[reacharavindh]

All this will fly until a competitor from outside the US releases a “freedom” model that is even 90% as capable as Fable was without its shackles.

But, as a frustrated EU resident lamenting a lack of European option(Mistral is just not competitive enough), I will spread my money towards the Chinese models as well. Thank you Murica! You achieved your soft power by pushing us towards the Chinese :-)

This protectionism and hypocrisy (free markets and freedom!! Until it is us who needs to practice what we preach) is so tiring. I wish European nations would come together closer and put their differences aside and realise larger things together. Become the new power that the US is clearly stumbling away from being.

[burnerRhodov3]

Europe seems to be going through an identity crisis lately, and i hope this sentiment doesn't continue. Europe becoming more reliant on the Chinese is not the answer, and will, if continues, isolate the EU from the US.

[surgical_fire]

> Europe becoming more reliant on the Chinese is not the answer

China should be dealt with as a normal country. There's no need for undue anxiety there.

EU as a trade block should exercise reciprocity and protect its own interests accordingly though.

As for LLMs, I see no issue in using Chinese models. With the talk of digital sovereignty, you can run open source models on EU datacenters without necessarily having to spend the money to train them.

> isolate the EU from the US.

That is not a bad thing. In fact, I hope this separation grows stronger.

It was about time European countries lifted themselves from the US shadow.

[WarmWash]

China is an authoritarian ethnostate with mock capitalism experiments.

If you want to climb into Xi Jinpeng's garden where he has absolute uncontested unilateral control for life, well, be warned.

[surgical_fire]

I want to climb nothing.

I said that the EU should have normal relations with China. It has no reason to inherit the US anxiety about China being a contender in the world stage.

Trade with it normally, do trade deals where it makes sense, use reciprocity and protectionism where it fits.

This should be pretty uncontroversial.

[burnerRhodov3]

>Trade with it normally, do trade deals where it makes sense, use reciprocity and protectionism where it fits.

This is extremely controversial. Where do you draw the line? Ev's are okay, cause the climate... Oh, wait, our own car industry dies? It's okay competition! Oh wait... They have no min wage or safety standards? Oh shit, where'd our auto industry go...? Oh, guess that didn't make sense... Lets tarrif...

And on and on and on, with every industry.

[squidbeak]

Europe may face technological and economic challenges, but one thing it isn't suffering is 'an identity' crisis - except in the daydreams of right wing propagandists. The EU's identity is represented in its charter and the various treaties behind it.

> Europe becoming more reliant on the Chinese is not the answer, and will, if continues, isolate the EU from the US

There are sound reasons to avoid reliance on China, but the risk of isolation from a fading superpower - who befriends the EU's enemies, agitates in EU politics, inflict needless damage on the EU's economy, and insults EU leaders - isn't one of them.

[burnerRhodov3]

Look, i've lived in Europe for years. My wife is from switzerland. But what's with this rhetoric? It's one thing if a democratically elected president who will be out in 2 years is something you hate on... but it's turned from that. It seems every European consintely berates us, from a fundamentally level now. I won't defend trump, but what has threatening annexation of greenland done? Billions in additional military buildup, which is good for both our economies. What has threatening to leave Nato done? Billions in additional military buildup... Nato membership requires 2% of GDP to be spent on military, and until recently, very few memberstates fulfilled those requirements. Sometimes force and fear is the only way to get entities to wake up to the reality that you have a literal war on your doorstep, and you still seem to think US is your enemy. WAKE UP. We are allies, and in both world wars the American people have lost millions of lives to ensure your freedom. Russia and China are allies and Xi has said "No coorperation is forbidden between Russia and China." When China invades Taiwan, and the next world war starts, the only path forward is is for the EU and the US to REMAIN ALLIES. Don't let hate fill your heart, for things that have benefitted us both.

[squidbeak]

> Nato membership requires 2% of GDP to be spent on military.

No, actually it isn't a condition of NATO membership to spend 2% on defense. This is a myth.

> It's one thing if a democratically elected president who will be out in 2 years is something you hate on... but it's turned from that. It seems every European consintely berates us, from a fundamentally level now.

