intrinsic perfection. They kind of look what others do, try to simulate and copy it, usually fail - and then the same pattern is repeated.
Just take the issue of a european chip industry. Or literally anything China is doing now. The EU just isn't really a driver - it is a maintainer at best. And that also means it will successfully lose out to e. g. China or the USA.
Ironic comment in light of Netherlands-based ASML being the only company in the world that can supply the lithography machines that TSMC uses to make chips for NVidia and others.
Isn't that an example of driving towards intrinsic perfection?
You mean with the licencing of the EUV tech? If push comes to shove, to the point where the USA tries to strangle ASML, the EU could create pathways to not recognise the licence agreement anymore, and remove copyright protections from it.
All the engineering part of that technology is in European hands, the royalties to EUV LLC are based on mutually beneficial arrangements, if it's weaponised all gloves are off.
And people forget what was actually licensed and what value does it have without ASML. ASML bought SVG lithography two decades ago to expand in dry/immersion optical litho and US market access. EUV matured later. SVG had momentum in DUV and still couldn't sustain at 193nm while EUV is an order of magnitude more complex. Cymer was ASML's light source supplier that ASML later acquired in 2013. Pre acquisition there were supply/technology agreements, but after 2013 the Cymer IP became ASML owned so not a continuing US license.
Today's restrictions are mainly export control licenses, not ongoing IP licenses.
ASML builds the whole scanner and owns the integration IP that makes the parts actually produce yield at scale. The light source matters but without ASML's stages, metrology, optics integration, contamination control, control software etc etc you've got a science project instead of a tool a fab can run. ASML won because the integration problem beat almost everyone else.
It's similar to TSMC, anyone can buy an ASML machine, but there is only one TSMC, because it's not just about the machine and not just about the light source.
Honestly the bigger problem - even with the current topic - is that everything is top down.
They don't make a framework for XYZ to emerge based on market forces. It's always committee driven 'we will support this initiative so XYZ happens' top-down initiatives.
Those are necessary in some sectors, but it is applied everywhere. With multinational participation in committee and a lot of back and forth dance.
It's better than blind trendchasing or completely unregulated market forces doing their job, but the delay overhead is gigantic.
> My problem with the EU overall, aside from being inefficient, is that they don't really push towards intrinsic perfection. They kind of look what others do, try to simulate and copy it, usually fail - and then the same pattern is repeated
There is literally a term for when EU mandates result in global change, "the Brussels effect".
Also, it's a bit weird to claim the EU never tries to push for perfection and just copies - this is the organisation that brought us USB C as the one and only standard for everything, the right to be forgotten and the right to digital privacy, competition on railway networks EU-wide, the OpenSkies, and is actively trying to prevent excessive concentration of market forces (unlike pretty much any other regulator).
> Also, it's a bit weird to claim the EU never tries to push for perfection and just copies - this is the organisation that brought us USB C as the one and only standard for everything
Not the same as inventing USB, and I am far from sure its a good thing.
> he right to be forgotten and the right to digital privacy
Right to privacy in various forms far predates the EU.
> competition on railway networks EU-wide
A copy of a policy of a country that has left the EU, and is far from popular there, and looks like being reversed there.
> actively trying to prevent excessive concentration of market forces (unlike pretty much any other regulator).
The US was very good at that historically, and there are plenty of regulators around the world with the same concerns.
Why? It's good for consumers (more practical) and the planet (less ewaste).
> Right to privacy in various forms far predates the EU.
Online? As a concept yes, but as a legal framework, not really.
> A copy of a policy of a country that has left the EU, and is far from popular there, and looks like being reversed there.
The UK system isn't actual competition though. There are concession that get local monopolies. So for the vast majority of trips, there is one private company that operates these trains on that route. It's the worst of all worlds. In the EU, anyone can start operating on any route.
> The US was very good at that historically, and there are plenty of regulators around the world with the same concerns.
And which one has done anything? The only recent one I recall is the UK's blocking Faceboo's acquisition of Giphy.
Another strategy, another initiative, another commission.
