Actually nuts to me the degree to which European policymakers do not even begin to understand how to kickstart technologically-intensive industry. Anyone who has seen close-up the results of a "pick the winners" grant-style approach to innovation knows what will go wrong here.
While grant process in EU isn't fun, I think Levels has bit of an ego issues. He mentioned that if he had issues like that on eg X, he would see Elon himself in the replies.
While he is great at converting his influencer status to income in his micro-SaaS projects, I don't think running ad-fueled browser games on state-sponsored super computer should be really aim of these grant programs.
Problem with these grant proposal things is that it favors established businesses over small founders. Establishes businesses have much more resources to go through all the legal / red tape issues.
I’ve seen this in practice with innovation subsidies: small startup has to spend a lot of time to go though all the hoops, taking up significant resources, to get modest compensation for actual innovative work. Larger business hires an external agency to do everything for them, to make silly proposals “convert website from jquery to react” as innovation, and gets thousands upon thousands of FTE-hours in subsidy compensation hours for it.
this! it favors established business with legal teams and (maybe more importantly) with connections.
The EU is also great at creating a heavy regulatory environment. Which entrenches existing incumbents. So the EU creates barriers that favor big companies, then tries to fix it with grants that... also favor big companies.
And then everyone's surprised that there's no innovation in Europe.
From all the world's companies worth over 100B$ there's only one European company - SAP, founded 50 years ago. [1]
>this! it favors established business with legal teams and (maybe more importantly) with connections.
This x2. A close friend of mine works at a major EU HW tech company and his job is wearing a suit, going to dinner parties and rubbing shoulders with high level local and national bureaucrats to convince them to fund X, Y, Z projects, none of which result in any major commercial success or ROI for the governments because the money they get is not enough to make new successful products, but hey, he's loving his job which gives him amazing job security against the waves of layoffs the company went through due to falling of sales, plus the networking he gets out of that is invaluable.
So at least some people are enjoying the gravy train while it lasts. But that's why a lot of EU tech companies immediately go to the US first before opening up to the EU market. US VSs are more generous with their cheque books than EU governments and investors, plus the 300 million people single consumer market speaking English as the common language and all that.
I left a research org because it was basically a professional gatherer and spender of grants. People would make some proposal with a consortium, spend the money, write a paper or two, visit a conference in eg Japan to present it, rinse and repeat. Hated that. Nothing to do with real innovation.
He is 100% right on this one. From personal experience trying to figure out EU. Lawyer bureaucrats manage funds behind red tape clearly meant to be for their pals.
All these while the EU is running out of funds and in a process of de-industrialization. There should be an independent corruption investigation on Brussels.
I took part in application for EU grants a few times and our company group did it many times over the years.
It's bureaucracy, often bordering with stupidity. You may need advisors to navigate all their forms & processes. But it certainly isn't "pals-only" type of deal.
On the other hand - is it harder than getting VC funding? For seasoned founder with reputation - probably. For fresh startup - probably not.
Reviewer (Scientific Expert) for the EU (since 2009) here.
The probability of getting a Horizon Europe grant allegedly (not official stats) is about 8.5% according to some friends, which may seem low. You need to write 70 pages following a Word template and the key goal is to cover answers to a large number of questions. Each proposal gets various grades across a range of dimensions, which get added up and if you obtain at least 13 out of a possible 15 points, you are eligible to get funded, read: "You will get funded if there is enough money." Often, there are several proposals that justly achieve 15/15, and because of that, many prosals that have 14 points and all proposals that have less may not get funded, simply because there just is not enough total funding available to fund all the technically eligible proposals. Having judged many proposals in AI / ML / search / "big data" / language technology etc. I recommend optimizing recall, i.e. aspiring completeness.
The application process is not easy, but you can get help: there are support agency in each member country, free online Webinars to help, hotline help desks as well as an ecosystem of paid consultants that typically charge about 3k€ to vet a proposal for you if you need that kind of service (I never used it).
The process is neutral and conducted professionally and with external oversight (consultants are hired as "rapporteurs" that report on process/procedural integrity in additional to the actual reviewers). I value the research officers of the EC as people of high competency, integrity and motivation (research money is tax payers money so it should be spent carefully).
In comparison, VC (and even more so business angel) funding is achievable with much less formal apparatus, often a short business plan and a convincing slide deck and demo can get people to a partner meeting if the time is right. But the criteria and process are much different, and ideas ready for public research grants are typically too early for VCs (but the EC wants to foster the creation VC-funded startups resulting from the disseminated research).