Do you think that having experienced this treatment from a nation previously trusted as a friend and ally that Europe can sensibly revert to its old confidence in the USA? Sure the Democrats might win power in 2028, or even a reformed and sensible Republican candidate. But who's to say the next populist Europhobic nutter isn't another 4 years behind them? This is the central problem for the US, that many of its citizens still won't confront: there are costs to unreliability, delinquency, bullying and threats.

> I won't defend trump, but what has threatening annexation of greenland done? Billions in additional military buildup, which is good for both our economies.

This is childishly fatuous. Europe, then, should be grateful to the US for threatening to invade it?

[bloppe]

If AfD, RN, Futuro Nazionale and their ilk stay on their current trajectory, the identity crisis will become much harder to ignore

[calgoo]

Also, don't forget how much they are medeling with the EU politics. Here in Spain the ultra right wing are following the thrump playbook step by step. Now I can't prove this, but with our current government standing up to both the US and Israel, there is a feeling that a bunch of money and "think tank" guidance is happening.

[SubiculumCode]

It's Russia and the US and EU have long been under attack.

[squidbeak]

Russia's meddling is malign. But did Russia send the USA's Vice President to Hungary to campaign on behalf of Viktor Orban?

[SubiculumCode]

maybe, who knows. but the propaganda from russia has been pervasive...and its cause people live vance and trump to get elected.

[jamiequint]

"Fading superpower" is typical EU cope. It may help to be a little bit introspective about why one might want to oppose EU politics, or its leaders, whose "leadership" over the last decade has led to unprecedented migrant, economic, and energy crises, and stalling growth.

[squidbeak]

Seeing the word 'cope' lobbed out is usually a sure sign a poster is projecting, and so it is here.

What exactly is there in the USA's destruction of the economic norms that have always served it, or in the pointless dumping of its hard-won soft power, alienation of its allies, deliberate weakening of its intelligence gatherers, rampant open corruption from its leadership, or in any other of the innumerable harms it's inflicted on itself the last 18 months, that you think is conducive to the US maintaining its superpower status?

[burnerRhodov3]

Proving superiority? Proxy controlling venezuala, creating LLM's and locking down the frontier models while GLM has to distill the models to be remotely competitive, having the hard power to ensure Iran can't fire AK's into crowds and develop nukes... I don't get how this is not percieved as immense strength? How are people defending terrorists who have been consistently saying "Death to the West"

[squidbeak]

"I can beat the shit out of the weakling in the school yard. Behold my superiority!"

[jamiequint]

"What exactly is there in the USA's destruction of the economic norms that have always served it"

What destruction? US GDP growth has recovered to the pre-COVID trendline while EU lags behind it's already-slow previous pace.

[squidbeak]

The bedrock of economic trust and co-operation that only ever served the USA's interest. What do you imagine the new coolness towards US companies or US lobbying is going to do to US GDP longterm?

You actually typify the myopia of many of Trump's supporters. "Cash in today: fuck tomorrow."

[thewebguyd]

No, fading is right. The US is willingly and deliberately ceding much of its soft power. The US also caused a global energy crisis by being so completely incompetent in their dealings with Iran in the on again off again toxic s/relationship/war

Even if the US isn't fading, the message is still clear: the country is adopting a more isolationist stance and has no problems alienating its allies. Why would you want to continue to tie yourself to a nation like that?

[spacedcowboy]

I mean, this is not necessarily a problem for the EU. Some might say it's a goal.

The USA is far more dangerous a "friend" than China is an acquaintance. China has not been threatening military annexation, China does not randomly start trade (or real) wars. China doesn't just turn away from international commitments.

Bottom line: China is a far better international partner than the USA.

[petilon]

> China has not been threatening military annexation

Maybe not in Europe, but ask their Asian neighbors.

> The USA is far more dangerous a "friend" than China is an acquaintance.

That's true and will continue to be true for 2.5 more years. European countries too have had bad leaders (like Germany), but have recovered. So too will the US.

> China is a far better international partner than the USA.

China is not a democracy and does not share western values.

[Laurel1234]

> China is not a democracy and does not share western values.

True, but neither is the US.

[energy123]

> China has not been threatening military annexation

They've been doing military annexation right now in the South China Sea.

> China does not randomly start trade (or real) wars.

The invasion of Vietnam? The subsidization of industry and pegging their FX?

> China doesn't just turn away from international commitments.

Abandoning Ukraine despite being a signatory to an agreement that assures their defense?