> All of this AI acceleration will be monitored by an “AI Observatory” and discussed in an “Apply AI Alliance” – a refashioning of the existing AI Alliance, a stakeholder talking shop.
It reminds me of how here in Spain the Government already created the Agencia Española de Supervisión de la Inteligencia Artificial (Spanish AI Supervision Agency) when we barely have an AI industry to supervise. It creates some more cushy jobs for them to hand out though.
I think this comment is, while factual, slightly misleading. Only around 16% of people "living off the government" are public servants, from which over 50% are for essential services like education health or public safety.
Over 50% of those "living off the government" are pensioners, so mostly coming from a pool of people who already worked (and most of them in the private sector), and paid their share in taxes. In spain, the private sector makes 70% of the active workforce, while the public sector around 13%, self employed 13%, and unemployed 10%.
I know Spain (and Europe) have quite a lot of structural problems, but I fail to see how having so many pensioners has anything to do with AI regulations.
If pensions come from government funds it matters if you are looking at the impact on the economy. The taxes pensioners paid have presumably been spent, so while their past contribution is an argument for their entitlement to pensions, it does not solve the problem of where the money will come from.
Its even worse in the UK where we have a special additional income tax (NI) on earned income (things like investment income are exempt), that is higher on people with low to moderate incomes, that is primarily used to pay (current) pensions (a little bit is set aside for future pensions, but there is only enough set aside for less an an year of payments).
It does not really make a big difference if the pensioner saved 100k while working and put it in their couch, or if they payed it in ekstra taxes which got saved by the government, or if the government presses new money.
The important part is how large fraction of the population work, not where the money for the remaining fraction comes from. Money is only a representation of value, value created by the working fraction.
Exactly this happened to European hardware startups. So many certifications and directives, weee, rohs, reach, red, supply chain, sustainability, etc. Logical step as an investor is to avoid ventures, that are burning tons of money just to comply with regulations. The company I work for right now has healthy cashflow and people for regulatory topics, but it would be impossible to re-create this electronics business today.
Even if you get EU grant, you can't run a startup that way. You have to basically have full plan set in stone, and you will be checked if it was fulfilled to avoid waste of EU money.
The problem is that you cannot pivot easily, you cannot change a lot of things in it - and even things like your potential hire bailing last minute can be devastating, paperwork wise.
Sadly this + unsustainable love for social welfare will lead Europe to lose long term life quality and possible wealth. They don't like innovators there now, that is for sure.
I work with Hopsworks. I think we are the only European owned software platform for developing and running AI systems (batch, real-time, LLMS/agents) at scale.
software platform - for training, feature engineering, inference.
By that measure, they don't count. They are cloud providers.
There are european inference as a service providers, too, though.
Interesting that the EU wants to push “Buy European AI,” but without clear implementation steps it feels more like strategy theater. I wonder how many of these initiatives will actually help small developers or startups build sustainable AI tools.
Or existing AI vendors build market share.
Of course, it will help us. But it needs a lot of money. And the consultancy companies have been feeding from the product trough here for years. We need to keep their noses out of it.
I got a feeling that there's a bunch of European politicians having a FOMO and are way too influenced by AI influencers that post stuff like "It's over", "Bye Bye Hollywood", "17 hours ago OpenAI launched it and this changes everything".
I recall bunch of those also having a FOMO for NFTs and having NFT events in the commission premises.
Probably its O.K. as long as they don't spend consequential money on this stuff. They should just watch the US more closely, keep announcing 600B Euros investment every few weeks and do nothing about it. Make VW invest 5B Euros for AI self driving in Mistral then Mistral buying shares from VW with that money, do some questionable self driving demos etc.
Eurocrats are clueless, they are trying to have something that very small number of people show interest in. What they should really do, IMHO, is to reduce friction induced by bureaucracy and that's it. Contrary to the popular narrative EU is a force for reducing bureaucracy, as the Brits found out when left EU. The idea is that EU coordinates the 27 states to create ruleset that are more or less aligned so there's not too much paperwork when trading between those 27 countries. Unfortunately this is still not good enough and they are working to create the 28th regime which is supposed to be something like streamlined ruleset that bypasses the local ones so that companies can grow in a market of 27 countries without dealing with 27 set of laws. That's when EU can have an actual AI thing because the current state of AI is just bunch of capitalists juggling money and credit among themselves to keep alive this interesting technology that looks promising but doesn't actually accomplish something yet. If EU will have anything of this sort they need a place to hold these capital gymnastics.
