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Comment by MR4D

19 days ago

The money doesn’t matter.

The goals don’t matter.

The people don’t matter.

The only thing that matters is how much regulatory red tape is involved.

My guess is that the paperwork will kill this. Read the announcement. Too much discussion about regulatory framework. In the US or China, all you need is some money and smart people. That’s a very low barrier to getting moving forward.

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MR4D

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askonomm  18 days ago

In other words, to be successful you need to be able to break the law and lobby the government? That is indeed the USA mindset, or should I say United Corporations of America? I'm happy EU is not USA.

  • MR4D  18 days ago

    That’s absolutely asinine and not at all what I said.

    The EU over regulates things like tech and that why they won’t be successful at have an AI tech scene. Over time, anyone good will migrate to the US or China where they can work faster and not have as many rules to deal with.

    A simple example is hiring and firing people - it’s much easier to make personnel changes in the US than Europe. As a result, US companies can take more risks.

    • askonomm  18 days ago

      Yes, US has at-will firing, and healthcare tied to the employer, and so forth. Basically the US has made sure that the corporations have all the power, and the people have none of it. Does this make it easier to make companies? Well of course it does, just like slave trade made it easier to collect crops.

      Unlike the US however, we in EU really like having basic human rights - such as mandatory minimum vacation time, healthcare that won't immediately disappear if you lose your job, or depend on the job, as well as not getting fired without cause, and without multiple warnings beforehand.

      If the result of this means that we won't be successful in the AI tech scene, or that all the Musk-like slave owners migrate to US or China where they can abuse people however much they like, I'm pretty sure Europeans are not going to shed a tear over that.

      I realize more and more that the main difference between Americans and Europeans is that Americans think from the perspective of a corporation, whereas Europeans think from the perspective of themselves, as human beings. We're not compatible, clearly, so there's no need to force us to be the same.

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    • dgroshev  18 days ago

      From experience, regulation as an explanation for EU startup competitiveness is overused so much it's almost meaningless. Can you point out specific laws that you consider existential for startups?

      What I find matters way, way more is two factors:

      - Concentration of capital. The US has an ecosystem of wealthy people that want to put their money somewhere. This is good for startups, but can also backfire as we can see in the news.

      - Unified market. EU is not a single market, it's several dozen markets with different regulations, different languages, and different cultures. You can't sell the same B2C product with the same marketing in Germany, Spain, and Sweden as easily as you can in California, Ohio, and Texas.

      2 replies →

jpdus  18 days ago

I agree that the announcement should´ve talked more about goals and performance than regulatory stuff ;-).

But I think there is a new understanding among the bureaucracy that regulation (alone, without innovation) will kill Europe´s competitiveness and that some acceleration and cutting of red tape is necessary.

Can't say with certainty that this will be successful. But that we, as a very young startup that is barely known outside of our AI Open Source niche, are part of this, is already a sign in itself - a year ago I´d have never believed that this might be an option (and also probably would've declined if someone asked us to join a EU-funded project).

We will have engineers without a degree (but hundreds of thousands of HF downloads) working side-by-side with some of the top researchers + HPC centers.