> The EIC welcomes applications from innovators in all EU Member States and countries associated to the Horizon Europe programme. It particularly welcomes applications from startups and SMEs with female CEOs.
So that's one that strongly pushes that angle. But the one I saw I clearly remember saying "female co-founder", not CEO.
Right but if we do this with public funds then the narrative shifts to "OMG the EU is so corrupt and stupid, looking they're pouring taxpayer dollars into unproven stuff! They're deindustrializing!!"
The point being that, as soon as public dollars are on the table, people expect perfection. Anything less is waste, fraud, and abuse.
There's literally no winning. Want to make sure the money is allocated right? Bureaucracy. Want to not do that? Waste, fraud, and abuse.
Except that Apple, Intel, Tesla, etc have all received US government investment [1]. TSMC is a product of the Taiwanese state! Government investment can be done well, and seeds excellent companies.
Denmark has a large hearing aids industry due to lots of government funding for hearing aids, and a large wind turbine industry due to funding for wind farms. So stimulating demand can work to build or strengthen an industry, but what Denmark and EU are doing with GPUs is stimulating supply in Europe and demand in the US. I would be surprised if that does not end up strengthening US and not EU industry.
I wouldn't count the wind turbine industry in the same category as startups, energy production and infrastructure are classical government investment schemes.
It doesn't matter if government funded startups have been successful. It's not the government's job to provide capital to high risk ventures. They should provide public services for the people and regulate the private sector according to the interest of the people.
Well, depends on your definition of high risk.
Basic research is definitely high risk, in that return for investment may happen generations from now if ever. I'd argue that funding of basic research through universities etc. is part of government's job.
And funding for basic research should be made so that the results belong to the public, for example through universities as you mentioned. Not through private startups.
The comment you're replying to is tainted with the survivorship bias. We see successful companies that got government funding, but not the opposite. Maybe we'd have more innovation and competition without government picking these specific winners.
Ironically, one of the companies you mentioned (Apple) now operates in an environment with very little competition and regularly faces antitrust claims.
Government picking winners may actually reduce competition in the long run.
The key difference: when private money picks wrong, it's their loss. When government picks wrong, it's taxpayer money.
Of course there is red tape. EU funding comes from taxpayer money and we want it to be spent wisely. The red tape is precisely to prevent it from being funneled to pals. EU has funded quite a few free software projects so it's not like the red tape is an insurmountable burden: https://www.ri.se/en/news/blog/europes-digital-future-spells...
I'd also say that their grants aren't unusually burdensome and grantmaking is arms length compared with a lot of other bodies.
Yes, some of the questions are weird, but I'd really rather write a bit confirming that the AI system being developed isn't going to be racist or Skynet than jump through some other hoops that exist (and that absolutely includes VC due diligence). The actual biggest issue with European funds is they get way more competent applications than they can fund anyway.
I'm actually no fan of his, so that's fine. That said, I went to the actual website he was talking about (I'm also an EU citizen) and in this case it is exactly as described and bordering comical.
> What's REALLY much more important though if you want to be a part of the AI race and I've posted for years here with @euaccofficial
is to make Europe a really extremely attractive place to start and run an AI business. Remove regulatory obstructions and give tax discounts for startups. Let them build a business first that can compete worldwide and once they make enough money (let's say $100M/y), then slowly start adding regulation.
When you talk to most EU business owners, even in tech, the limiting factor isn't regulations. This being the #1 reason is such a tired trope.
Ironically, China has in some ways a bigger regulatory burden when it comes to software, as there if the government doesn't approve the business is dead in the water. I doubt that Klarna would've gotten off the ground there, for one, I could see them being shut down much earlier there. In the EU only now very slowly are some governments even starting to talk about some weak measures around their business model. But I've never, not once in my life, heard "Chinese software companies can't get off the ground due to the regulatory burden".
The same people who clamor about the EU regulations are the ones who hate on the EU for their protectionist measures against US tech. Yet another bout of irony here - China's software industry has flourished exactly thanks to 10 times stronger protectionist measures against US tech. So has Korea's, and their protectionism has never even been anywhere on the China level, more inbetween EU and China. No, if there's anything that would help, it's much more tech protectionism in the EU.
Pieter Levels is at the end of the day an influencer, not a serious founder.
The root cause of that is the lack of a true Capital Market union.
In the US, you can get VC across state borders and VC can invest in any US company regardless of their location. Not in the EU.
Investing in an Estonian startup from, say, the Netherlands is near impossible. And even if managed, now that NL investor has to repeat the entire process for Poland, Spain, Malta and other countries.