This particular "Apply AI" strategy seems to stem from the idea that AI does some great things and EU industry should adopt it to increase productivity and not fall behind. Pure FOMO, considering that studies show very limited gains through use of AI so far.
Ever since GDPR it has been baffling that European companies just reach for the American hyperscalers without a care in the world. Sure, _some_ companies need it, but you can get a long ways with OVH or Hetzner.
I suspect many of them are just ignoring their obligations with respect to data transfers (they also fail to understand the meaning of "Freely Given Consent" or "Legitimate Interest"), and utterly pathetic and useless institutions like the Irish Data Protection Commission (https://www.dataprotection.ie/en) just... let them.
Everything in EU is overpriced and worse than things coming from outside the EU, and that is by design. EU basically has no choice but to become more dystopian and adopt policies similar to the USSR to keep itself viable. This includes extreme trade barriers (with exceptions for China, because of course) and extreme restrictions on speech.
Europe is like some rich kid who thinks he somehow has merit of his own, instead of just being well-off because his parents were well-off. Basically Europe is the Greta Thunberg of continents.
It is a bit hypocritical of the EU to push tariffs against the EU citizens, forcing higher prices. Tariffs can sometimes make sense, such as for an emerging industry, but counter-tariffs are often the outcome and we here are punished by higher prices. If the EU wants to be relevant, they also need to produce at a lower price; China is conquering markets because it simply is more competitive now.
China has better quality manufacturing at a cheaper price than EU and China. They aren't pushing out junk, it's well engineered, well, manufactured good which are almost impossible to produce at all in Europe never mind produce at a cheaper price, but still Europe allows these things to be imported with less strict barriers than they have against goods produced in European countries themselves.
Same, they push tariffs it seems mostly to protect automotive industry from competition, the industry which has grown bloated and rent-seeking over the years.
Even more so when you take build quality and support quality in the equation.
On paper the EU may have strong trade barriers with China, but in practice this just does not bear out. Europe has stronger trade barriers within itself than with China.
The EU demands that goods made in Poland conforms to some standards, but also that the manufacturers in Poland conform to some standards. For goods from China they in theory demand the same standards, but in practice these standards are not strictly enforced for goods from China (see AliExpress, Temu, Shein, etc), and there are no regulation on the manufacturers. Chinese manufacturers use slave labour, they pollute, they don't give their employees similar rights and benefits.
It's also way easier and cheaper for most Europeans to buy something from China than it is to buy something from within Europe, even though the actual selling price out of the factory is not that much higher for things manufactured in Europe. I pay the same "tariffs" if I buy from Sweden or AliExpress.
> Everything in EU is overpriced and worse than things coming from outside the EU, and that is by design
If nothing else, Airbus says hello and laughs in your face. Throw in Spotify and IKEA, the majority of the world's luxury sector, a decent portion of the world's biggest car manufacturers, ASML, and you're just being silly.
As someone who lives in Europe and buys things in Europe every single day, I know that practically everything except groceries comes from China. But sure, whenever I buy a plate from IKEA it comes from Turkey and not China.
But I guess if I were a rich person who mostly bought luxury goods, they would come from France. I guess I'm the problem. If only my tax money stayed with me instead of being funnelled to useless aristocrats, then maybe I could afford more luxury goods from France.
Everyone in the world buys things made in China everyday, it's the largest manufacturing country in the world, that's a non-sequitur.
At the same time there are plenty of everyday items still made in the EU, and not necessarily luxury goods. My pets' leashes are made in Germany, my kitchen knives are made in Germany, my pots and pans are made in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. My drinking glasses are made in France, and Italy, my glass storage containers are made in France; lots of my clothing are made in Portugal, my music gear is made in Germany, Spain, Estonia, and Poland.
