I agree. Beyond scale and inertia against moving (and frontier AI models) it’s not obvious to me what would be hard to replicate in Europe given regulation that mandated non-US hosting.
Most companies using hyper scalers are doing weird superstitious things at the behest of overpaid consultants. And the huge margins they take make it easier to adapt to things like higher electricity costs.
As someone who was self taught as a programmer and has a reasonable high level understanding of some CS concepts but not lots of experience applying them, and no good mentor, I’ve found working with an LLM really englightening. Asking Claude to think about “good ways to structure this” or asking how similar problems get solved in industry or high profile projects has really helped me design better solutions and avoid painfully reinventing wheels (recent eg was for a plugin type architecture).
I think a lot of academics and researchers who code but aren’t software engineers or CS majors are going to benefit, provided they take the time to prove what the model does and are curious about whether it’s doing something sensible!
Relative to a 1% coder hand rolling something then yes it’s AI slop etc. but it’s prob still raising the bar generally.
A good harness and engineering is important no matter which model you use.
But Sovereignty of hosting is also important because without it all pii is being leaked.
The EU economy has absorbed covid and the Russian war in that time. It’s pretty unsurprising that things are flat.
The main thing Europe lacks is economies of scale in investment in tech, and a common language. Big data tech wasn’t a priority until we realised it was going to be weaponised against us by an ally. I think we’ll do fine. Most of AWS and Azure is expensive superstitious cover your ass bullshit anyway. It could all be regulated away with proper data residency laws, which I hope are coming soon.
First, many regular people are “stupid” in the sense that they do get anxious about things that ar slow probability and are not anxious about things that are high probability.
If you are a billionaire you also have a doctor with the time and expertise to properly evaluate the evidence in a Bayesian framework, and you have time to talk to them and understand and implications. That isn’t scalable.
Also, it’s quite likely that billionaires are having lots of unnecessary procedures and that harm is being caused. The mri scans are not the reason they live longer!
I mostly agree with you by one small wrinkle is that the evaluation of screening is normally against a criteria of cost effectiveness as well as safety. So for some conditions, if cost effectiveness was the barrier to rollout it might still be worth it if you are rich?
This kind of thinking (that it’s an obvious lie, perpetrated by a cabal) is the sort of superstitious bullshit that is going to jet us all killed. Look up Bayes theorem. As yourself how good a test would have to be if the base rate is low. Wonder what the probability of harm might be if the next advised test was invasive and the patients was anxious because a lump had been detected.
Europe is currently hosed because we made the mistake of trying to develop economies complementary to the US and china.
That was a big strategic mistake. In the US case it was borne of the mistaken belief that we shared values and were partners.
But don’t mistake the situation for lack of innovation of capability. Europe is currently adapting, but I think the success of Ukraine is one reason to be optimistic that current adversity might actually leave us better off in the long run.
Corrupt countries with broken legal systems tend not to fare that well in the longer run.
The culture shift that has generated this is the same one that causes the other story on HN this morning about xAIs gas generators being a national security issue. Ie one towards corruption graft and the public ill.
I don’t want Europe to model itself on the US, whatever the economic gain. Hopefully we are large enough to find a third way between China and the US.
Probably true. But that’s not the position we are in now. Apple is much better aligned with users interests than any one else, at least for short/medium term.
You’re shifting the goalposts somewhat, but the thing this misses is that the cookie banners are the least important aspect of EU data regulation. The principle of consent and of minimising data held has actually made a substantial different in European firms, mostly for the better.
It's shallow because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a real tradeoff. I share a lot of your cynicism about US tech companies, but I think you need to be realistic about the state of the market and how the incentives align.
Apples incentives are not, currently, as strongly misaligned with their user interests as many other tech firms (meta, google, random startups, etc). Going slowly might not be a bad idea for most people here.
That said, I hadn't seen the demo you mention. If they do do that (bank passwords etc) they are stupider than I thought they would be.
For me, it's real regulations about what data can reasonably be hoovered, what it's used for, for how long. And a culture where the majority don't blindly click yes to all messages like that because the only alternative is not to use the shiny new thing they have been sold. I don't think it could ever appear in the US, which is why it's a good thing apple won't be forced to open up there.
But if the EU does insist, they should be careful what they wish for and plan for the negative consequences of a free for all.