This is not an anti-China post. I don't like anti-XYZ country posts that create tension and make people defensive. I am not particularly against China more than other major powers. They have their interests and they pursue them selfishly, like other countries do. This is just a basic lesson about the world you live in.

[spacedcowboy]

Taken as read is the context "in Europe" here - it's a comment about European reaction to China vs America, and none of the above applies to Europe.

[energy123]

China didn't renege on its treaty with Ukraine who is in Europe?

American isn't sanctioning Russia's oil?

China isn't buying Russia's oil?

[spacedcowboy]

For Ukraine, America has treated them far worse than China, humiliating its leader, buying Russian oil, publicly agreeing with Putin, telling Ukraine to just give up its land and people, charging Ukraine for its support, trying to bend Ukraine over a barrel for mineral rights in exchange for weapons, I could go on.

China does what it says it will do. The US lies to your face and does what it wants to. One of these is a far easier country to deal with.

[naim08]

> taiwan? > hk? trade wars... have you actually looked at how china uses trade as political bargaining tool??? Look at how China treats Japan, south korea, etc

[surgical_fire]

Eminently, none of those places are in Europe

[vintagedave]

> Mistral is just not competitive enough

Does anyone know why? I was really excited when they emerged, but their models and targets don't seem to be quite in the same market.

[xdertz]

Their target market is completely different. Anthropic and OpenAI try to build general AI that wins on all the benchmarks by throwing ungodly amounts of money at it.

Mistral focuses on long term b2b contracts and their proposition is that they fine tune their model to your needs with an added bonus of 'not dependent on America' in a politically tumultuous time.

[nolok]

Another added bonus is that they offer a clear "self hosted" if you want it, you can get the exact same product without sending your queries to them, it's costlier and you need the hardware sure, but between the economic espionnage aspect, the sovereignty aspect, the data safety aspect ... This has teeth in europe.

[ghm2199]

An so like if a business wanted to home in on one very specific use case that could be hyper optimized by SFT, had really good support for updating and adding new features, on-Prem etc. that’s the kind of market they are in?

[mike_hearn]

Lack of capital and (probably) lack of willingness to mass distill Anthropic and OpenAI.

[plufz]

What would happen if they mass distilled one of the really large local models like GLM 700b or deepseek 1.6t?

[grim_io]

At that point you might as well just host them yourself.

[sajithdilshan]

That's not how the innovation works

[weezing]

Innovation is teaching your model on stolen data from literally everywhere but other models.

[kelipso]

Innovation is a pretty neutral concept. It doesn’t care about things like “what if my model learns from other models” as opposed to “what if my model learns from data I painfully curated” if the model progresses the same.

[sulam]

Those already exist.

[sajithdilshan]

Most probably lack of capital and talent. At the end of the day they have to compete with other giants for the chips to train the models.

[VeejayRampay]

capital and talent is the same in this context

there's no shortage of talent in Europe or France, it's just an issue of available capital

[inglor_cz]

"there's no shortage of talent in Europe or France, it's just an issue of available capital"

This is more complicated than you paint it. Countries like UAE have enough capital to throw at things and little-to-no taxation, yet they don't attract as much talent as they would like to.

Preexisting centers of excellence like Silicon Valley are attractive for young talented people precisely because a lot of older talented people are already there. The same reason why a young talented painter in 15th century would prefer Florence to some rich, but boring place elsewhere.

You can only really do a meaningful work in a "heavy" field by tightly cooperating with others, and physical proximity still matters.

[VeejayRampay]

the older talented people are there because of money

there's nothing special about the US, it's money

[sajithdilshan]

What I meant was top talent. US is still the top destination for top AI talent in general

[throwaway676712]

A large contingent of the top AI people is French, the Mistral founders worked at Meta and Google before coming back to France. The real issue is capital, French salaries are shit

[joelthelion]

I wouldn't be surprised if they had new models up their sleeve. Could be wrong of course.

[sajithdilshan]

I’m pretty sure they have new models, but not better ones

[seviu]

This. I have been using anthropic and codex subs, on max. All this changed in June. We are clearly entering an era where we cannot rely on American models. As a solo developer I value reliability over performance. I cannot pay hundred of $, plus a lot of my private time figuring out how to properly use this technology, for it to be taken away within hours.