It's up to you to choose items made in the EU and not China though.
Also think about non-consumer items and expensive items such as cars.
Even with consumer items the keyboard I am typing this on says "made in the Czech Republic" on the bottom. I definitely have lots of things made in Germany, Taiwan, France, the US, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Vietnam etc.
People in the UK keep saying "we do not make anything anymore" but in fact lots of things, cars (often foreign brands, but still made here) and car parts, medicines, chemical, medical equipment, jet engines, satellites..... those are just off the top of my head.
I didn't mention non-consumer items because OP was complaining about only buying items "made in China".
For non-consumer items there's a whole laundry list of high-tech stuff where Europe has a big presence: high-end chemical reactors, high-precision machinery, chip manufacturing machines (not only ASML but also probe cards, vacuum valves/pumps), off-shore wind turbines (including HV submarine lines for transmission), aseptic packaging for food (Tetra Pak, SIG), and lots more.
People only look at the brands they recognise without understanding there's a whole lots of standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants going on in the supply chain so Apple can manufacture an iPhone in China using technology from all across the globe, a lot of it from Europe. That laser cutter doing precision metalwork on phones, or cars? Probably German or Swiss...
It's not flashy but there's actually very important technology that is developed, and made in Europe.
Selling medicines, and biotech is quite a productive industry where European companies are leaders. The same for high-precision machinery used by the "actual productive industries" that depend on European machines to be able to even have factories with assembly lines, chemical reactors, etc.
It's almost like people taking these jabs don't understand comparative advantages, and are also blind to the economical output of Europe in general...
Regardless of how you view the current political climate in USA, it's simply become a major risk-management factor for almost any European organisation. We're heavily invested into Azure, but we've had to work out plans on how we could potentially exit within 30 days because we're part of the European energy sector. (We're really part of the global energy sector, but we're based in the EU.) We still view US tech companies as more reliable and secure than a lot of other non-EU places, but it's not like it was 5 years ago. I'm not sure any of us are really happy with this. Mistral is fine, but it's not as good as Claude and similar. It is what it is though.
Ironically there are no current exit strategies for our public sector mobile apps which rely solely on Google play or the Apple store. I've written a plan for how we can move our resources from Azure to Hetzner, luckily I'm not involved with how we would move any 365 products so it was not too bad. Only the plan involves me using our digital national ID app on my phone, which would not work if I wasn't running android with Google Play (or apple). I mean, in the extreme it wouldn't be impossible to use my passport in person, but still.
That is also true. Relying on the USA past this point is a losing strategy.
> Ironically there are no current exit strategies for our public sector mobile apps which rely solely on Google play or the Apple store.
Its not just consumers. A lot of the private sector also relies on mobile apps. Even more of it relies on American desktop OSes. There are lots of other online services - email, storage. Lots of non-IT services such as payments (SWIFT, Visa, Mastercard).
How much good will you moving from Azure to Hertzner do if lots of other businesses are down, lots of payments are not working, and a lot of government stiff is not working. Maybe you can keep a few things going because they have energy (and it is important to keep supplies going if everything else fails), but that is about it.
Out of curiosity - do you also plan for the possibility that your will want to move to another provider at the same time as the rest of your industry if not large parts of the EU as a whole?
Whenever I think about these things I just don’t see us Europeans being able to tackle suddenly having to decouple from the US if Trump or a successor suddenly turns the screws to 11.
Sort of. We're heavily containerized and have almost no reliance on Azure only services. So we could deploy it to any EU cloud, or even put it on our own hardware if needed. In the worst case, we could use work laptops as a linux cluster and run on that, though storage would be "interesting". That is my part of the business though. IT operations don't exactly have an easy exit if they're told we can't use Windows or Office in a month. Finance doesn't have an easy exit if they're told they can't use BC, and so on.
Basically energy production would have few isses with a disconnect from the US, regardless of where we'd have to go. But the business would struggle.
How do people who don't have a smartphone (they still exist!) manage without digital ID? Is there no analog fallback?
