Regardless of how you view the current political climate in USA, it's simply become a major risk-management factor for almost any European organisation. We're heavily invested into Azure, but we've had to work out plans on how we could potentially exit within 30 days because we're part of the European energy sector. (We're really part of the global energy sector, but we're based in the EU.) We still view US tech companies as more reliable and secure than a lot of other non-EU places, but it's not like it was 5 years ago. I'm not sure any of us are really happy with this. Mistral is fine, but it's not as good as Claude and similar. It is what it is though.
Ironically there are no current exit strategies for our public sector mobile apps which rely solely on Google play or the Apple store. I've written a plan for how we can move our resources from Azure to Hetzner, luckily I'm not involved with how we would move any 365 products so it was not too bad. Only the plan involves me using our digital national ID app on my phone, which would not work if I wasn't running android with Google Play (or apple). I mean, in the extreme it wouldn't be impossible to use my passport in person, but still.
shevy-java 1 hours ago [-]
That is also true. Relying on the USA past this point is a losing strategy.
stefanfisk 47 minutes ago [-]
Out of curiosity - do you also plan for the possibility that your will want to move to another provider at the same time as the rest of your industry if not large parts of the EU as a whole?
Whenever I think about these things I just don’t see us Europeans being able to tackle suddenly having to decouple from the US if Trump or a successor suddenly turns the screws to 11.
CalRobert 52 minutes ago [-]
How do people who don't have a smartphone (they still exist!) manage without digital ID? Is there no analog fallback?
stefanfisk 40 minutes ago [-]
In Sweden you can technically get by with only a psychical ID. But even now when the number of people that only have a physical ID is low getting things done can be hard. Suddenly switching to physical ID only on asocialt wide basis would be comparable to going from almost exclusively shopping online to in-store cash only.
johnofthesea 36 minutes ago [-]
You don't have kodebrikke in Sweden? Just app?
willvarfar 29 minutes ago [-]
Unfortunately not. I would welcome it.
shevy-java 1 hours ago [-]
My problem with the EU overall, aside from being inefficient, is that they don't really push towards intrinsic perfection. They kind of look what others do, try to simulate and copy it, usually fail - and then the same pattern is repeated.
Just take the issue of a european chip industry. Or literally anything China is doing now. The EU just isn't really a driver - it is a maintainer at best. And that also means it will successfully lose out to e. g. China or the USA.
pavlov 44 minutes ago [-]
Ironic comment in light of Netherlands-based ASML being the only company in the world that can supply the lithography machines that TSMC uses to make chips for NVidia and others.
Isn't that an example of driving towards intrinsic perfection?
modo_mario 21 minutes ago [-]
It's worth noting that that company too has america's hand around it's neck.
vachina 55 minutes ago [-]
They’re not looking for perfection, they’re looking to remove paying compute taxes to the US, and keep IP and knowledge within EU.
Xelbair 47 minutes ago [-]
Honestly the bigger problem - even with the current topic - is that everything is top down.
They don't make a framework for XYZ to emerge based on market forces. It's always committee driven 'we will support this initiative so XYZ happens' top-down initiatives.
Those are necessary in some sectors, but it is applied everywhere. With multinational participation in committee and a lot of back and forth dance.
It's better than blind trendchasing or completely unregulated market forces doing their job, but the delay overhead is gigantic.
sofixa 55 minutes ago [-]
> My problem with the EU overall, aside from being inefficient, is that they don't really push towards intrinsic perfection. They kind of look what others do, try to simulate and copy it, usually fail - and then the same pattern is repeated
There is literally a term for when EU mandates result in global change, "the Brussels effect".
Also, it's a bit weird to claim the EU never tries to push for perfection and just copies - this is the organisation that brought us USB C as the one and only standard for everything, the right to be forgotten and the right to digital privacy, competition on railway networks EU-wide, the OpenSkies, and is actively trying to prevent excessive concentration of market forces (unlike pretty much any other regulator).
intended 43 minutes ago [-]
Didn’t Tesla outright buy one of the only companies in the world which made a specific type of robotics/automation back in 2016/17?
jamesblonde 58 minutes ago [-]
I work with Hopsworks. I think we are the only European owned software platform for developing and running AI systems (batch, real-time, LLMS/agents) at scale.
olivermuty 5 minutes ago [-]
Scaleway, ovh and a bunch of other inference as a service providers dont count?
arhamakhtar352 40 minutes ago [-]
Interesting that the EU wants to push “Buy European AI,” but without clear implementation steps it feels more like strategy theater. I wonder how many of these initiatives will actually help small developers or startups build sustainable AI tools.
jamesblonde 11 minutes ago [-]
Or existing AI vendors build market share.