> Investing in an Estonian startup from, say, the Netherlands is near impossible
If anything this would be due to Dutch regulations rather than Estonian ones. So that would be more of a problem for setting up VCs in the EU rather than attracting capital in general, as the same would apply to the rest of the world. Is it easier for a US or Singapore VC to invest in an Japanese startup vs an Estonian startup? As far as I know the answer is a "no", but I'm happy to be proven wrong.
This is because there's no unified capital market.
A texas VC can invest in a startup in Chicago and a startup in Florida can raise money from NY and so on.
> If anything this would be due to Dutch regulations rather than Estonian ones
Yes, because there's no unified capital market. You describe an effect not the cause. With 27 member states, if such regulations are bi-directional, you'd need 351 of such "regulations". If one way, you'd need 702.
In the US with 51 states, there aren't a total of 1,275 "regulation contracts" between all states, there's one, and it's federal.
I don't think you understood my point. This "disadvantage" applies the exact same way to starrups every other non-US country, it's not something specific to the EU so it makes no sense to posit it as an EU thing.
> Is it easier for a US or Singapore VC to invest in an Japanese startup vs an Estonian startup?
This was my main question, and it looks like the answer is indeed no.
Still, the existence of the EU is (to bring peace by) lowering, mostly economic, barriers that traditionally exist between countries.
And the comparison in this threat was "between EU and US" (in europe Thing is hard... in Europe you cannot... etc). When people use "The EU" or "Europe" in this sense, they consider it as a "Single thing". Europe, or the EU, has a great disadvantage for startups over the US. You say that is because Europe is not a "thing" like a country is. I say, that is because Europe seen as a "thing" lacks some critical infrastructure that "the thing called US" has - or even "the thing Brazil" or "China" do have, internally.
Opening a company in Estonia is very cheap but in Spain the manager/CEO needs to be an "autónomo" (like a self-employed tax status). This costs thousands of Euros per year. Something like 2,400-30,000 Euros per year, every year, forever.
The global ground is even less common. In that sense it's ironic to talk about this as if it's an EU issue. Non-EU/US countries are all completely separate. The EU has much more common ground amongst each other than the other 170 or so countries that aren't EU/US; in that sense, it's an advantage for EU startups compared to startups from the other 170 countries that aren't the US. Yet it gets positioned as this unique EU disadvantage, as "the reason why EU startups are 'behind'".
In countries that have it. In Slovenia we have no such legal entity and so starting a business requires, at the very least, ~400€/month for a single proprietorship (unless you are already employed elsewhere already, then it's <100€) or even more for an LLC-type company (since it requires one fully employed person at a level above minimal wage).
I'm sure there's at least one US state where it's a pain to set up a company. So startup founders don't set up in that state but in Delaware, or recently maybe 1-2 ones. Germany is that state for the EU where it's a pain, so you set up your legal entity elsewhere.
You just need to pay 60€ or so for a business license and off you go. A GmbH (a corporate structure with limited liability, somewhere between an LLC and Corp) is not needed if you want to start a) now and b) for almost zero cost.
It’s probably the people who didn’t start a business in the EU that you want to talk to. Like, I’m European, but I started my company in the US because everything is so much easier here.
Where in Europe and where in the US? You probably started one in the easiest US state to do so. Did you try starting one in the easiest EU state? Otherwise we already can't take things very seriously.
Secondly, what's easier besides VC funding? If it's VC funding, the disparity there has nothing to do with regulations - guess how much VC funding the non-EU rest of the world gets.
I’m actually bootstrapping, so the VC situation isn’t relevant to me.
It’s a distant memory to me now, I’m building a company and so much has happened that the details of this decision have faded away. But, between the AI act and GDPR, there’s a set of potential traps laid out for you to step into, along with reams of paperwork. All that requires lawyers and compliance consultants to help you figure it out, and that’s way too much for a fledgling startup.
I think it said it all that the AI regulations were written before there was really anyone to regulate. Why would I want to pour my heart and soul into a system that’s geared to find ways to stop me from building?
Anyway, it’s no longer relevant to me: I’m gone and I don’t have to worry about it anymore.
Awesome! I'm also bootstrapping. My company is set up in a place where the local version of the GPDR is significantly stricter and more onerous than the GDPR itself - yes, you heard it right, this exists! GDPR isn't even the toughest privacy laws in the world .
Yet startups here have managed to compete with US bigtech incomparably better than the EU. Shows that tough privacy laws have nothing to do with it.
> All that requires lawyers and compliance consultants to help you figure it out, and that’s way too much for a fledgling startup.
