[BitsAndObjects]

The UK and Europe welcome the US Footgun Operation. Plenty of opportunities for those top researchers and engineers over here.

The EU (which is not the same as Europe), is also looking a bit sharper on AI regulation at the moment (for now… not perfect but sharper etc etc).

[dmix]

The EU and UK is a long way from attracting top AI talent purely from opportunity and monetary terms.

Not to mention UK is arguably further down the mass surveillance pipeline than the US. They’ve always had more aggressive domestic intelligence surveillance laws which was made clear during the Snowden years, they’ve had flock style cameras forever, and they have an anti encryption law pitched seemingly yearly.

I’d imagine most top engineers would rather try to push back on the US executive branch overreach than move. At least for the time being.

[BitsAndObjects]

For sure we’re not currently attracting the talent. There’s more to that than just money, but money is significant factor. When it comes to compensation, AI is too broad a category to have a meaningful debate. Hardware or software or mathematics or what kind of person? Etc.

I’m not gonna dispute the UK being further down some parts of the road.

Not sure what you’d count as top engineers, but I know enough that have been asking about and moving to the UK/EU that it’s been a noticeable reversal of the historic trends. Also, a major slowdown of these kinds of people in the UK/EU wanting to move to the US.

[reaperducer]

The EU and UK is a long way from attracting top AI talent purely from opportunity and monetary terms.

Which is why people are talking about this -- it's about ideology now.

You may personally be motivated solely by money. Not everybody is you.

[dmix]

I’m not an AI engineer but it’s not hard to imagine why some bright talent would want to work at the most exciting AI companies in the US while also making 3-10x what they’d make in Europe.

Ideology is easy to throw around for internet comments but working on the cutting edge stuff next to the brightest minds in the space will always be a major personal draw. Just look at the Manhattan project, I doubt the primary draw for all of those academics was getting to work on a bomb. It was the science, huge funding, and interpersonal company.

[BitsAndObjects]

See my other comments around here. This idea that salaries in the US are so much higher than Europe for all these top AI roles just isn’t true. Even the big American companies have been opening offices in places like London to hire the top talent at high salaries.

This also isn’t hypothetical. I know top-talent engineers and researchers that have moved out of the USA in the last 12 months due to the political climate (which goes beyond just the AI topics).

And you might want to read a few books on the Manhattan project and the people involved before you use that analogy. I don’t think it’s particularly strong.

[dmix]

> I know top-talent engineers and researchers that have moved out of the USA in the last 12 months due to the political climate

Are they working remotely for US companies? In Canada that’s very much still the case everywhere you look

> Even the big American companies have been opening offices in places like London to hire the top talent at high salaries.

I assumed this discussion was about rejecting working for US companies who would be susceptible to the executive branch’s bullying, not whether you can you make a US tier salary off American companies while not living in America. If you’re doing that you might as well live in America among among the other talent and maximize your opportunities.

[BitsAndObjects]

No, it’s a counterpoint on salaries… “Even the American companies” ie they wouldn’t have to open offices here, nor would they have to pay high salaries, to compete for talent if everyone they wanted was in the US or could be so easily attracted to move to the US. The point is clearly things aren’t so one-sided as people seem to think.

[graemep]

Google's Deepmind is UK based.

It is American owned now but it clearly hired enough talent for Google to buy it.

[busko]

Exactly. Attracting talent is not the same as having talent.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/education...

You attract talent for the same reasons china attracts sales; at the cost of your very own rights.

Look at the towns suffering around data centres for a start. The rest of us are happy to pay for what you'll do to yourselves.

[piskov]

Do UK and Europe have hardware manufacturing for those researches to work with once US imposes GPU export restrictions to them at the first whiff of competition/threat?

[BitsAndObjects]

Yes.

And the US can’t realistically stop our well-funded homegrown AI Hardware startups from manufacturing with TSMC. This is part of why there’s funding from the EU to develop Sovereign AI capabilities, currently focused on designing our own hardware. We’re nothing like as far behind as you might expect in terms of tech, just in terms of scale.

Also, while US export restrictions might make things awkward for a short while, it wouldn’t stop European innovation. The chips still flow, our own hardware companies would scale faster due to demand increase, and there’s the adage about adversity being the parent of all innovation (or however it goes).