Even though it's the same app and ID, there is a bit of a difference between the company ID tied to my digital ID and my private digital ID. You can get a physical code thingie instead of the phone app for private use. To be honest though, the primary reason I have a smartphone is that it's annoying if you don't. Banking, contacting the doctor, buying medicine, dealing with your childrens school, going to the library and so on are all super annoying without apps, and you can't get them without Google Play or Apple.
I agree it's annoying, and even though I have a smartphone, I'm annoyed. My kids' school uses a tool that has a web UI but I wonder how long that will last.
In Sweden you can technically get by with only a psychical ID. But even now when the number of people that only have a physical ID is low getting things done can be hard. Suddenly switching to physical ID only on asocialt wide basis would be comparable to going from almost exclusively shopping online to in-store cash only.
Given that the EU is encouraging disaster preparedness and handling things like extended power outages I really hope they don't make it impossible to function without a charged phone.
You don't have kodebrikke in Sweden? Just app?
Most banks supply some sort of hardware auth device. But those are only valid with the bank’s services.
Unfortunately not. I would welcome it.
My problem with the EU overall, aside from being inefficient, is that they don't really push towards intrinsic perfection. They kind of look what others do, try to simulate and copy it, usually fail - and then the same pattern is repeated.
Just take the issue of a european chip industry. Or literally anything China is doing now. The EU just isn't really a driver - it is a maintainer at best. And that also means it will successfully lose out to e. g. China or the USA.
Ironic comment in light of Netherlands-based ASML being the only company in the world that can supply the lithography machines that TSMC uses to make chips for NVidia and others.
Isn't that an example of driving towards intrinsic perfection?
It's worth noting that that company too has america's hand around it's neck.
You mean with the licencing of the EUV tech? If push comes to shove, to the point where the USA tries to strangle ASML, the EU could create pathways to not recognise the licence agreement anymore, and remove copyright protections from it.
All the engineering part of that technology is in European hands, the royalties to EUV LLC are based on mutually beneficial arrangements, if it's weaponised all gloves are off.
And people forget what was actually licensed and what value does it have without ASML. ASML bought SVG lithography two decades ago to expand in dry/immersion optical litho and US market access. EUV matured later. SVG had momentum in DUV and still couldn't sustain at 193nm while EUV is an order of magnitude more complex. Cymer was ASML's light source supplier that ASML later acquired in 2013. Pre acquisition there were supply/technology agreements, but after 2013 the Cymer IP became ASML owned so not a continuing US license.
Today's restrictions are mainly export control licenses, not ongoing IP licenses.
ASML builds the whole scanner and owns the integration IP that makes the parts actually produce yield at scale. The light source matters but without ASML's stages, metrology, optics integration, contamination control, control software etc etc you've got a science project instead of a tool a fab can run. ASML won because the integration problem beat almost everyone else.
It's similar to TSMC, anyone can buy an ASML machine, but there is only one TSMC, because it's not just about the machine and not just about the light source.
They’re not looking for perfection, they’re looking to remove paying compute taxes to the US, and keep IP and knowledge within EU.
Honestly the bigger problem - even with the current topic - is that everything is top down.
They don't make a framework for XYZ to emerge based on market forces. It's always committee driven 'we will support this initiative so XYZ happens' top-down initiatives.
Those are necessary in some sectors, but it is applied everywhere. With multinational participation in committee and a lot of back and forth dance.
It's better than blind trendchasing or completely unregulated market forces doing their job, but the delay overhead is gigantic.
> My problem with the EU overall, aside from being inefficient, is that they don't really push towards intrinsic perfection. They kind of look what others do, try to simulate and copy it, usually fail - and then the same pattern is repeated
There is literally a term for when EU mandates result in global change, "the Brussels effect".
Also, it's a bit weird to claim the EU never tries to push for perfection and just copies - this is the organisation that brought us USB C as the one and only standard for everything, the right to be forgotten and the right to digital privacy, competition on railway networks EU-wide, the OpenSkies, and is actively trying to prevent excessive concentration of market forces (unlike pretty much any other regulator).
> Also, it's a bit weird to claim the EU never tries to push for perfection and just copies - this is the organisation that brought us USB C as the one and only standard for everything
Not the same as inventing USB, and I am far from sure its a good thing.