It also really just doesn't unless you're doing really shady stuff, in which case, good. The huge majority of startups don't need a lawyer to deal with GDPR.
> but I started my company in the US because everything is so much easier here
Which part is easier? That you have 50 different states with slightly varying laws to consider (e.g. Californian Data protection)? That you have a byzantine system of "benefits" to choose and manage?
And compared to where? Germany or Estonia or Sweden or Spain? The complexities will vary wildly depending on the country (kind of like in the US, where lots of companies pick the state to base themselves in based on the combination of favourable laws and precedents and taxes).
we might be somewhat trending in this direction, but the reality is largely that the US states are pretty identical and have very similar laws on the books. the federal government is in charge of commerce usually.
most laws like CCPA also have some threshold where you already need to be pretty successful for it to apply to you.
for some select industries (biometrics & healthcare), yes you have a patchwork of laws.
How much oversight is there and how strong is? And if you cover Califronia, New york, Texas and Florida. Would those other places really stop you, specifically if its online? And even if you get fined, how much is that fine going to be?
Because they are plenty of companies just ignoring regulation and simply paying the fines, as the enforcement often a joke.
When I got here, I realized that things are so much better here that the only thing that could get me back to Europe is a decision not to renew my visa.
> When you talk to most EU business owners, even in tech, the limiting factor isn't regulations. This being the #1 reason is such a tired trope.
Okay, what is the limiting factor? Because when I talk to EU business owners (admittedly, very few) - they point to lack of big EU capital markets, which is directly downstream of the policy environment. And when I talk to top EU human capital, they all point to the lack of competitive wages. There's a real difficulty in allocating capital to talented humans.
And, at least in Southern Europe, the income tax schedule is so aggressive it's hard to justify continuing working in many of these countries if you are highly talented.
Like, if you can tell me what the induced operator norm from l_2 -> l_2 is - probably you should come to the US and work at a biglab and make bank. What can you do in Portugal, Italy, Spain, etc.??
> Pieter Levels is at the end of the day an influencer, not a serious founder.
Sure, agreed.
I think it is a complete misreading to point to protectionism as the reason for Chinese success, but having a big unified domestic market for consumers along with massive saving rates and capital controls probably does help.
One fairly large factor is that even though English is much more common today, you just can't operate (depending on the product of course) in many countries without having customer support, documentation etc in the local language.
A big part is that the EU is a collection of countries that (with very few exceptions) have different languages and laws. For a company to serve Spain and France, for instance, it would need to translate everything, hire local lawyers and customer support agents. Considering the much smaller size of the countries (biggest one is 70 million vs 330 million in the US), the opportunity for "unlimited" growth is limited.
This also rebounds in the fact that when an American company makes it big, they have the resources to flood other EU markets and be cheaper/better than the local competition due to economies of scale and money based on their big successful US market. A French company making it big is still small compared to a US equivalent.
Then, there's the capital markets, no denying that. The money being thrown around the US is like nowhere else on the planet. Some of it definitely a bubble / unrealistic, but that doesn't matter. But in part it's because of the size of the total potential market that this is justified.
Education / national mythology also plays a part, I think (this is pure conjecture now). In the US, the "American Dream", "everyone can make it" etc is heavily ingrained. It propagates through the world with the help of Hollywood and other American cultural exports. In most EU countries, there isn't such a heavy emphasis on independence and "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps". "Hustle culture" isn't a thing. So for most people, it isn't something that comes naturally to them to start a company and work 100 hour weeks to be big and rich and successful and famous.
That's not to say there aren't such people, I went to 42 and have been to Station F and know some people in that universe. A decent proportion of my classmates wanted to make their startup and make it big, and some did end up starting their own companies.
> This also rebounds in the fact that when an American company makes it big, they have the resources to flood other EU markets and be cheaper/better than the local competition due to economies of scale and money based on their big successful US market. A French company making it big is still small compared to a US equivalent.
Ding ding ding! When China does it with solar and EVs we call it "dumping". When Uber, OpenAI and Anthropic do it, that term is never ever used. VC funded US techs dumps harder than any Chinese industry ever has.
> Considering the much smaller size of the countries (biggest one is 70 million vs 330 million in the US), the opportunity for "unlimited" growth is limited.
If you manage to get 10 million customers, your business is already successful on a gigantic scale, and you should have all the know-how in taking on the world. The success of other people is rarely the reason why you are failing in your own life. Start somewhere, do something.
> The money being thrown around the US is like nowhere else on the planet.