Of course, it will help us. But it needs a lot of money. And the consultancy companies have been feeding from the product trough here for years. We need to keep their noses out of it.
schnitzelstoat 2 hours ago [-]
Another strategy, another initiative, another commission.
> All of this AI acceleration will be monitored by an “AI Observatory” and discussed in an “Apply AI Alliance” – a refashioning of the existing AI Alliance, a stakeholder talking shop.
It reminds me of how here in Spain the Government already created the Agencia Española de Supervisión de la Inteligencia Artificial (Spanish AI Supervision Agency) when we barely have an AI industry to supervise. It creates some more cushy jobs for them to hand out though.
I think this comment is, while factual, slightly misleading. Only around 16% of people "living off the government" are public servants, from which over 50% are for essential services like education health or public safety.
Over 50% of those "living off the government" are pensioners, so mostly coming from a pool of people who already worked (and most of them in the private sector), and paid their share in taxes. In spain, the private sector makes 70% of the active workforce, while the public sector around 13%, self employed 13%, and unemployed 10%.
I know Spain (and Europe) have quite a lot of structural problems, but I fail to see how having so many pensioners has anything to do with AI regulations.
poszlem 2 hours ago [-]
“Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.”
lnsru 2 hours ago [-]
Exactly this happened to European hardware startups. So many certifications and directives, weee, rohs, reach, red, supply chain, sustainability, etc. Logical step as an investor is to avoid ventures, that are burning tons of money just to comply with regulations. The company I work for right now has healthy cashflow and people for regulatory topics, but it would be impossible to re-create this electronics business today.
Xelbair 41 minutes ago [-]
Even if you get EU grant, you can't run a startup that way. You have to basically have full plan set in stone, and you will be checked if it was fulfilled to avoid waste of EU money.
The problem is that you cannot pivot easily, you cannot change a lot of things in it - and even things like your potential hire bailing last minute can be devastating, paperwork wise.
Printerisreal 1 hours ago [-]
Sadly this + unsustainable love for social welfare will lead Europe to lose long term life quality and possible wealth. They don't like innovators there now, that is for sure.
mrtksn 60 minutes ago [-]
I got a feeling that there's a bunch of European politicians having a FOMO and are way too influenced by AI influencers that post stuff like "It's over", "Bye Bye Hollywood", "17 hours ago OpenAI launched it and this changes everything".
I recall bunch of those also having a FOMO for NFTs and having NFT events in the commission premises.
Probably its O.K. as long as they don't spend consequential money on this stuff. They should just watch the US more closely, keep announcing 600B Euros investment every few weeks and do nothing about it. Make VW invest 5B Euros for AI self driving in Mistral then Mistral buying shares from VW with that money, do some questionable self driving demos etc.
Eurocrats are clueless, they are trying to have something that very small number of people show interest in. What they should really do, IMHO, is to reduce friction induced by bureaucracy and that's it. Contrary to the popular narrative EU is a force for reducing bureaucracy, as the Brits found out when left EU. The idea is that EU coordinates the 27 states to create ruleset that are more or less aligned so there's not too much paperwork when trading between those 27 countries. Unfortunately this is still not good enough and they are working to create the 28th regime which is supposed to be something like streamlined ruleset that bypasses the local ones so that companies can grow in a market of 27 countries without dealing with 27 set of laws. That's when EU can have an actual AI thing because the current state of AI is just bunch of capitalists juggling money and credit among themselves to keep alive this interesting technology that looks promising but doesn't actually accomplish something yet. If EU will have anything of this sort they need a place to hold these capital gymnastics.
This particular "Apply AI" strategy seems to stem from the idea that AI does some great things and EU industry should adopt it to increase productivity and not fall behind. Pure FOMO, considering that studies show very limited gains through use of AI so far.
lifestyleguru 57 minutes ago [-]
> Eurocrats are clueless
Stop hurting yourself by thinking like this. They are extremely smart and capable, only not working in your favour.
jamesblonde 7 minutes ago [-]
Mods have woken up.
First job - downgrade any pro European tech stories.
Done.
CalRobert 49 minutes ago [-]
Ever since GDPR it has been baffling that European companies just reach for the American hyperscalers without a care in the world. Sure, _some_ companies need it, but you can get a long ways with OVH or Hetzner.
