[ph4rsikal]

Over the last 20 years, Europe has become irrelevant.

There is not a single European LLM on the same level as US or Chinese models. France's Mistral reached 400M in revenue, but I believe it could have been more relevant if the EU had not slowed everything down with overregulation.

[anonymous908213]

Why does Europe need to dump hundreds of billions of dollars into developing a chatbot that will never be able to pay off its debts? Mistral seems like a much more practical and sustainable approach to LLM development than centering the entire economy around a pyramid scheme predicated on selling the belief that AGI is always three months away.

China's LLM development relative to resources spent is impressive, but it also happened to be predicated on Chinese miners buying into the previous pyramid scheme and having a lot of GPUs on hand already. I don't think the lack of European commitment to the previous pyramid scheme putting it a bit behind in that regard indicates any kind of grand regional failure, so much as an event of pure circumstance that probably has little lasting meaning 5 or 10 years from now.

[ph4rsikal]

You lost all your credibility if you see AI as "a chatbot".

[anonymous908213]

Conversely, every person calling LLMs "agents" never had any credibility to begin with. Despite my many attempts to coerce an example out of people here, I am still waiting for one (1) singular demonstration of "agentic software" that is capable of replacing production-grade software at scale. Software created by agents that solves a real-world problem and is used by tens of thousands or millions of people. Candidates include an OS, a web browser, an IDE, image editing software akin to Photoshop, a fully-featured Discord/Slack/etc. replacement, a non-trivial video game, music production software, enterprise-grade database software etc., really anything that isn't just another AI tool to produce another AI tool to produce another AI tool culminating in complete psychosis and detachment from anything people do in the real world. If you would like to be the first to provide evidence that these things are more capable than chatbots in concrete terms, by all means, go ahead.

[menaerus]

LLMs as chatbots are the least interesting application of LLMs.

[ph4rsikal]

I build agents for banks for a living and can tell you for sure that you are wrong.

[michelb]

We have been overly reliant on non-European partners we could trust and rely on. That is now gone. So right now is a good opportunity for Europe to focus inward. Imagine having all the social benefits AND tech. We also need to make sure keep malignant actors like the USA & Russia at bay. One can dream.

[ph4rsikal]

Yes, I agree. But it was Europe that has become complacent and lazy. "Doing good" is more important than "doing right". As a result, with energy prices high, dependence on Russia only increased, and car manufacturers (Stellantis, Mercedes -50% revenue) are dying as have shipbuilders before them.

[sehansen]

Dependence on Russia is quite sharply down. In Q1 2022 the EU imported 63 billion EUR worth of goods from Russia, in Q3 2025 only 5.7 billion. So down 90%.

In terms of fossil fuels:

- Russia isn't even in the top 6 oil supplies of the EU. The top 6 are USA, Norway, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iraq. They make up ~60% of EU oil imports.

- In raw natural gas: Norway, Algeria, UK and Azerbaijan supply 81% of EU imports.

- In liquefied natural gas: USA, Qatar and Algeria supply 68% of EU imports.

Add to that Dutch and Danish North Sea oil and gas and it's evident the EU is not "dependent" on Russia.

[ragall]

Russian propaganda is strong in you, little padawan.

[telmo]

I am old enough to remember variations of this conversation from 20 years ago. If you scratch, you always find ideology underneath: an antipathy for regulation that puts people before money and for sharing the cost of social safety nets. I like living in Europe. It's not perfect (what is), but it's pretty good. Living my life well vs. worrying about my country not buying enough GPUs to keep the markets excited? Choices, choices...

[marsten]

IMHO the EU is the best place to live if you're a rank-and-file worker, and the US is the best place to live if you're ambitious.

EU integration brings some advantages but it also becomes harder to experiment. Ideally you'd have a few member states vying to become the Shenzhen of Europe but that won't happen under EU integration.

[isodev]

That assumes LLMs are relevant and will be around a year from now. Let’s not forget NFTs.

Your comment is also blind to the absurd amount of research and projects which are born here but later move to look for funding.

So the EU is not irrelevant, on the contrary, we’re just mourning the fall of the US and transitioning to an independent future. Who would’ve though, we’d end up needing to build a copy of everything…

[indemnity]

> That assumes LLMs are relevant and will be around a year from now. Let’s not forget NFTs.

These two things are not alike. At all.

[isodev]

I used it as another “there was a strong tech push but ultimately we couldn’t make it work” kind of idea. With NFTs the grift was immediately visible, with LLMs it’s a bit harder, the whole “AI” facade gives people hope - I want to believe and stuff.

[ph4rsikal]

" we’re just mourning the fall of the US ".

Listen to Rubio's speech again.

The EU is in a managed decline, and no number of migrants will change that.

[isodev]

Rubio is a mouthpiece for a regime that’s not qualified to discuss Europe, or even his very own US of A. All he meant in his speech is that his government has chosen isolation

[ph4rsikal]

Just look at the space industry. Europe doesn't even have a proper space port.

[sehansen]

The Guiana Space Centre isn't a proper space port? Guyane is a region of France, just like Normandy or Pays de la Loire or the 15 others.

[perbu]

I’ve raised money here and there. Never really had issues with the EU regulations.

But the lack of risk capital and investor brainpower has been a huge problem.

[shaky-carrousel]

Yes, Europe is not as relevant in the unhealthy toy business as the US, which is a good thing.