> he right to be forgotten and the right to digital privacy
Right to privacy in various forms far predates the EU.
> competition on railway networks EU-wide
A copy of a policy of a country that has left the EU, and is far from popular there, and looks like being reversed there.
> actively trying to prevent excessive concentration of market forces (unlike pretty much any other regulator).
The US was very good at that historically, and there are plenty of regulators around the world with the same concerns.
> and I am far from sure its a good thing.
Why? It's good for consumers (more practical) and the planet (less ewaste).
> Right to privacy in various forms far predates the EU.
Online? As a concept yes, but as a legal framework, not really.
> A copy of a policy of a country that has left the EU, and is far from popular there, and looks like being reversed there.
The UK system isn't actual competition though. There are concession that get local monopolies. So for the vast majority of trips, there is one private company that operates these trains on that route. It's the worst of all worlds. In the EU, anyone can start operating on any route.
> The US was very good at that historically, and there are plenty of regulators around the world with the same concerns.
And which one has done anything? The only recent one I recall is the UK's blocking Faceboo's acquisition of Giphy.
Didn’t Tesla outright buy one of the only companies in the world which made a specific type of robotics/automation back in 2016/17?
Another strategy, another initiative, another commission.
> All of this AI acceleration will be monitored by an “AI Observatory” and discussed in an “Apply AI Alliance” – a refashioning of the existing AI Alliance, a stakeholder talking shop.
It reminds me of how here in Spain the Government already created the Agencia Española de Supervisión de la Inteligencia Artificial (Spanish AI Supervision Agency) when we barely have an AI industry to supervise. It creates some more cushy jobs for them to hand out though.
In Spain there are half a million more people living off the government than those working in the private sector: https://theobjective.com/economia/macroeconomia/2024-09-16/a...
I think this comment is, while factual, slightly misleading. Only around 16% of people "living off the government" are public servants, from which over 50% are for essential services like education health or public safety.
Over 50% of those "living off the government" are pensioners, so mostly coming from a pool of people who already worked (and most of them in the private sector), and paid their share in taxes. In spain, the private sector makes 70% of the active workforce, while the public sector around 13%, self employed 13%, and unemployed 10%.
I know Spain (and Europe) have quite a lot of structural problems, but I fail to see how having so many pensioners has anything to do with AI regulations.
If pensions come from government funds it matters if you are looking at the impact on the economy. The taxes pensioners paid have presumably been spent, so while their past contribution is an argument for their entitlement to pensions, it does not solve the problem of where the money will come from.
Its even worse in the UK where we have a special additional income tax (NI) on earned income (things like investment income are exempt), that is higher on people with low to moderate incomes, that is primarily used to pay (current) pensions (a little bit is set aside for future pensions, but there is only enough set aside for less an an year of payments).
It does not really make a big difference if the pensioner saved 100k while working and put it in their couch, or if they payed it in ekstra taxes which got saved by the government, or if the government presses new money.
The important part is how large fraction of the population work, not where the money for the remaining fraction comes from. Money is only a representation of value, value created by the working fraction.
“Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.”
Exactly this happened to European hardware startups. So many certifications and directives, weee, rohs, reach, red, supply chain, sustainability, etc. Logical step as an investor is to avoid ventures, that are burning tons of money just to comply with regulations. The company I work for right now has healthy cashflow and people for regulatory topics, but it would be impossible to re-create this electronics business today.
Even if you get EU grant, you can't run a startup that way. You have to basically have full plan set in stone, and you will be checked if it was fulfilled to avoid waste of EU money.
The problem is that you cannot pivot easily, you cannot change a lot of things in it - and even things like your potential hire bailing last minute can be devastating, paperwork wise.
Sadly this + unsustainable love for social welfare will lead Europe to lose long term life quality and possible wealth. They don't like innovators there now, that is for sure.
I work with Hopsworks. I think we are the only European owned software platform for developing and running AI systems (batch, real-time, LLMS/agents) at scale.