That's true and it's awesome. In Europe money is only thrown to real estate owners and any enterprising people with a dream are cordially invited to fucking forget about it, shut up, and fall back in line. Even if they already have a proven track record. They take their idea to the United States and are treated incredibly well in comparison. Even if their business will only be a niche business with limited reach, like 99% of businesses.
> Europe money is only thrown to real estate owners and any enterprising people with a dream are cordially invited to fucking forget about it, shut up, and fall back in line.
That's simply not true. Europe is a continent that includes startup powerhouse Sweden, UK that has a ton of them too, and France that is making massive strides (just check out Station F). It might be true in Slovakia or whatever, but you simply cannot say that broadly for the whole continent.
> That's true and it's awesome
Is it? It is to an extent, but it also encourages nonsense (Juicero, the AI spice mixer), pump and dump tech-isation of existing stuff with no business model (Wework) and outright scams (Theranos, Nikola).
If the barrier to entry to get money thrown at you is so low, a lot of it gets wasted. So the rest really really has to make it big, which gives some perverse incentives (like Uber dumping to driver old school taxis out of business to then jack up prices, because if they're not a monopoly/biggest fish in town, they wouldn't have been worth it)
Nations like Sweden and the UK might have a healthy startup scene despite not getting good help from banks and other capital institutions.
Go search the web for startup financing in Sweden. One of the big banks has a page dedicated to this - but they're not offering their own money, instead they're pointing to government grants and government lending programs.
> If the barrier to entry to get money thrown at you is so low, a lot of it gets wasted. So the rest really really has to make it big
You can't do your accounting like that. One entity does not make up for the losses of another entity. Money is cheap in the US and thrown around to bad startups and good startups. In Europe money is expensive and mostly available to governments or for real estate feudalism.
That's capital markets and the lack of capital markets is because of not having business friendly environment. Consumer protections strong, pro business not so much. Companies like Spotify go to the US to IPO.
Are you saying that the other 199 non-US countries in the world all have a business unfriendly environment, since every one of them besides China has practically the same amount of software VC funding compared to the US?
All of these purported EU-specific reasons completely ignore that things are the same elsewhere. It's the US that is the outlier.
> Consumer protections strong, pro business not so much.
That's not the reason the EU has no unified capital market.
The reason is that member states are reluctant to hand over control and power to EU. Just look at e.g. Eurobonds and the shitshow around that. Especially the rise of populist anti-EU parties all over, are causing this.
Ironically, the parties that "freedom lovers" like Musk are funding and pushing, are the ones causing the EU to not function as a single capital market and "not having a business friendly environment".
> I think it is a complete misreading to point to protectionism as the reason for Chinese success, but having a big unified domestic market for consumers along with massive saving rates and capital controls probably does help.
Capital controls are protectionist measures, but anyway, no.
> Okay, what is the limiting factor?
Let's look at which countries have a significant local software industry compared to population size.
- China
- US
- Korea
- You can argue for Japan and India but that's already starting to stretch.
- Yup, effectively no where else. Even in an "out of the way" place like Myanmar everyone uses Meta, with a nice little genocide to show for it. Sure, in Vietnam they use Zalo, and other places have a few other local players. But most of the famous US tech apps are dominant.
Is the EU the outlier here? No. Everywhere else US tech dominates. Meta, Netflix, Apple, Google, Uber, Spotify, Microsoft, Match Group, Paypal, Amazon, and on and on. They don't just dominate the EU, they dominate the world.
Except for the countries I named above, where at least some of the markets that US big tech competes in, instead have bigger local players. And even there, guess what?
Their market share is almost 1:1 linearly correlated to the degree of protectionism in those countries, all the way from China, then Korea, then India/Japan, and then everywhere else! Who woulda thought!
Why does Korea have much less US tech dominance than, say, Germany? Despite German companies theoretically having a big advantage: the German public is 100x more privacy conscious than the Korean one, and much less trusting of US companies.
I can tell you that it's not less regulations; Korea's GDPR is much more onerous than the EU's and so are investment regulations. On every single regulatory aspect, German software startups have it easier. But they were never protected. US tech was allowed to waltz in, dump their products - that's what they did, it's hilarious how now China "dumping" EVs and solar is suddenly an issue when it's exactly the strategy that US tech continues to this day; the AI companies are doing it right now! And the Korean companies were protected. Both by the rules burden, that local companies had to deal with too, along with intentional protectionism.
When it comes to solar and EVs, we all understand that a foreign country dumping their goods kills local industry. It's the exact same with software.
