[rnijveld]

I find this a very weird way of formulating this. Even if AI keeps its promises and is the future of computing (hopefully without destroying the environment), should it not be applauded that there are still organizations funding work in non-AI related technology? You can say many things about AI, but a lack of funding is not an issue at all I would say. Meanwhile all that other stuff still needs maintenance and development, or would you consider anything not focussed on AI wasted?

[menaerus]

Lack of funding on the European ground, yes, I do see and NLNet seems to be yet another example of it. If my peers had the idea to develop some PoC, and they don't run the startup, how else would they get some pocket money to survive the year of development? All other funds are reserved for bigger and already established companies and/or organizations. And if there's one funding that the individual or few of them had a chance to get it is the NLNet. If there's more than NLNet then I'd like to hear about it.

Also, from the project list it reads as if they're anti-AI - only 3 "AI" projects selected out of 67. Considering the AI development trajectory through the course of couple of years, and especially in the last 1-2 years, it is highly likely that the largest output and innovation will exactly be in the AI domain in the next years to come. So IMO it seems like a lack of vision as I am pretty sure that there are strong individuals with great ideas but for which they lack financial support.

[port11]

Could it be that there’s simply less options in the open-source AI space compared to ALL of open-source?

[menaerus]

I don't think the open source is the differentiator here. I'm sure there's plenty of solid ideas. It would be interesting though if nlnet would open source the contributions they received in which case we would have a solid understanding how many of them have been AI or not