Scaleway, ovh and a bunch of other inference as a service providers dont count?
software platform - for training, feature engineering, inference. By that measure, they don't count. They are cloud providers. There are european inference as a service providers, too, though.
Interesting that the EU wants to push “Buy European AI,” but without clear implementation steps it feels more like strategy theater. I wonder how many of these initiatives will actually help small developers or startups build sustainable AI tools.
Or existing AI vendors build market share. Of course, it will help us. But it needs a lot of money. And the consultancy companies have been feeding from the product trough here for years. We need to keep their noses out of it.
I got a feeling that there's a bunch of European politicians having a FOMO and are way too influenced by AI influencers that post stuff like "It's over", "Bye Bye Hollywood", "17 hours ago OpenAI launched it and this changes everything".
I recall bunch of those also having a FOMO for NFTs and having NFT events in the commission premises.
Probably its O.K. as long as they don't spend consequential money on this stuff. They should just watch the US more closely, keep announcing 600B Euros investment every few weeks and do nothing about it. Make VW invest 5B Euros for AI self driving in Mistral then Mistral buying shares from VW with that money, do some questionable self driving demos etc.
Eurocrats are clueless, they are trying to have something that very small number of people show interest in. What they should really do, IMHO, is to reduce friction induced by bureaucracy and that's it. Contrary to the popular narrative EU is a force for reducing bureaucracy, as the Brits found out when left EU. The idea is that EU coordinates the 27 states to create ruleset that are more or less aligned so there's not too much paperwork when trading between those 27 countries. Unfortunately this is still not good enough and they are working to create the 28th regime which is supposed to be something like streamlined ruleset that bypasses the local ones so that companies can grow in a market of 27 countries without dealing with 27 set of laws. That's when EU can have an actual AI thing because the current state of AI is just bunch of capitalists juggling money and credit among themselves to keep alive this interesting technology that looks promising but doesn't actually accomplish something yet. If EU will have anything of this sort they need a place to hold these capital gymnastics.
This particular "Apply AI" strategy seems to stem from the idea that AI does some great things and EU industry should adopt it to increase productivity and not fall behind. Pure FOMO, considering that studies show very limited gains through use of AI so far.
> Eurocrats are clueless
Stop hurting yourself by thinking like this. They are extremely smart and capable, only not working in your favour.
Ever since GDPR it has been baffling that European companies just reach for the American hyperscalers without a care in the world. Sure, _some_ companies need it, but you can get a long ways with OVH or Hetzner.
I suspect many of them are just ignoring their obligations with respect to data transfers (they also fail to understand the meaning of "Freely Given Consent" or "Legitimate Interest"), and utterly pathetic and useless institutions like the Irish Data Protection Commission (https://www.dataprotection.ie/en) just... let them.
While some regulation is nice and needed it is kind of sad to see EU just rent-seeking on top of the AI innovation cycle.
Glad to see that the EU's Tech Commissioner is one of the world's leading experts in the field of AI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henna_Virkkunen
Everyone is selling the shovels but there is no gold. It's a shovel gold rush.
Mods have woken up. First job - downgrade any pro European tech stories. Done.
Everything in EU is overpriced and worse than things coming from outside the EU, and that is by design. EU basically has no choice but to become more dystopian and adopt policies similar to the USSR to keep itself viable. This includes extreme trade barriers (with exceptions for China, because of course) and extreme restrictions on speech.
Europe is like some rich kid who thinks he somehow has merit of his own, instead of just being well-off because his parents were well-off. Basically Europe is the Greta Thunberg of continents.
> This includes extreme trade barriers (with exceptions for China, because of course)
We have high tariffs with China as well though. I wish we didn't, then I might actually be able to afford an electric car.
It is a bit hypocritical of the EU to push tariffs against the EU citizens, forcing higher prices. Tariffs can sometimes make sense, such as for an emerging industry, but counter-tariffs are often the outcome and we here are punished by higher prices. If the EU wants to be relevant, they also need to produce at a lower price; China is conquering markets because it simply is more competitive now.