But then half of HN has millions on the bank exactly thanks to the above - this is where all those fat SV salaries have come from - so I do get the lack of desire to understand it.
Are the solar panels and EVs 'dumped' or are they just actually cheaper to produce? I would argue its the latter. Sure there is some state investment in the supply chain, so it is in Europe. Sure the are EV subsidies and green energy subsidies, but so does Europe have them.
Fundamentally BYD cars are cheaper because China has localized the complete supply Chain or has very good raw materials import and local refinement capability. BYD invested themselves and spend 20-25 years vertically integrating while European companies put out huge dividend and miss major technology trends.
The EV market in China was hyper competitive with a huge number of competitors and the subsidies were strategically phased out to turn the industry competitive rather then relaying on protection.
The idea that China has enough money do 'dump' products in literally ever sector that people accuse it of 'dumping' AND at the same time have enough money for massive infrastructure programs at home seems like coping to me.
I largely agree with you on this. I mentioned it because of the irony when compared to US big tech, where it's never mentioned while being their entire playbook - and as you're pointing out, in reality a much better example than Chinese EVs. The whole Silicon Valley VC model (hi YC!) where we talk about "burning VC cash" - this is literally a euphemism for dumping. Subsidizing goods to make them artificially cheap, far below cost, to gain market share, establish a near-monopoly and then raise prices. Dumping at scale. Amazon, Uber, now OpenAI. The only answer to that is protectionism.
Great, you can cross Spotify off the list then or something.
> Uber is irrelevant in many places in the EU due to protectionism.
Thanks for another great example that proves the point :) Though I think there are markets where Uber Eats dominates even when Uber Taxi doesn't. Could be wrong.
> Their market share is almost 1:1 linearly correlated to the degree of protectionism in those countries
Seems like you actually believe this. I think our starting points on reality are different enough that we are not going to have a productive conversation, I wish you and other Europeans the best of luck in your protectionism-led growth strategy. Make sure to not discuss it with any pesky macroeconomists who might lead you astray. take care
Tbh, a lot of EU protectionism vs. US tech seems not to keep the competition out. In fact, with the amount of free press US startups get and the size of their coffers, they can simply roll over the local competition in EU markets most of the time.
What it's terribly good at is adding burdens that the US giants don't face early on, slowing down the early growth between 28 fragmented markets. I don't know specifically about how China works, but the question is proving product-market fit, and for that, you need a lot of users fast.
In the EU, it's a different battle country to country as the media environment, the markets, the regulation etc. are all fractured.
Is the point of these policies to pick winners? Or to upskill the creators and stimulate the economy by giving possible entrepreneurs experience Europeans can't get in big tech?
In the US, some ex-Googler might found a startup. Europe doesn't have the equivalent of FAANG. (Europe-wide companies are not quite as easy as US-wide)
Even if the super computer itself "fails", is the goal actually the secondary impacts to the economy?
(And in the US, we do our own fair share of picking winners / losers, especially in the current regime)
Please don't fulminate on HN. A sentence like "Actually nuts to me the degree to which European policymakers do not even begin to understand" is inflammatory rhetoric of the kind we're trying to avoid here on HN. The question of how countries/economic unions can funtion most effectively is a topic worthy of serious discussion, but these discussions can be far more fruitful it they're approached with curiosity rather than rage.
I literally quoted the paragraph from this link in the tweet I provided: Edit: lol, I didn't, I quoted it from a policy document, not from press release. However, my point stands:
--- start quote ---
Apply AI Strategy
The Apply AI Strategy aims to harness AI's transformative potential by driving adoption of AI across strategic and public sectors including healthcare, pharmaceuticals, energy, mobility, manufacturing, construction, agri-food, defence, communications and culture. It will also support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with their specific needs and help Industries integrate AI into their operations.
--- end quote ---
I also quoted a paragraph from a document I will find when I'm not on mobile.
> Seems like your quote was very misleading to me, so no your point doesn't stand
My quote: Cluster: for public benefit, cutting edge research in biotech, medical, robotics.
Literal quote from your link: The Apply AI Strategy aims to harness AI's transformative potential by driving adoption of AI across strategic and public sectors including healthcare, pharmaceuticals, energy, mobility, manufacturing, construction, agri-food, defence, communications and culture.
You: your quote was misleading.
I'm sorry, I don't have the time or the patience with willfully ignorant and blind people getting their interpretations from AI slop engagement farmers.
Yeah you just demonstrated how it was misleading - by omitting half the categories, especially communications and culture.
> I'm sorry, I don't have the time or the patience with willfully ignorant and blind people getting their interpretations from AI slop engagement farmers.
