> 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.
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?
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?
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.
If you want to climb into Xi Jinpeng's garden where he has absolute uncontested unilateral control for life, well, be warned.
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.
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.
True, but neither is the US.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Huh? Sonnet 5 is a strict improvement over Sonnet 4.6 at the same price.
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.
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.
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.
In terms of cost-benefit, they are already the best models I could find.
A Chinese cybersecurity company "360" has announced "Chinas version of Mythos".
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.
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
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.
If that's a comfortable position for you, all good.
We held the US in higher regards, that's all.
I don't think anyone is making the same mistake with China, as open weight models can't be Thanos'd away.
Even the premier EU companies such as ASML are heavily reliant on US supply chain.
But why can't we be bitter?