[itcrowd]

Honestly, the cynicism in the comments here is extremely disappointing.

EU citizens badly need AI systems that are open and privacy-respecting. Getting together this rather large coalition of experts with quite some money and (importantly) access to compute power is a nice first step.

Let them play around, train some models, fail-and-get-up-again, start over, write papers and hopefully get some useful output. Remember, for the involved PhD students it will also be a learning experience!

Yes, it's only the first step. But yeez, it's a press release indicating the start of a scientific collaboration! Let's hold back on the negativity for a couple of years until after they've had a chance.

I, for one, hope this will lead to success and wish the team the best.

[egorfine]

> badly need AI systems that are open and privacy-respecting.

There are plenty AI systems that are open and privacy-respecting. In fact, any model you run on your own hardware is privacy-respecting. And open, for whatever that means.

[mardifoufs]

There are tons of open LLMs, if anything it's weird to see euro nationalists fawn at the mouth whenever something calls itself European. Like what does it do better than any other open source LLM?

And you'd see the same reaction if a "OpenMurica" LLM would be announced. It's just weird and cringy to attach patriotism to something like this

[kubb]

It's not cynism, people feel offended that there's another way to fund projects that via VC money.