By funding AI slop, you're funding AI slop, not AI research, or, quote, "drive adoption of AI across strategic and public sectors including healthcare, pharmaceuticals, energy, mobility, manufacturing, construction, agri-food, defence, communications and culture"
> research works on grasping at the possible but not quite knowing how
If these are public money, you want to reduce the blind grasping
> Slop has stumbled into accidental success on a number of occasions.
So, show me these occasions where AI slop led to "transformative potential by driving adoption of AI across strategic and public sectors including healthcare, pharmaceuticals, energy, mobility, manufacturing, construction, agri-food, defence, communications and culture."
Yeah no, it's just not how it works. They're trying to support fundamental research and they have limited resources to accomplish them. Some random dude who wants to build a company that generates pretty AI pictures is just not the target audience, and he rightly got rejected.
And frankly, the dream scenario that Pieter describes where he somehow would qualify for these resources also wouldn't help kickstart the tech industry, and it's also not how it works in the states.
What does help, and what European governments (at least the one in The Netherlands that Pieter is from) actually do, is more funding for startups. If you're a startup founder in NL almost every angel you talk to has a matched funding deal with the government. That's such a smart way of keeping up with the US. Do you think US startups get free compute from the government? They don't even get subsidies most of the time. What they get is better funding because there's more capital available, and helping investors with that is exactly how you solve that.
I don't think what you're saying is inconsistent with what I'm saying. I think you are making a big deal out of the difference between state investment funds and subsidized GPUs but I think they basically work by similar mechanisms.
> What does help, and what European governments (at least the one in The Netherlands that Pieter is from) actually do, is more funding for startups. If you're a startup founder in NL almost every angel you talk to has a matched funding deal with the government. That's such a smart way of keeping up with the US.
Does government offering matched funding to investors actually help startups who are struggling to find (any) funding? If a startup can't find (any) funding, matching is irrelevant.
> Do you think US startups get free compute from the government? They don't even get subsidies most of the time. What they get is better funding because there's more capital available, and helping investors with that is exactly how you solve that.
Umm. I'm not really convinced that the political elites in Europe understand how to do any of this stuff well.
The EU Commission is appointed, not elected. Only the Parliament (MEPs) are elected.
What’s worse, the parliament cannot originate law. Only the unelected Commission can do so. And they can do it behind closed doors. This is a setup that’s ripe for corruption.
However, they're appointed by the EU Council (the heads of state, most of them elected, some appointed by a national parliament), and approved by the (elected) European Parliament.
At the cost of some transparency, this does make it possible to select a bit more for management skills instead of just campaigning skills.
The Commission is appointed by elected officials. That's the same way the US presidency works. It's also how the UK PM role works, or any minister in pretty much any democratic government. All of those are still referred to as "elected" in common tongue.
Actually it’s very different to the US presidency and UK PM.
US presidential candidates are appointed, but they must then be elected by the public.
UK PMs must be elected MPs, or at least must face an immediate by-election (by constitutional convention) if not already an MP
If back-hand deals, internal political favouritism, nepotism or opportunism lead to the appointment of an EU Commissioner there’s nothing the public can do about it.
Is this really true? Aren't the outcome of primary elections much much more important in determining who will be the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees than elected officials and party officials are?
Specifically, an unreliable source that gives fast answers to questions says that a candidate who wins enough primaries to get over half the delegates is almost certain to be the presidential nominee for his or her party.
I think you're mistaken about appointment/election:
* Citizens vote in a nationwide election every four years.
* Those votes determine electors in each state — this is part of the Electoral College system.
* The Electoral College then formally elects the president based on those state results.
* The candidate who receives at least 270 of the 538 electoral votes becomes president.
So while there’s a layer of formality through the Electoral College, the president is ultimately chosen by voters, not appointed by any government body.
* It doesn’t have ongoing powers, authority, or political discretion like a parliament or the European Council.
* It’s a one-time, ceremonial body that meets once every four years to cast votes reflecting (in nearly all cases) the popular vote results in each state.
2. Electors don’t deliberate or choose freely.
* In almost every state, electors are legally bound (or at least politically bound) to vote according to their state’s popular vote.
* So the outcome is functionally determined by voters, not by an independent decision of the Electoral College.
3. The EU analogy misrepresents the role of the Electoral College.
* In the EU, citizens elect national governments, which then appoint members of the European Council, who negotiate and nominate the EU Commission — a genuine appointment process.
* In the U.S., the electors are not government officials making appointments; they are agents executing the people’s will as expressed in the election.