China has better quality manufacturing at a cheaper price than EU and China. They aren't pushing out junk, it's well engineered, well, manufactured good which are almost impossible to produce at all in Europe never mind produce at a cheaper price, but still Europe allows these things to be imported with less strict barriers than they have against goods produced in European countries themselves.
Same, they push tariffs it seems mostly to protect automotive industry from competition, the industry which has grown bloated and rent-seeking over the years.
Even more so when you take build quality and support quality in the equation.
On paper the EU may have strong trade barriers with China, but in practice this just does not bear out. Europe has stronger trade barriers within itself than with China.
The EU demands that goods made in Poland conforms to some standards, but also that the manufacturers in Poland conform to some standards. For goods from China they in theory demand the same standards, but in practice these standards are not strictly enforced for goods from China (see AliExpress, Temu, Shein, etc), and there are no regulation on the manufacturers. Chinese manufacturers use slave labour, they pollute, they don't give their employees similar rights and benefits.
It's also way easier and cheaper for most Europeans to buy something from China than it is to buy something from within Europe, even though the actual selling price out of the factory is not that much higher for things manufactured in Europe. I pay the same "tariffs" if I buy from Sweden or AliExpress.
Maybe for buying cheap trinkets online, yeah.
But you can't buy an electric car on Temu.
> Everything in EU is overpriced and worse than things coming from outside the EU, and that is by design
If nothing else, Airbus says hello and laughs in your face. Throw in Spotify and IKEA, the majority of the world's luxury sector, a decent portion of the world's biggest car manufacturers, ASML, and you're just being silly.
As someone who lives in Europe and buys things in Europe every single day, I know that practically everything except groceries comes from China. But sure, whenever I buy a plate from IKEA it comes from Turkey and not China.
But I guess if I were a rich person who mostly bought luxury goods, they would come from France. I guess I'm the problem. If only my tax money stayed with me instead of being funnelled to useless aristocrats, then maybe I could afford more luxury goods from France.
Everyone in the world buys things made in China everyday, it's the largest manufacturing country in the world, that's a non-sequitur.
At the same time there are plenty of everyday items still made in the EU, and not necessarily luxury goods. My pets' leashes are made in Germany, my kitchen knives are made in Germany, my pots and pans are made in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. My drinking glasses are made in France, and Italy, my glass storage containers are made in France; lots of my clothing are made in Portugal, my music gear is made in Germany, Spain, Estonia, and Poland.
It's up to you to choose items made in the EU and not China though.
Also think about non-consumer items and expensive items such as cars.
Even with consumer items the keyboard I am typing this on says "made in the Czech Republic" on the bottom. I definitely have lots of things made in Germany, Taiwan, France, the US, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Vietnam etc.
People in the UK keep saying "we do not make anything anymore" but in fact lots of things, cars (often foreign brands, but still made here) and car parts, medicines, chemical, medical equipment, jet engines, satellites..... those are just off the top of my head.
I didn't mention non-consumer items because OP was complaining about only buying items "made in China".
For non-consumer items there's a whole laundry list of high-tech stuff where Europe has a big presence: high-end chemical reactors, high-precision machinery, chip manufacturing machines (not only ASML but also probe cards, vacuum valves/pumps), off-shore wind turbines (including HV submarine lines for transmission), aseptic packaging for food (Tetra Pak, SIG), and lots more.
People only look at the brands they recognise without understanding there's a whole lots of standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants going on in the supply chain so Apple can manufacture an iPhone in China using technology from all across the globe, a lot of it from Europe. That laser cutter doing precision metalwork on phones, or cars? Probably German or Swiss...
It's not flashy but there's actually very important technology that is developed, and made in Europe.
Selling status to Americans and Chinese who have contribute actual productive industries is hardly an achievement
Selling medicines, and biotech is quite a productive industry where European companies are leaders. The same for high-precision machinery used by the "actual productive industries" that depend on European machines to be able to even have factories with assembly lines, chemical reactors, etc.
It's almost like people taking these jabs don't understand comparative advantages, and are also blind to the economical output of Europe in general...
Very few people understand comparative advantage.
Almost every conversation i have about international trade with anyone without some sort of economics background illustrates this.