I suspect many of them are just ignoring their obligations with respect to data transfers (they also fail to understand the meaning of "Freely Given Consent" or "Legitimate Interest"), and utterly pathetic and useless institutions like the Irish Data Protection Commission (https://www.dataprotection.ie/en) just... let them.
simianwords 1 hours ago [-]
While some regulation is nice and needed it is kind of sad to see EU just rent-seeking on top of the AI innovation cycle.
flanked-evergl 1 hours ago [-]
Everything in EU is overpriced and worse than things coming from outside the EU, and that is by design. EU basically has no choice but to become more dystopian and adopt policies similar to the USSR to keep itself viable. This includes extreme trade barriers (with exceptions for China, because of course) and extreme restrictions on speech.
Europe is like some rich kid who thinks he somehow has merit of his own, instead of just being well-off because his parents were well-off. Basically Europe is the Greta Thunberg of continents.
schnitzelstoat 1 hours ago [-]
> This includes extreme trade barriers (with exceptions for China, because of course)
We have high tariffs with China as well though. I wish we didn't, then I might actually be able to afford an electric car.
shevy-java 1 hours ago [-]
It is a bit hypocritical of the EU to push tariffs against the EU citizens, forcing higher prices. Tariffs can sometimes make sense, such as for an emerging industry, but counter-tariffs are often the outcome and we here are punished by higher prices. If the EU wants to be relevant, they also need to produce at a lower price; China is conquering markets because it simply is more competitive now.
flanked-evergl 41 minutes ago [-]
China has better quality manufacturing at a cheaper price than EU and China. They aren't pushing out junk, it's well engineered, well, manufactured good which are almost impossible to produce at all in Europe never mind produce at a cheaper price, but still Europe allows these things to be imported with less strict barriers than they have against goods produced in European countries themselves.
Xelbair 39 minutes ago [-]
Same, they push tariffs it seems mostly to protect automotive industry from competition, the industry which has grown bloated and rent-seeking over the years.
Even more so when you take build quality and support quality in the equation.
flanked-evergl 56 minutes ago [-]
On paper the EU may have strong trade barriers with China, but in practice this just does not bear out. Europe has stronger trade barriers within itself than with China.
The EU demands that goods made in Poland conforms to some standards, but also that the manufacturers in Poland conform to some standards. For goods from China they in theory demand the same standards, but in practice these standards are not strictly enforced for goods from China (see AliExpress, Temu, Shein, etc), and there are no regulation on the manufacturers. Chinese manufacturers use slave labour, they pollute, they don't give their employees similar rights and benefits.
It's also way easier and cheaper for most Europeans to buy something from China than it is to buy something from within Europe, even though the actual selling price out of the factory is not that much higher for things manufactured in Europe. I pay the same "tariffs" if I buy from Sweden or AliExpress.
schnitzelstoat 41 minutes ago [-]
Maybe for buying cheap trinkets online, yeah.
But you can't buy an electric car on Temu.
sofixa 53 minutes ago [-]
> Everything in EU is overpriced and worse than things coming from outside the EU, and that is by design
If nothing else, Airbus says hello and laughs in your face. Throw in Spotify and IKEA, the majority of the world's luxury sector, a decent portion of the world's biggest car manufacturers, ASML, and you're just being silly.
flanked-evergl 45 minutes ago [-]
As someone who lives in Europe and buys things in Europe every single day, I know that practically everything except groceries comes from China. But sure, whenever I buy a plate from IKEA it comes from Turkey and not China.
But I guess if I were a rich person who mostly bought luxury goods, they would come from France. I guess I'm the problem. If only my tax money stayed with me instead of being funnelled to useless aristocrats, then maybe I could afford more luxury goods from France.
rangestransform 37 minutes ago [-]
Selling status to Americans and Chinese who have contribute actual productive industries is hardly an achievement
lifestyleguru 1 hours ago [-]
Everyone is selling the shovels but there is no gold. It's a shovel gold rush.
Ironically there are no current exit strategies for our public sector mobile apps which rely solely on Google play or the Apple store. I've written a plan for how we can move our resources from Azure to Hetzner, luckily I'm not involved with how we would move any 365 products so it was not too bad. Only the plan involves me using our digital national ID app on my phone, which would not work if I wasn't running android with Google Play (or apple). I mean, in the extreme it wouldn't be impossible to use my passport in person, but still.
Whenever I think about these things I just don’t see us Europeans being able to tackle suddenly having to decouple from the US if Trump or a successor suddenly turns the screws to 11.
Just take the issue of a european chip industry. Or literally anything China is doing now. The EU just isn't really a driver - it is a maintainer at best. And that also means it will successfully lose out to e. g. China or the USA.
Isn't that an example of driving towards intrinsic perfection?
They don't make a framework for XYZ to emerge based on market forces. It's always committee driven 'we will support this initiative so XYZ happens' top-down initiatives.
Those are necessary in some sectors, but it is applied everywhere. With multinational participation in committee and a lot of back and forth dance.