On top of that, the intelligence is being dialed down. Sonet 5 is a living proof of this. Fable has strong guardrails, but new Sonet is a dumbed down expensive model, which already falls behind GLM 5.2 and Kimi 2.7. I might go back to Claude since I know Fable is just a limited offer, and I am not going to pay for API usage. But what they are signaling with Sonet will also come to Opus. A lobotomized more expensive model.

I am honestly baffled how the current administration is giving the whole world, on a golden plate, to China. And they don't seem too bothered about it. They are living in their own bubble and reality distortion field I guess.

I could go on endless rant about Dario, but I feel I am so strongly biased now that my judgement might be clouded.

Time to move on

[Forgeties79]

I feel like I see this comment every few months and yet in between people keep talking about all of the functionality they’re getting out of anthropic’s offerings. It doesn’t seem to me that people are willing to give up the “shackles” as it were and we’re just going to wind up with what we’re fearing here. On top of that, local models are just not turnkey enough for the average person yet (go ahead and drop somebody into LM studio and tell them to get to work, it won’t go well).

[2muchcoffeeman]

The best models are clearly all from US companies.

But I think what you’ll see is people making sure the model they use can just be plugged into their workflow.

I used to use Gemini-cli until they did a Google and cancelled it in favour of anti-gravity.

That was my fault. Fool me the 10th time shame on me.

So I picked more open source offerings that I can use with any model. Once the other models are good enough, I just need to jump ship.

[glimshe]

The reason Anthropic gets away with all of that is that Claude revenues are increasing with no end in sight. People write these entitled rants and silently go back to Anthropic and OpenAI like obedient puppies.

[Forgeties79]

It’s in increasing but they still haven’t gotten into the black. I’m pretty sure nobody has yet, right?

[glimshe]

Probably not, but I think the investors care more about users and subscriptions than profits at this point.

[Forgeties79]

That’s the old model for sure but we’ve never seen this much investment this rapidly. They have to be getting cold feet by now. Hence anthropic going public. If they had a strategy for getting in the black AND longterm viability I feel like we’d see them roll private longer. But instead we’re seeing all the signs of “grow, exit, let the next dude figure it out.”

[jandrewrogers]

AI tech is clearly a Red Queen's Race[0]. In the long-term, whoever can run the fastest the longest will win. Adverse action that doesn't materially impact the rate of execution has little effect on this outcome except to the extent it reduces the rate of execution of competitors. Historically, American business is exceptional at executing this type of game and patient when it comes to making it pay for itself.

The AI model people choose today has no bearing on the ultimate trajectory of the competition. Both the US and China understand this. EU simply can't move quick enough to be competitive in this type of game, which I think they also recognize.

Everyone is betting that the model you use will be a Hobson's Choice[1] over a long enough time horizon. They are likely correct.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson%27s_choice

[orangecat]

the intelligence is being dialed down. Sonet 5 is a living proof of this.

Huh? Sonnet 5 is a strict improvement over Sonnet 4.6 at the same price.

[seviu]

The tokenizer is 30% more expensive (it generates 30% more tokens) just they are giving an offer now which will end by end of August. On max effort its way more expensive than Opus and slightly less than fable.

It has also strong guardrails and deliberate reduced training data around cybersecurity. On purpose. If you develop a system and then try to harden it, it will miserably fail.

It’s a neutered model. Pretty sure not what they had in mind, but they have to, since they invested so much VC money in developing it.

[lmf4lol]

Not the EU should build one but companies from the EU!!! We need to stop relying on the Brussel bureaucrats. China is not building models. US is not building models. Deepseek is doing and Anthropic!

[andai]

I think there's a lot of government funding for it in China though?

[lmf4lol]

Its still business and eager entrepreneurs doing the work! Not China. China is facilitating, yes. but its not building models.

[andsoitis]

> as a frustrated EU resident lamenting a lack of European option(Mistral is just not competitive enough), I will spread my money towards the Chinese models as well. Thank you Murica!

It is interesting to hear a European exclaim they would rather depend on a selection of models from companies in China with concomitant strings attached, rather than be dependent on a selection of models from companies in America.

Isn't it better to simply stick to whatever is best and then, should it be pulled from under you, simply switch out to the new best model that IS available? I don't know that models have a moat and you can easily swap out should you need to.