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In the US, the people elect the President, because electors vote as their state’s voters directed.
The EU Commission analogy doesn’t fit, because that’s an appointment process made by governments, not a formalization of a direct vote.
Now you're moving the goal posts by post-facto introducing all sorts of qualifiers.
Fact of the matter is, neither the US President nor the EU Commission are directly elected. Both are appointed with one layer of indirection between them and a direct vote.
Either we call both elected or we call both unelected. To do so for one, but not the other is anti-European propaganda.
It’s about control. It is a fundamental difference in perspective and mentality regarding control. America is or at least was largely oriented around indirect control or outcome oriented objectives, where Europe is largely oriented around direct control or prescribed objectives.
It’s also enshrined in our respective governments and the foundational philosophies that underpin them. The US Declaration of Independence sets out to describe that the natural rights of the men who created the USA are preeminent and the Constitution lists how those rights may not be infringed upon, i.e. It creates laws that binds and limits the actions of government, something that was and has never been emulated since. Where across Europe, you simply do not have anything even remotely similar and the law inversely describes what you are permitted by government to do instead.
It is effectively descriptive vs prescriptive law and underlying philosophies. It is something I have had the hardest time on occasion getting my European friends to really internalize, seemingly because it’s so contrary to what their conditioned with all their life, i.e., the government is essentially the matter that grants you what it grants you, not that you have rights that the government may not infringe upon.
But to be fair, this possibly European tendency to dominate and control what you may and may not do and when and how, is and long has been creeping into the USA too, arguably since even the 12th amendment to the Constitution and getting worse with every amendment since, layers upon layers of contradicting and conflicting flaws and bugs that will be reading their ugly heed here in about two years, when Trump may run for President again. And if you don’t think he can, you simply don’t understand what a spaghetti code the Constitution is after the 11th amendment, hack after hack building up mountains of debt that is going to come due in our lives.
Which I think many (the vast majority?) Europeans will fight you to the death to avoid admitting. The politicians just made some honest mistakes. No corruption at all. Just read the other replies in this discussion.
EU grifting is so much worse than even the most brazen Trumpian crypto pump n' dump.
Geniunely repugnant. Atleast the Trump admin has the decency to pump everyones 401k...
I'm trying to figure out why it bothers me so much. I think its because the EU are such unbelievable losers in everything they do. they can't even grift, thats how useless they are. they can't even steal properly. its so undignified, and offensive to the senses.
Wouldn't go that far. EU policymakers have good intentions, I believe - but ultimately are products of their environment and cultural inclination.
The EU is such a bizarre place because they treat capital and entrepreneurs with such massive distrust, but never really bothered getting rid of the quasi-static entrenched hierarchies from feudalism? Like I'll go to the UK or France and there will just be massive swathes of land owned by the nobility or 'former' nobility? Maybe start there but let your high-value human capital earn a good wage?
You are wrong in that you think the hierarchies stem specifically from feudalism, but you are absolutely correct in that these hierarchies exist and are deeply entrenched. Sweden and Germany have one of the lowest percentages of self-made vs. inherited fortunes in the western world. Actually some tax policies in the US enable much more upward mobility, such as real estate taxation and 401k-like vehicles.
The problem in UK cities has nothing to do with feudalism. The massive lands most of those big land owners own isn't really worth that much. The really valuable land around cities is locked up by 1960s land use and building regulation. You have incredibly valuable land not developed because it has to be 'green' but its not some ancient woodland, rather its just a bunch of grass next to a highway.
Those 1960s regulation have a 1000x larger effect then any land owners owning a bunch of unproductive farmland or highlands.
Not to say there are no issues with large land owners, but its nowhere near anywhere close to being the issue with housing prices and living cost.
The EU Parlament has it's issues, and it's atrocious how corrupt politicians like e.g. von der Laien fail upwards into leadership roles there, but they're both massively exaggerating the issues to a degree that it's hard to call the stated opinions anything but unhinged.
Its kinda like calling a Chihuahua "apex predator". completely out of touch with reality.
Okay, can you please quote me directly what I said that is unhinged/delusional or explain why he is on point that I should seek help? I think you have lost sight of that being an incredibly rude thing to say to someone, but maybe not?
Feudalism is a problem in some corners, but it's mostly a UK thing. The US has its own almost-feudalism like ownership structure (see 1980s to now wealth distribution), which is problematic, but it's not bad enough (yet) to halt the US economy.
Also funny to read this narrative of how access to the European 'supercomputer' cluster is going. https://x.com/levelsio/status/1981485945745788969