[piskov]

> And the US can’t realistically stop our well-funded homegrown AI Hardware startups from manufacturing with TSMC

See what happened to Russian Baikal production on TSMC

[BitsAndObjects]

You mean because of the international sanctions that needed Taiwanese, British and Dutch support to be effective?

Or because of the revoked processor design licenses from the British company Arm (which is still UK headquartered… despite being NASDAQ listed and largely owned by Japanese firm SoftBank)?

Or perhaps you think the US could stop us using the 12nm fabs being built by TSMC on European soil? Or could stop us manufacturing RISC-V-based chips (Swiss-headquartered technology)?

The US is weak in digital-logic silicon fabrication and it knows it. That’s why it’s been so panicked about Intel and been trying to get TSMC to build fabs on US soil. They’re pouring tens of billions of dollars into trying to claw back ownership and control of it, but it’s not like Europe or China or others are standing still on it either.

[piskov]

> Or perhaps you think the US could stop us using the 12nm fabs being built by TSMC on European soil?

Being built as in not operating yet?

12 nm gpu is what? Nvidia 1080/2060 level? Those top researchers mentioned would love to train on that. Also how many gpus would be made annually?

Also what about CPU? You gonna use risc-v? With what toolchain?

Chinese could pull it off in a few years, yeah.

EU? Nah. Started thinking about sovereignty too late compared to China

[geysersam]

Things can change quickly. Give it a decade.

[axus]

The GPUs and AIUs aren't being manufactured in the US.

[sho_hn]

The EUV and other factory equipment everyone's using is predominantly European. High-end testing tools used in R&D are largely European.

The fabs aren't, and that is no small thing. The tech stack is there though.

It's pretty tiresome that the HN audience keeps assuming Europe doesn't have "tech" because it doesn't have Facebook. Where do you think all the wealth comes from? Europe is all over everyone's R&D and supply chain.

[BitsAndObjects]

I sometimes wonder whether people realise which country ASML is based in, and which country their major suppliers are in (e.g. optics: Germany)

[SauntSolaire]

To make 1/10th the salary they're making now?

[BitsAndObjects]

You seem to have a very ill-informed view of UK/EU salaries in this particular sector; And also: yeah, people take salary hits to go do things they believe in (this is like, the entire premise of the underpaid American startup founder model) - it should come as no surprise that people are willing to forgo pay for reasons other than just building their own business / making themselves personally wealthy.

[SauntSolaire]

We're talking about the "brightest scientist and engineers" in the AI sector, you may be underestimating US salaries for the people that's referring to.

And no, working remotely for US companies doesn't count.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

> To make 1/10th the salary they're making now?

Yeah, and also be slapped with some unrealized capital gains tax on assets they acquired while working in the US...

[lemontheme]

First, the difference isn’t that big in the economically stronger EU countries. Second, you need to factor in cost of living, which by most accounts is lower. Third, meaningful labor laws and a shared appreciation for work-life balance. And finally, to continue the sweeping generalizations, while we celebrate business acumen, we don’t fetishize wealth. People who flaunt money get made fun of, as do sigma grindset hustle bros.

I’ll take a pay cut any day for the ethos of the EU.

[Ray20]

> First, the difference isn’t that big in the economically stronger EU countries

It's exactly that big. It's not as big for people with low qualifications, but the more highly qualified the specialist, the greater the difference.

> Second, you need to factor in cost of living, which by most accounts is lower.

But here the difference really isn't that big.

> Third, meaningful labor laws and a shared appreciation for work-life balance.

This works more against EU rather than for them. Peak tech skills aren't usually acquired through laziness around and following meaningful labor laws, even in the EU.

> while we celebrate business acumen, we don’t fetishize wealth

An excuse for poor people (who still fetishize wealth)

[readthenotes1]

That much?

[ambicapter]

No, of course not.

[SauntSolaire]

For the "brightest scientist and engineers" in the AI sector? I wouldn't be so sure.

[thimabi]

I agree. And even if those workers stay in the U.S., there’s absolutely no guarantee that they’ll do their best to favor the government’s interests — quite the opposite, if anything.

At the end of the day it’s a matter of incentives, and good knowledge work can’t simply be forced out of people that are unwilling to cooperate.