Pre-emptively betting on which is going to be least susceptible to government intervention seems like premature optimization to me.

[nicoburns]

Note the GP says "I will spread my money towards the Chinese models AS WELL", so it's more of a case of encouraging competition rather than betting on any one actor.

[andsoitis]

The "as well" is ambiguous. I interpreted it as "like other people are doing" rather than "spend twice as much as contingency". To me it seems like the more parsimonious interpretation, but I could very well be mistaken and they are indeed planning to throw money in both directions already just in case.

[surgical_fire]

Chinese models cost a fraction of the price, and as someone who has been using DeepSeek and MiMo, they are nothing short of excellent.

In terms of cost-benefit, they are already the best models I could find.

[thewebguyd]

> Companies in China with concomitant strings attached

What strings? The Chinese models are open weight, you don't have to spend your money directly with those labs. They can be hosted within the EU, by EU companies without sending a dime to China.

The bigger question is does the EU have the appetite to invest in building out data centers/hosting infrastructure for this, and that's where I have my doubts.

[pokot0]

Isn't building a 90% frontier model relatively cheap for EU?

I feel like EU could start a company, start from available open weight models, feed 2bln a year into it (1% of the EU budget) and make a compelling almost SOTA model for the EU market. This company could partner with datacenter providers and sell it hosted in the EU or somewhere else with EU protection terms. The budget for this company would easily double with the added revenues and you are creating an ecosystem of providers that can compete with US big-techs and have a 500 million people market that can't wait to ditch US companies for them, given the current mood.

The model can be open weight and it's an easy way to compound the efforts we are seeing in China without even having to talk to each other. Maybe there is a way to make it work not open weights but I am not sure how would that work.

These are those kind of decisions that seem such no brainers to me, which probably means I am completely out of touch with reality.

[adrianN]

1% of the budget is a really big number. The EU has a lot than a hundred responsibilities that demand money.

[throwaway676712]

Europeans are risk averse and don't have access to that many deep pocketed risk-taking VCs. On top of that the US is poaching all the talent since most EU firms won't or can't match the salaries offered in the US to AI researchers.

This may change in the future as AI gets more commoditized and the current US admin keeps shooting itself in the foot but they are still very far ahead right now

[senko]

> I feel like EU could start a company,

That's not how market-based economies work...

> feed 2bln a year into it and make a compelling almost SOTA model

...and the reason is, if you give a bunch of people €2b a year and tell them "go try and make something", they'll make a ton of paperwork covering their asses and very little actual output.

This is irrespective if those people are European ("european google killer"), American ("cost plus" old US aerospace companies) or Chinese (which is why they do it a little different).

If there are no incentives to really try really hard, they won't do it.

In many high-tech cases in Europe, the formula for "let's subsidise the hell out of research and hope a commercially-viable business comes out" has a really poor track record.

Your second option - and possibly the best bet - is to find an existing company that already showed they're capable, and shower them with money, which is what French are doing with Mistral.

[benny_s]

Good idea in theory, but in reality 90% of this 2bn budget would just be swallowed up by the bureaucracy that would surround this.

[Alifatisk]

> All this will fly until a competitor from outside the US releases a “freedom” model that is even 90% as capable as Fable was without its shackles.

A Chinese cybersecurity company "360" has announced "Chinas version of Mythos".

[sajithdilshan]

A lot of bitter europeans would down vote this comment, but saying Murica has pushed you towards China is hypocrisy is at its finest. Your incompetent EU politicians are the ones that has failed you by outsourcing every aspect of sovereignty to the rest of the world instead of self-reliance. You have nobody to blame but yourselves. In one year you'll be blaming China for abandoning the EU when they starts controlling their frontier models.

[grim_io]

Maybe we will in a year, but then we'll just complain about China copying protectionism and censorship from the USA.

If that's a comfortable position for you, all good.

We held the US in higher regards, that's all.

[Citizen_Lame]

Well you are not wrong, I would also add corrupted and cowardly politicians. We are in worse position than China, and under full control of daddy USA, no matter what they say. If US would pull switch, it would be catastrophe for the EU.

Even the premier EU companies such as ASML are heavily reliant on US supply chain.

But why can't we be bitter?

[pirate787]

You can't be bitter because Europe squandered technological and capital market parity with the US in just 20 years.