It's better than blind trendchasing or completely unregulated market forces doing their job, but the delay overhead is gigantic.
There is literally a term for when EU mandates result in global change, "the Brussels effect".
Also, it's a bit weird to claim the EU never tries to push for perfection and just copies - this is the organisation that brought us USB C as the one and only standard for everything, the right to be forgotten and the right to digital privacy, competition on railway networks EU-wide, the OpenSkies, and is actively trying to prevent excessive concentration of market forces (unlike pretty much any other regulator).
> All of this AI acceleration will be monitored by an “AI Observatory” and discussed in an “Apply AI Alliance” – a refashioning of the existing AI Alliance, a stakeholder talking shop.
It reminds me of how here in Spain the Government already created the Agencia Española de Supervisión de la Inteligencia Artificial (Spanish AI Supervision Agency) when we barely have an AI industry to supervise. It creates some more cushy jobs for them to hand out though.
Over 50% of those "living off the government" are pensioners, so mostly coming from a pool of people who already worked (and most of them in the private sector), and paid their share in taxes. In spain, the private sector makes 70% of the active workforce, while the public sector around 13%, self employed 13%, and unemployed 10%.
I know Spain (and Europe) have quite a lot of structural problems, but I fail to see how having so many pensioners has anything to do with AI regulations.
The problem is that you cannot pivot easily, you cannot change a lot of things in it - and even things like your potential hire bailing last minute can be devastating, paperwork wise.
I recall bunch of those also having a FOMO for NFTs and having NFT events in the commission premises.
Probably its O.K. as long as they don't spend consequential money on this stuff. They should just watch the US more closely, keep announcing 600B Euros investment every few weeks and do nothing about it. Make VW invest 5B Euros for AI self driving in Mistral then Mistral buying shares from VW with that money, do some questionable self driving demos etc.
Eurocrats are clueless, they are trying to have something that very small number of people show interest in. What they should really do, IMHO, is to reduce friction induced by bureaucracy and that's it. Contrary to the popular narrative EU is a force for reducing bureaucracy, as the Brits found out when left EU. The idea is that EU coordinates the 27 states to create ruleset that are more or less aligned so there's not too much paperwork when trading between those 27 countries. Unfortunately this is still not good enough and they are working to create the 28th regime which is supposed to be something like streamlined ruleset that bypasses the local ones so that companies can grow in a market of 27 countries without dealing with 27 set of laws. That's when EU can have an actual AI thing because the current state of AI is just bunch of capitalists juggling money and credit among themselves to keep alive this interesting technology that looks promising but doesn't actually accomplish something yet. If EU will have anything of this sort they need a place to hold these capital gymnastics.
This particular "Apply AI" strategy seems to stem from the idea that AI does some great things and EU industry should adopt it to increase productivity and not fall behind. Pure FOMO, considering that studies show very limited gains through use of AI so far.
Stop hurting yourself by thinking like this. They are extremely smart and capable, only not working in your favour.
I suspect many of them are just ignoring their obligations with respect to data transfers (they also fail to understand the meaning of "Freely Given Consent" or "Legitimate Interest"), and utterly pathetic and useless institutions like the Irish Data Protection Commission (https://www.dataprotection.ie/en) just... let them.
Europe is like some rich kid who thinks he somehow has merit of his own, instead of just being well-off because his parents were well-off. Basically Europe is the Greta Thunberg of continents.
We have high tariffs with China as well though. I wish we didn't, then I might actually be able to afford an electric car.
Even more so when you take build quality and support quality in the equation.
The EU demands that goods made in Poland conforms to some standards, but also that the manufacturers in Poland conform to some standards. For goods from China they in theory demand the same standards, but in practice these standards are not strictly enforced for goods from China (see AliExpress, Temu, Shein, etc), and there are no regulation on the manufacturers. Chinese manufacturers use slave labour, they pollute, they don't give their employees similar rights and benefits.
It's also way easier and cheaper for most Europeans to buy something from China than it is to buy something from within Europe, even though the actual selling price out of the factory is not that much higher for things manufactured in Europe. I pay the same "tariffs" if I buy from Sweden or AliExpress.
But you can't buy an electric car on Temu.
If nothing else, Airbus says hello and laughs in your face. Throw in Spotify and IKEA, the majority of the world's luxury sector, a decent portion of the world's biggest car manufacturers, ASML, and you're just being silly.
But I guess if I were a rich person who mostly bought luxury goods, they would come from France. I guess I'm the problem. If only my tax money stayed with me instead of being funnelled to useless aristocrats, then maybe I could afford more luxury goods from France.